The Flawed Philosophy of Intelligent Design

The time has come to be blunt. The problem with Intelligent Design is not that it is false; not that the arguments in its favor reduce to smoke and mirrors; and not that it's defenders are disingenuous or even duplicitous. The problem with Intelligent Design is that it is dumb. I would contend that ID is dumb biology; even if it is on to something, what it is on to has no connection and does no meaningful work in biology (or physics). However, and more significantly, ID is dumb philosophy.

First, and despite the claims of its defenders, ID is a position in natural theology. And, despite its name, natural theology is not a branch of theology or of science, but of philosophy.

Natural theology lives on the boundary of natural philosophy (science) and metaphysics. The fundamental question of natural theology is: given what we know about the world from natural science, is the best available metaphysical picture of the universe one according to which the objects of natural science form a closed system or, alternatively, one according to which at least one entity fundamentally different from the objects of natural science is required to explain the structure of the natural world.[1]

Once we recognize that ID is a metaphysical position, we can recognize that ID has two principle competitors: metaphysical naturalism and global non-naturalism. Both of these frameworks compete with ID as fundamental perspectives for understanding the world.

First, let us consider metaphysical naturalism. Roughly, a metaphysical naturalist claims that the world per se is roughly the way that the world is portrayed in the natural sciences. The first, but not principle advantage, of naturalism is its profoundly elegant simplicity; at its heart rests the intuition that the world simply is the way that it seems to be. However, to really understand the power of this intuition pursued to a philosophical conclusion we must be willing to embrace its power to drive David Hume's war against superstition and moral privilege. The power of the tools that naturalism puts at our disposal for understanding who we are and why we are the way we are; for understanding the real place of human beings in the cosmos; and for elevating the dignity of the ordinary, both ordinary human beings and the ordinary world, cannot be overestimated. If you don't feel the pull of naturalism, then even if you ultimately find it inadequate, as I do, you just don't get it.

On the other hand there are a wide variety of non-naturalist cosmologies. General characterizations of non-naturalism fall together much less straightforwardly than do such characterizations of naturalism. This is, at least in part, because of the much greater historical depth of non-naturalism. Although, today, naturalism does feel like the default metaphysical position for those who begin their metaphysics with natural science, that is a quite recent phenomenon. Unfortunately, not being naturalists is about the only thing that the various non-naturalists have in common.

Fortunately, the virtues of non-naturalism can be usefully characterized as just the opposing virtues to those of naturalism. The best non-naturalist cosmologies derive from a very real sense on the part of their defenders of the messiness of the world; a sense that, contrary to naturalist expectations, things don't come together when we look deeper. That is, naturalism seems to require that there be a scientific picture of the world. Instead, claim their opponents, things just get weirder. Whether we are looking at quantum theory; at the strange fact that stars ever manage to light their fusion engines; at the weird and totally unexpected patterns that crop up in the fossil and evolutionary record; how can anyone who really digs down, even if they don't ultimately agree, fail to feel the pull of a metaphysical picture, which, at least, explains how all of this weirdness manages to fit together into a WORLD?

And, what do the ID types want to set against these? Some kind of bastard child of naturalism and non-naturalism. According to ID, the world perked along perfectly fine for several billion years according to the rules of physics. Over most of space-time the naturalists have it basically right, things just sort of go the way they seem they should. Then, a couple of billion years ago, along came The Designer, not itself the product of those processes. It showed up and decided to take a bunch of these otherwise perfectly natural chemicals and put them together to make bacteria and then designed in a replication system. Then it left it alone for another several million years and decided, "Hey, I've got these bacteria around, let's collect them into these other things." And, so forth.

But, this is just dumb! It takes the real virtues of both real alternatives and turns them on their heads. If naturalists value metaphysical simplicity, the simplicity of ID becomes simplemindedness. The ID theorist response to any puzzle is to demand a simple solution, even if the simple solution amounts to deus ex machina. This isn't just lazy philosophy; it's lazy fiction. On the other hand, if non-naturalists have a valuable sensitivity to the messiness of the real world, the ID theorists goal is to make that messiness go away. Pointing at every gap in our understanding and saying, "See there goes God, or whoever." isn't sensitivity to complexity; it's just stupidity.

Consider one of the most fully developed alternative evolutionary cosmologies; that of Teilhard de Chardin.[2] De Chardin, one of the most celebrated paleo-anthropologists of his generation, noticed certain patterns in the evolutionary record available to him. In particular, he noticed what seemed to be patterns in the evolutionary record related to the evolution of central nervous system complexity, i.e. thought, that seemed to be surprising if the only constraints operating on biological evolution were basic physics, the physical boundary conditions and natural selection.

Trying to summarize his conclusions from this is just about as possible -- that is, it's not possible to do fairly -- as would be attempting to summarize, for example Richard Dawkins' attempt at an evolutionary account of vision. However, what follows should at least give the reader a taste.

Teilhard thought that he could "derive" the operative constraints on evolutionary systems necessary to generate the patterns he discerned. He argued that those constraints pointed to a global teleological structure for the entire universe. Roughly, these constraints are equivalent to postulating the evolution of conscious awareness, the noosphere, as a cosmological endpoint for all natural processes.

This is probably wrong, but it is real philosophy; you could spend years struggling with everything you need to really get a handle on in order to see where Teilhard goes wrong.

And this is the first thing to notice; unlike ID, Teilhard's cosmology is not a shortcut to anywhere. Teilhard's cosmology does not close off questions; it opens them up. And, if it is right, it really does help us make metaphysical sense of everything about the universe without having to abandon real science at any point in the process. That is, for Teilhard, as much as for any naturalist, we understand the universe by looking at the universe; not outside of it. In Teilhard's universe there are no dei ex machina; things happen in the universe because that's the way they happen in this universe. The difference is that this universe is not quite as straightforwardly self-subsistent as the naturalists would have it be.

And instead of attempts to really work through these problems, we are offered ID.

Consider the following example. Imagine yourself as a visiting alien; when surveying "Africa" you discover large termite mounds. Most of the crew gets right down to the business of studying termites and figuring out how they manage to produce their nests. But, a few make a different claim. Given that the termites are clearly not sentient, they decide that the termites could not possibly have built their nests in the absence of an independent sentient nest designer -- The Termite Farmer. Therefore, they take off and go looking for The Termite Farmer instead of studying what termites actually do.

Among what I would call "real" termite biologists there can be both naturalist and non-naturalists. That is, some of them think that what you see is what you get; others think that there is something more subtle going on with the termites. However, unlike the design theorists, they both think that you learn about termites by studying termites. Not, by wandering around looking for hypothetical termite designers. However, it's actually worse than that. It's as if the believers in termite-mound designers didn't just go around being pains in the neck to real biologists by pointing out the places they don't quite understand yet; problems with which the real termite biologists are, of course, already perfectly familiar. Instead of either getting down to work or getting out of the way, they go around crowing that termite biologists get it all wrong because the termite-designers tried to make it look as if they, the designers, didn't exist. That is, ID theorists need to claim that, although life looks like a fundamentally natural process subject to natural explanation, that naturalness is an illusion. But, this isn't just bad science or bad philosophy; it's a conspiracy theory fit for The X-files, and thus, while it may not be religion, it certainly is just dumb!

The author is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University, Chicago.

[1] There is another branch of "natural" theology, one that operates from an a priori basis. This family of arguments attempts to prove that possession of certain concepts or the ability to make certain judgments implies the existence of a "divine" being. Anselm's argument, what Kant calls the Ontological Argument, is the quintessential example.

2 Despite the claims of many naturalists, de Chardin does not make an argument from design in the sense at issue here. See Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).for an example of this mistake. See Stephen Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology for a (roughly) naturalist engagement with Teilhard which avoids this mistake.

"IDers have a particular dislike for randomness,
Source this."

See, for example,
http://www.gotquestions.org/intelligent-design.html
"The specified complexity argument states that it is impossible for complex patterns to be developed through random processes. For example, a room filled with 100 monkeys and 100 typewriters may eventually produce a few words, or maybe even a sentence, but it would never produce a Shakespearean play. And how much more complex is biological life than a Shakespearean play?"
...
"The anthropic principle states that the world and universe are "fine-tuned" to allow for life on earth....The existence and development of life on earth requires so many variables to be perfectly in tune that it would be impossible for all the variables to come into being through random, uncoordinated events."

You choose to selectively view the Universe in such a way that you think you can disclude the effect at either end of the scale because it doesn't fit your world view.

Step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath and go lie down. You either can't read or don't comprehend.

How does it integrate [the findings from] physics, geology and chemistry?

Physics: radiometric dating.
Geology: the fossil record.
Chemistry: genome mapping.

Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another.

Add up your direct observation of shared characteristics, supportive observed genome similarities transcending species, transitional fossil records showing the diverging development of physical traits from common ancestors to multiple extant species, and radiometric dating to chart all of these data on a coherent timeline, and the case gets a tad stronger.

Fossils in itself doesn't prove anything. For example, if I buried a bicycle 20 years ago and buried a motorcycle in the same vicinity today; 200 years later if someone digs up these items, is it accurate for them to conclude that the bicycle evolved into a motorcycle on its own? They have a lot of shared characteristics.

See above about the various independent sources of evidence supporting each other.

"if I told you that a snake came up to me and started talking in fine Yiddish and that what he was to say would determine the entire future of the human race, would you believe me?
So do you believe that random chance could produce a talking snake or not? If not, why not?"
----
LOL. This was the funniest thing I read all day. If you want to believe in talking snakes or faeries, so be it. As Thomas Jefferson observed, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god."

Inasmuch as Adam and Eve, according to creationism, had no opportunity to learn language, and we have no idea what language they spoke, it is unlikely that a snake would speak to them in unaccented English!

It is quite true: I do not believe that talking snakes arose by random chance. There is nothing in science or my personal experiences that allow for talking snakes to arise by natural processes.

By the same token, there are lots of myths and superstitions that I do not believe in.

Actually, now that I look at it, Gitt's theories on information are more applicable.

1. DNA (genetics, etc) for life is a molecular blueprint/code for that life form. A living thing's DNA makes it what it is, and is self-repairing and keeps the living thing what it is.

2. This DNA is a code for life. It contains information as to what that particular life form will be, and how it will function. and what attributes it will possess.

3. This 'code' can be studied and deciphered. DNA doesn’t use a binary code, but a quaternary one. Whereas the unit of information in the computer is a 1 or a 0, the unit in DNA can be T, A, C or G. We have learned some of the rules of how DNA works, we know that if certain things are present in an organisms' code, they will have certain attributes (good or bad). We speak of genetic inheritance, genetic drift, inbreeding, all based on the understanding that we know information is passed along.

4. When we take this data code (A-T, C-G pairings) and put it into context, we are able to make information out of this data (genes, how dna works, inheritance, etc).

5. Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement.

6. Re-phrasing 5, coded information cannot arise by chance. Information requires a sender (a source of intelligence).

7. The information we see in the genetic code of life requires a source of intelligence behind it. It needed a source of intelligence (man) to discover the information and beign to understand it. You cannot have information without intelligence to create it.

Science is knowing that the first phytoplanktons that actually created oxygen led to the largest die-off in the history of the planet as they pumped their lethal, toxic, noxious waste into the atmosphere. The creatures that were left were adapted to use oxygen. Over time, the phytoplanktons became plants, the remaining organisms founded the animal kingdom.

Since no one was around to observe this event, it is merely conjecture, a theory if you will. Unless you have hard evidence to the contrary? And assertions, however stridently and loudly proclaimed, do not pass as "hard evidence".

From the eighteen words I posted criticizing your breathtakingly irrelevant analogy between errors in a computer simulation and the natural process of evolution, you have discerned how I view the Universe?

Those weren't the words you picked out. You picked out the words that followed my explanation of an experiment using genetic algorithms and an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) starting from a useless program and using random chance and "natural selection" of the best fit to arrive at (in about 100 generations) an algorithm that was not only fit to perform the function, but so fit to perform the function that the human beings who ran the test were unable to explain the method by which it was created or how it worked.

That is the main tenet of ID is it not? Are you saying that God now interferes with computer lab experiments?

I was initially responding to someone who said that it took four years of college to learn that computers do what they are told. If I were him, I would have picked up a book, because in 1978, when I first read a computer programming book, that's what they started with. I then went on to tell how, just like in a natural organism's DNA, sometimes the program goes wrong.

I then went on to give an example, admittedly a trivial one. That "random mutation", however, was pruned from existence when I hit "exit". My point was that, even in computers, random mutations occur.

I then went on to explain that if we use those random mutations to actually produce new programs using a mechanism similar to those found in nature (reproduction of the most fit plus small random mutations, or recombining best programs and picking bits from each one), those programs can display unbelievable complexity and fitness for the solution very rapidly.

You made clear in your response that you either A) didn't read past the first paragraph, or B) chose to read it and then claim that I was, I believe you chose the term "stupid", to claim that it related to reality in any way.

A computer was used to model a process that occurs in nature (Genetic Algorithms). That process produced an "evolved" program that exceeded the human capability to understand or explain. My statement that this result bears grave consequences for our view of the natural world, where literally trillions of generations have occurred since the first bacteria are found in the fossil record, was labeled by you as "stupid". To me that established a mindset and a world view that you espouse. Yes, it is an assumption on my part, but one based on evidence you've provided.

I haven't checked, but something tells me that you labeled the word "dumb" in the article as an ad hominem attack, and then you proceeded to engage in the same type of ad hominem attack against me.

I feel compelled to make a couple of clarifications to my post...

In my response to your quote of:
'Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another',
I failed to clarify that it is not believed that existing species 'evolved from one another', but from common ancestors.

I also withheld a response to your motorcycle analogy, not out of a lack of anything suitable to say, but because I tend to believe that an analogy that uses inanimate objects in situations that examine living things suffers fatal flaws if that situation would require impressing living traits on the proxy items in order to make sense. If you wish, however, I could craft a response to how your bikes might be perceived in an anthropological sense.

"Evolution correctly integrates the findings from physics, geology, and chemistry about the age of the earth. Evolution makes sense of why all us mammals share so many characteristics in common."

"How does it integrate physics, geology and chemistry? Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another."

"Fossils in itself [sic] doesn't prove anything... I'm just searching for the concrete evidence that so many claim exist."
----
I am not sure I understand your point. Do you deny that fossils exist? Do you deny that fossils show a chronological understanding from simpler life forms to vertebrates, then to dinosaurs, then to mammals? Do you deny that fossils show a development from simpler plants to present-day angiosperms?

I can assure you that fossils exist. I have one right here on my mantlepiece. It is of a fish that lived in Devonian times.

The real fact is, 98.5% of all life on earth died during that period.

And you know how much life constituted 100%? Really? What was the population numbers and what did the population consist of?

My point is this: Know the difference between a fact and a theory. This is a big planet and many have confused local events for global events. With the planet made up of 80% water, don't presume 98.5% of anything died off.

No, I have no hard evidence, since your measure is "were you there."

I have only the incredibly circumstantial evidence of massive fossil records, ice cores, radio isotope dating, the fact that Oxygen would vanish in a few million years without a constant source of it on the planet, massive evidence of anaerobic bacteria and life forms before this event, and the complete absence of them afterwards, the arrival of whole new forms of life that used photosynthesis rather than metal-acid reactions as energy sources, and then another set that suddenly use redox reactions for the first time in the fossil record, thousands of scientific papers, thousands of books, millions of established scientific facts and researchers agreeing, the fact that Oxygen in inorganic chemistry is a corrosive, quickly absorbed gas that almost never, ever occurs in its elemental form in nature.

But no, no hard evidence.

You posted: "Fossils in itself doesn't prove anything. For example, if I buried a bicycle 20 years ago and buried a motorcycle in the same vicinity today; 200 years later if someone digs up these items, is it accurate for them to conclude that the bicycle evolved into a motorcycle on its own? They have a lot of shared characteristics."

I reply:
Your analogy makes no sense. Bicycles do not select mates, give birth to baby bicyles that grow up to select new mates, and thus have new baby bicyles, some of which mate and produce new ones, and so on. This is the fundamental flaw in ID, because it ignores reproduction that mixes genes more or less randomly and selection for certain survival characteristics in the offspring.

If I have a fossil record, and the record before time period X shows 1000 species, and after time period X, I see only 15 species, then I can state unequivocally that the fossil record shows that 98.5% of all species have died off.

The fact that it's a big planet just means that I have a lot more fossil records showing the same thing, and improving my degree of assurance that the statement is accurate.

Oh, and the planet is 71% water, and all of those lifeforms that I refer to lived in or on the water. The nice part is that massive ocean kills sink wonderfully to the bottom and become part of the sedimentary record. The *fact* that this same die-off appears at the same time in all the fossil records all around the world puts paid to your "local event" idea. The production of oxygen as the waste product of phytoplanktons was the greatest threat to life in the history of the planet. Worse than the extinction of the dinosaurs, worse than any other event in the fossil history.

That is a *fact* not a conjecture. The evidence is massive and well researched. The level of confidence in the oxygen die-off is 99.99999999%. You'll note, it's not 100%, because that's the scientific method. Tomorrow we could find out that aliens came down and culled the planet. But that would only null out the *method* of extinction, not the *FACT* that it happened.

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