Darwin's Doubt

Darwin’s Doubt, the brand new New York Times bestseller by Cambridge-trained Ph.D., Stephen Meyer, is creating a major scientific controversy. Darwinists don’t like it.

Meyer writes about the complex history of new life forms in an easy to understand narrative style. He takes the reader on a journey from Darwin to today while trying to discover the best explanation for how the first groups of animals arose. He shows, quite persuasively, that Darwinian mechanisms don’t have the power to do the job.

Using the same investigative forensic approach Darwin used over 150 years ago, Meyer investigates the central doubt Darwin had about his own theory. Namely, that the fossil record did not contain the rainbow of intermediate forms that his theory of gradual evolutionary change required. However, Darwin predicted that future discoveries would confirm his theory.

Meyer points out that they haven’t. We’ve thoroughly searched the fossil record since Darwin and confirmed what Darwin originally saw himself: the discontinuous, abrupt appearance of the first forms of complex animal life. In fact, paleontologists now think that roughly 20 of the 28 animal phyla (representing distinct animal “body plans”) found in the fossil record appear abruptly without ancestors in a dramatic geological event called the Cambrian Explosion.

And additional discoveries since Darwin have made it even worse for his theory. Darwin didn’t know about DNA or the digital information it contains that makes life possible. He couldn’t have appreciated, therefore, that building new forms of animal life would require millions of new characters of precisely sequenced code—that the Cambrian explosion was a massive explosion of new information.

For modern neo-Darwinism to survive, there must be an unguided natural mechanism that can create the genetic information and then add to it massively, accurately and within the time allowed by the fossil record. Is there such a mechanism?

The answer to that question is the key to Meyer’s theory and entire book. Meyer shows that the standard “neo-Darwinian” mechanism of mutation and natural selection mechanism lacks the creative power to produce the information necessary to produce new forms of animal life. He also reviews the various post-Darwinian speculations that evolutionary biologists themselves are now proposing to replace the crumbling Darwinian edifice. None survive scrutiny. Not only is there no known natural mechanism that can create the new information required for new life forms, there is no known natural mechanism that can create the genetic code for the first life either (which was the subject of Meyer’s previous book Signature in the Cell).

When Meyer suggests that an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the evidence at hand, critics accuse him of being anti-scientific and endangering sexual freedom everywhere (OK, they don’t explicitly state that last part). They also claim that Meyer commits the God of the gaps fallacy.

But he does not. As Meyer points out, he’s not interpreting the evidence based on what we don’t know, but what we do know. The geologically sudden appearance of fully formed animals and millions of lines of genetic information point to intelligence. That is, we don’t just lack a materialistic explanation for the origin of information. We have positive evidence from our uniform and repeated experience that another kind of cause—namely, intelligence or mind—is capable of producing digital information. Thus, he argues that the explosion of information in the Cambrian period provides evidence of this kind of cause acting in the history of animal life. (Much like any sentence written by one of Meyer’s critics is positive evidence for an intelligent being).

This inference from the data is no different than the inference archaeologists made when they discovered the Rosetta Stone. It wasn’t a “gap” in their knowledge about natural forces that led them to that conclusion, but the positive knowledge that inscriptions require intelligent inscribers.

Of course, any critic could refute Meyer’s entire thesis by demonstrating how natural forces or mechanisms can generate the genetic information necessary to build the first life and then massive new amounts of genetic information necessary for new forms of animal life. But they can’t and hardly try without assuming what they are trying to prove (see Chapter 11). Instead, critics attempt to smear Meyer by claiming he’s doing “pseudo science” or not doing science at all.

Well, if Meyer isn’t, doing science, then neither was Darwin (or any Darwinist today). Meyer is using the same forensic or historical scientific method that Darwin himself used. That’s all that can be used. Since these are historical questions, a scientist can’t go into the lab to repeat and observe the origin and history of life. Scientists must evaluate the clues left behind and then make an inference to the best explanation. Does our repeated experience tell us that natural mechanisms have the power to create the effects in question or is intelligence required?

Meyer writes, “Neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers—formulated using a similar logic and method of reasoning—to the same question: ‘What caused biological forms and the appearance of design in the history of life?’”

The reason Darwinists and Meyer arrive at different answers is not because there’s a difference in their scientific methods, but because Meyer and other Intelligent Design proponents don’t limit themselves to materialistic causes. They are open to intelligent causes as well (just like archaeologists and crime scene investigators are).

So this is not a debate about evidence. Everyone is looking at the same evidence. This is a debate about how to interpret the evidence, and that involves philosophical commitments about what causes will be considered possible before looking at the evidence. If you philosophically rule out intelligent causes beforehand—as the Darwinists do—you will never arrive at the truth if an intelligent being actually is responsible.

Since all evidence needs to be interpreted, science doesn’t actually say anything—scientists do. So if certain self-appointed priests of science say that a particular theory is outside the bounds of their own scientific dogma, that doesn’t mean that the theory is false. The issue is truth—not whether something fits a materialistic definition of science.

I’m sure Darwinists will continue to throw primordial slime at Meyer and his colleagues. But that won’t make a dent in his observation that whenever we see information like that required to produce the Cambrian Explosion, intelligence is always the cause. In fact, I predict that when open-minded people read Darwin’s Doubt, they’ll see that Dr. Meyer makes a very intelligently designed case that intelligent design is actually true. It’s just too bad that many Darwinists aren’t open to that truth—they aren’t even open minded enough to doubt Darwin as much as Darwin himself was.

The mechanism that puts Mars right where we predicted it would be — did its algorithm necessarily have an outside designer?

I would say "YES." Because an algorithm is a mathematical entity. And mathematics is a universal language. Universals are never the products of mechanistic behavior — mechanics is a result of, not the cause of, universals.

Universals include not only mathematics and by extension logic; but also the natural (e.g., physico/chemical) laws, and I daresay the moral law as well. All mechanics pertains to finite, physical entities. It has no operational scope beyond them.

The beauty here is that the mind of man has the capacity to engage universal ideas. Which tells me right there that man is not a machine.

Actually getting to Mars, however, did require man to conceive of algorithms that would operate towards the achievement of that purpose. If the algorithms achieved their purpose, it must be because the mathematical "truth" they purport to represent actually corresponds with the way the world really is, independent of human wishes and desires.

Which is NOT to denigrate that human beings wished and desired to get to Mars. If they didn't, "we" wouldn't have gone there. This is only to say that human wishes and desires were not the principal or sufficient cause of their success in so doing.

In sum, the algorithmic specification of the world at large is not a human design. Rather, the truth of Reality as discernible by humans depends on the correspondence of natural phenomena to universal specifications which pre-exist and post-exist the human mind. The truth of the world is not a human design — but the truthfulness of human investigations of Reality absolutely depends on recognition by humans of what David Bohm called the "implicate order" of all that exists — which is not a human creation.

I just think the term "mechanism" as a description of a universe that gives all indication of somehow being "alive" in toto is unfortunate and grossly misleading. I would rate it as a prime example of Whitehead's famous Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

IOW, just because something "looks like" a machine doesn't actually make it one.

You wrote: "... if you're okay with evolution but think there must be something more than purely mechanistic, materialist evolution, I'm not sure we have much of a disagreement."

Oh my, I'm very, very glad for that!

You also wrote: "...if we give people a mild dose of smallpox (or cow pox), they don't get sick when exposed to a larger dose later. No understanding required."

Aristotle's famous claim is that "all men desire to know." Lately I've begun to suspect that this maxim is not universally true. But for those men who do want to know the "why" of things, understanding is required. And that's how we learned about viruses.

Science's role in such matters is indispensable — but not completely sufficient. There is more to the world than what can be directly observed, weighed, and measured. Certainly, no universal falls into the category of things that are amenable to such methods of investigation.

Thank you truly, dear HHTVL, for your outstandingly thought-provocative essay/post!

I guess I would agree that evolution required a designer every bit as much as the orbit of Mars did. But to me, that means "not much."

Regarding a hypothetical designer, would it be all right with you if we confine ourselves to biological evolution here — since the title of this thread is "Darwin's Doubt?" I'd just like to take a look at this hypothesis, which Thomas Nagel explores so well in his book. For Nagel, an atheist, the "designer" cannot be an intelligent agent. He prefers to acknowledge that there is "bias" in nature — for the world we see all around us, especially including biological organisms, is extremely unlikely to be the outcome of pure chance — which may be of two kinds: intentional bias (theism) or non-intentional bias (the "biasing" introduced into nature by the sheer existence of physical laws).

This is the main hypothesis seemingly endorsed by a majority of evolutionary biologists today, though a minority still cling to the "pure chance" argument. Iris Fry calls the latter the “Almost a Miracle Camp,” which includes such distinguished scientists as Francis Crick, Ernst Mayr, and Jaques Monod (Crick and Monod are both Nobel Laureates). These men appear to be content with the idea that life arose by pure chance even if the probability of this having happened is extremely remote. (So I prefer to call them "The Bitter Enders.")

Leaving those folks aside, in Mind and Cosmos, Nagel writes:

The evolution of mind is part of a single long process of evolutionary descent. It is the latest stage in the evolution of physical organisms, some of whom are now governed largely by thought. If we are skeptical about an intentional (theistic) explanation of the existence of reason, and can't make sense of a causal reductionist one, it is natural to speculate that some tendencies in this direction have been at work all along. If physics alone or even a non-materialist monism can't account for the later stages of our evolutional history, we shouldn't assume it can account for the earlier stages. Indeed, when we go back far enough, to the origin of life — of self-replicating systems capable of supporting evolution by natural selection — those actually engaged in research in the subject recognize that they are very far from even formulating a viable explanatory hypothesis of the traditional materialist kind. Yet they assume there must be such an explanation, since life cannot have arisen purely by chance....

...But the hypothesis of intentional design [S_I — see below] is ruled out as unscientific. So it seems natural to conclude that the only way left for life not to be a matter of chance is for it somehow to be made likely by physical law.

At this point in the book, Nagel cites Roger White, a colleague and professor of philosophy at M.I.T. I found the quotes of White so interesting, I went looking for the relevant paper — and found it: Does Origins of Life Research Rest on a Mistake?

Some useful notation at this point:

C = pure chance
S = physical outcome as the effect of bias
B_I = intentional bias (i.e., intelligent designer, i.e., God)
B_N = nonpurposive bias introduced by the principles of physics and chemistry.

Here's White:

[T]he line of reasoning ... is something like the following. That molecular replicating systems appear to be designed by an agent is sufficient to convince us that they didn’t arise by chance. But in scientific reasoning, non-intentional explanations are to be preferred, if possible (some would say at all costs), to intentional ones — hence the motivation to find a non-intentional explanation of life.

It should be clear however, that even granting the appropriateness of a preference for non-intentional explanations, this line of reasoning is confused. In general, if B_I raises the likelihood of S, then S confirms B_I to at least some degree, and may thereby disconfirm C. But it does not follow that S confirms B_N one iota. S confirms B_N only if B_N raises the likelihood of S. If the reason we doubt the Chance Hypothesis is that we suspect that life is due in part to intelligent agency, this by itself gives us no reason to expect there to be a non-intentional explanation for life. If on reflection we do not find the hypothesis of intentional biasing acceptable, then we are left with no reason at all to doubt that life arose by chance.

Thus we have three possibilities: chance, creationism, and directionless physical law. Earlier in the paper, White had observed:

What makes certain molecular configurations stand out from the multitude of possibilities seems to be that they are capable of developing into something which strikes us as rather marvelous, namely a world of living creatures. But there is no conceivable reason that blind forces of nature or physical attributes should be biased toward the marvelous.

It appears that White is not averse to the B_I (intelligent design) hypothesis. But Nagel has reservations, which basically boil down to: Intent implies purpose. Whose purpose? is his question.

Nagel is aware that of the three hypotheses, only one — B_I — is teleological in character. That is, it implies goal direction.

Now teleology has been banished from science since the 17th century. Nagel wants to restore it — but as a naturalistic teleology in which teleological laws would assign higher probability to steps on paths in state space that have a higher "velocity" toward certain outcomes. "They would be the laws of self-organization of matter, essentially — or of whatever is more basic than matter....some laws of nature [yet to be discovered] would apply directly to the relation between the present and the future, rather than specifying instantaneous functions that hold at all time [Newton's laws]. A naturalistic teleology would mean that organizational and developmental principles of this kind are an irreducible part of the natural order, and not the result of intentional or purposive influence by anyone. I am not confident that this Aristotelian idea of teleology without intention makes sense, but I do not at the moment see why it doesn't."

Well, I find this all tremendously interesting, even though I believe Aristotle may be rolling in his grave right now....

You'll recall Aristotle's four causes: Formal, material, efficient, and final. Final is the teleological one, in that it fulfills whatever is intended by the formal, by means of the material and efficient causes. The final cause expresses the purpose or goal of an intelligent agent. Nagel wants to dispense with the agent.

Why? I'll let Nagel explain himself:

A creationist explanation of the existence of life is the biological analogue of dualism in the philosophy of mind. It pushes teleology outside the natural order, into the intentions of the creator — working with completely directionless materials whose properties nevertheless underlie both the mental and the physical....

My preference for an immanent, natural explanation is congruent with my atheism. But even a theist who believes God is ultimately responsible for the appearance of conscious life could maintain that this happens as part of the natural order that is created by God, but that it doesn't require further divine intervention. A theist not committed to dualism in the philosophy of mind could suppose that the natural possibility of conscious organisms resides already in the character of the elements out of which those organisms are composed, perhaps supplemented by laws of psychophysical emergence. To make the possibility of conscious life a consequence of the natural order created by God while ascribing its actuality to subsequent divine intervention would then seem an arbitrary complication. Some form of teleological naturalism should for these reasons seem no less credible than an interventionist explanation, even to those who believe that God is ultimately responsible for everything.

I find Nagel's hypothesis fascinating; but I do not agree with it, because (of course) I am a "theist," a fan of both dualism in the philosophy of mind and the classical Aristotelian causal categories. But other than that, I think Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos is ingenious and valuable.

The only questions that he seems not to want to answer are: (1) Where do the laws of nature, of physics, of chemistry come from? (2) Why is there anything at all, why not nothing?

In closing, just let me mention that the great Sir Isaac Newton believed that, not only did God create the universe, but that God "intervened" in it from time to time. While he evidently rejected what we call "special creation" (as do I), he believed that, as a mechanical system, the universe would be subject to an accumulation of distorting "errors," and that God would have to step in from time to time to set things aright again.

Newton called God "the Lord of Life with His creatures."

That's how I think about Him, too.

God's Name is I AM.

* * * * * * *

Thank you so much for writing, HHTVL! Sorry to run on so long.... I refer you to the sources presented here, thinking you might find them enjoyable and useful.

Nagel: (1) A creationist explanation of the existence of life is the biological analogue of dualism in the philosophy of mind. It pushes teleology outside the natural order, into the intentions of the creator — working with completely directionless materials whose properties nevertheless underlie both the mental and the physical.... (2) My preference for an immanent, natural explanation is congruent with my atheism. (3)But even a theist who believes God is ultimately responsible for the appearance of conscious life could maintain that this happens as part of the natural order that is created by God, but that it doesn’t require further divine intervention.

Spirited: The meaning of the three positions briefly outlined by Nagel:

1. Jesus Christ, the “angel” who spoke with Moses at Sinai, is the Creator. Foremost of His miracles is creation out of nothing – six acts or days of creation rather than the billions of years of evolutionary alchemical process out of matter:

“The first moment of time is the moment of God’s creative act and of creation’s simultaneous coming to be.” (Philosopher and New Testament scholar William Lane Craig quoted in “If God created the universe, then who created God?’ by Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)

With Irenaeus, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was well established. He also argued that the world (matter) was not coeternal with God:

“But the things established are distinct from Him who has established them, and what [things] have been made from Him who has made them. For He is Himself uncreated, both without beginning and end, and lacking nothing. He is Himself sufficient for this very thing, existence; but the things which have been made by Him have received a beginning... He indeed who made all things can alone, together with His Word, properly be termed God and Lord; but the things which have been made cannot have this term applied to them, neither should they justly assume that appellation which belongs to the Creator.” (”Is Creatio Ex Nihilo A Post-Biblical Invention? An Examination Of Gerhard May’s Proposal,” Paul Copan, Trinity Journal 17.1; Spring 1996)

The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 affirms creation ex nihilo:

“We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God ... the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who from the very beginning of time by His omnipotent power created out of nothing [de nihilo condidit] both the spiritual beings and the corporeal.” (ibid, Copan)

On creation ex nihilo, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) asserts:

“It pleased God ... in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein” (IV.I; ibid)

2. Nagel’s preference: immanent, natural explanation

Underlying Nagel’s immanent naturalistic stance is metaphysical nihilism-— not ancient Greek atomism but rather the quasi-Buddhist stance, the ‘everything and nothingness’ position adopted by Teilhard.

In its contemporary forms metaphysical nihilism is called evolutionary materialism by physicalist Darwinists and spiritual science by Theosophists, occult New Agers, and other forms of Eastern mysticism. While the former embraces a variation of Darwinism the latter prefers immanent spiritual conceptions such as Teilhard’s idea which leapfrogs off of Darwin’s theory.

The apostate French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) taught that an impersonal God-force emerges from spontaneously generated matter. According to him, this evolution of God from the world or universe results in evolution becoming “conscious of itself” and ultimately, in the transformation of all matter into “Christ consciousness” or “pure spirit.” This is the meaning of immanent. Teilhard called this final stage the “Omega Point” or “the cosmic Christ.”

3. Nagel’s third position is evolutionary theism. Here matter is co-eternal with a God who is not only limited but responsible for death, since life had to incarnate and die within millions of different life forms over vast periods of time. This God is not a God of salvation but a Gnostic deity of death, suffering, and unspeakable cruelty.

Nagel’s preference: immanent, natural explanation

Indeed. As Nagel writes, "A naturalistic teleology would mean that organizational and developmental principles of this kind are an irreducible part of the natural order, and not the result of intentional or purposive influence by anyone."

But this begs the question. I can agree that organizational and developmental principles are an irreducible part of the natural order. But where did this natural order come from? Did it spring forth "fully formed from the brow of Zeus," as Athena, goddess of reason, did in the Greek myth?

Zeus was an intracosmic god, not a transcendent one. He, like man, is a created being, though unlike man, he is immortal.

I'd say that Nagel is avoiding the real problem of origin. If he insists that the ordering principles of the universe stem from an "immanent" source, this is tantamount to saying that the universe is sui generis: It made itself, including all the ordering principles that govern it. Yet if it had a beginning, it had to be a beginning from "nothing." Pretty good trick! But to me, this is senseless — it tells me nothing about the origin and (emergent or evolutionary) destination of the universe. It is an unanalyzed, "just so" story.

The atheist position requires him to deny transcendence. Which definitely limits his options as a thinker. (Which is why I said in an earlier post that "Nagel is an honest man — as honest as a man who rejects God out-of-hand can be.")

Moreover, he rejects, it seems, any form of dualism, advancing instead a hypothesis of non-material, yet still "natural" monism.

And yet, I do believe the following is Truth:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: — Romans 1:20

One statement of his that I found particularly troubling was his attribution to all "theists" (he never says "Christians," but this is likely who he is talking about) of the belief that "God is responsible for everything." In a key sense this is true: God made the world and everything in it for His purpose, and gave it its order so that His purpose ultimately will be achieved. Alpha to Omega; First to Final Cause.

But if God is responsible for everything, then He can be blamed for all the evil in the world. My late father "blamed God" for World War II to his dying day. Perhaps Nagel "blames God" for the Holocaust. Hence the reasoning might go: since God is the "father of evil," then He cannot be trusted. So just reject Him. The necessity of naturalistic answers then comes to the fore with full force.

But this overlooks the fact (to me it is a fact) that God created man in His image, as possessing reason and free will. The point of entry for evil in this world is to be found in man himself, and only in man — specifically in the man who exercises his free will to deny God and His Logos. God gives man choice, and freedom to act on his choice. If he chooses that which is evil, ought we to blame God for this?

I think not. For if man had no freedom of choice and action, this would mean that God has completely determined every and all aspects of His Creation, including man. And then we really do have a "clockwork universe." To me, this is senseless: because the world that I exist in and observe is simply not that way.

Dear spirited irish, sister in Christ, thank you ever so much for your illuminating essay/post. Outstanding.

Regarding a hypothetical designer, would it be all right with you if we confine ourselves to biological evolution here — since the title of this thread is "Darwin's Doubt?"

Provisionally, yes. The only reason I say "provisionally" is that I often find myself analogizing to some other natural phenomenon when speaking with critics of the ToE. Some critic will bring up the improbability of some aspect of the evolutionary theory and claim that it means there must have been some direct intervention, and I'll point to the equal improbability of some other phenomenon that no one claims requires particular intervention. But I'll try to stick to the subject.

Given the extraordinary "fine tuning" of the universe which makes biological life possible, or extremely likely to occur, the idea of "bias" becomes useful, especially in light of the fact that there is no principle in pure chance that could lead to the fine tuning.
This is the main hypothesis seemingly endorsed by a majority of evolutionary biologists today, though a minority still cling to the "pure chance" argument.

I'm going to try to pick my way very carefully through your next paragraphs. (Don't worry, I'm not going to discuss every step.) I worry a bit about your choice of words. Having chosen the word "bias," you've introduced a sense of purpose, even though you refer to "non-intentional bias." I don't completely understand your statement that "there is no principle in pure chance that could lead to the fine tuning." Isn't there no principle in pure chance period, sort of by definition? It seems to me that if pure chance can lead to a particular outcome, it's not in itself evidence of bias if it does lead to that outcome, no matter how unlikely the outcome is.

And what hypothesis is it that you see the majority of evolutionary biologists endorsing? That the universe is biased towards producing the particular set of organisms we see? Towards producing life?

At this point in the book, Nagel cites Roger White, a colleague and professor of philosophy at M.I.T...

If I'm understanding White's argument, then I think I disagree with it. He's claiming that outcome S can confirm intentional bias but can't confirm non-intentional bias. It seems to me that all it can do is confirm bias--whether the bias is intentional or non-intentional is a separate question.

There's another problem I have with his argument, well illustrated by the sentence in your next quote,

But there is no conceivable reason that blind forces of nature or physical attributes should be biased toward the marvelous.

The world of living creatures is not necessarily marvelous in itself. It's marvelous to us because we're in it and of it. It's like saying "why should the sky be such a beautiful blue color if there's no bias towards beauty?" But is life or a blue sky, inherently and indisputably, more marvelous by some extrinsic standard than the lifeless hunk of rock we call Pluto? I think he'd have a really hard time making that case.

And I think my last two points illustrate a fundamental issue with these lines of thought. Note I didn't say "problem:" speculating about these questions is a fine use of our God-given brains, and that's what philosophers are for. But I'm not sure science can find an answer, because science is operating from within the effect of chance/intentional bias/non-intentional bias/whatever. It's like (analogy alert!) one fish arguing that the fishbowl is so well suited to living that an external agency must have designed it that way, and another fish saying no, that's just the way goldfish bowls are. From outside the bowl, of course, we know which is true; but I don't think there's anything the fish could do from inside the bowl to determine it one way or the other. (Which won't stop them from arguing about it forever, of course.)

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