Posted on 04/11/2005 10:25:55 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
"Intelligent design." It's been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness.
But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you'd think it's a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic.
Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early as the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaxagoras concluded, "Mind set in order … all that ever was … and all that is now or ever will be."
After 2400 years, the appearance of design is as powerful as ever. That is especially true of the living world. Advances in biology have revealed that world to be one staggering complexity.
For example, consider the cell. Even the simplest cells bristle with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors that they use to navigate their environment.
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, assembly lines, recycling units and more. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one part of the cell to another.
Such sophistication has led even the most hard-bitten atheists to remark on the apparent design in living organisms. The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's structure and an outspoken critic of religion, has nonetheless remarked, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved."
Clearly, Crick (and others like him) considers the appearance of design to be strictly an illusion, created by naturalistic evolution. Yet it's also clear that this impression is so compelling that an atheistic biologist must warn his colleagues against it.
In contrast, ID theorists contend that living organisms appear designed because they are designed. And unlike the design thinkers whom Darwin deposed, they've developed rigorous new concepts to test their idea.
In the past, detecting design was hampered by vague and subjective criteria, such as discerning an object's purpose. Moreover, design was entangled with natural theology--which seeks, in part, to infer God's character by studying nature rather than revelation. Natural theologians often painted such a rosy view of nature that they became an easy mark for Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Where they saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness.
Since the 1980s, however, developments in several fields have made it possible to rigorously distinguish between things that "just happen" and those that happen "on purpose." This has helped design theory emerge as a distinct enterprise, aimed at detecting intelligence rather than speculating about God's character.
Dubbed "intelligent design" to distinguish it from old-school thinking, this new view is detailed in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a peer-reviewed work by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski.
In contrast to what is called creation science, which parallels Biblical theology, ID rests on two basic assumptions: namely, that intelligent agents exist and that their effects are empirically detectable.
Its chief tool is specified complexity. That's a mouthful, and the math behind it is forbidding, but the basic idea is simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) arranged in a recognizable, delimited pattern (is specified).
For example, the article you're now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It's not just a jumble of letters (which is also complex), but a magazine article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.
The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by massive experience. As Dembski points out, "In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present."
Thus, if we could trace the creation of a book, our investigation would lead us to the author. You could say, then, that specified complexity is a signature of design.
To see how this applies to biology, consider the little consider the outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and a long whip-like propeller. It hums along at a cool 17,000 rpm.
Decades of research indicate that its complexity is enormous. It takes about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters.
Moreover, the pattern--a working flagellum--is highly specified. Deviate from that pattern, knock out a single gene, and our bug is dead in the water (or whatever).
Such highly specified complexity, which demands the presence of every part, indicates an intelligent origin. It's also defies any explanation, such as contemporary Darwinism, that relies on the stepwise accumulation of random genetic change.
In fact, if you want to run the numbers, as Dembski does in his book No Free Lunch, it boils down to the following: If every elementary particle in the observed universe (about 1080) were cranking out mutation events at the cosmic speed limit (about 1045 times per second) for a billion times the estimated age of the universe, they still could not produce the genes for a working flagellum.
And that's just one system within multiple layers of systems. Thus the flagellum is integrated into a sensory/guidance system that maneuvers the bacterium toward nutrients and away from noxious chemicals--a system so complex that computer simulation is required to understand it in its entirety. That system is meshed with other systems. And so on.
Of course, what's important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Design theorists don't derive their conclusions from revelation, but by looking for reliable, rigorously defined indicators of design and by ruling out alternative explanations, such as Darwinism.
Calling their work religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public--and our students--deserve better than that.
Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in statistics and research design.
Read the above comments, that seem to question evolution on it's merits. There are questions in the theory that just can't be explained. It doesn't mean that evolution is bunk, it just means that there are alot of questions out there that do need answered.
We can say this. Any scientist will tell you that 'you can't create order from disorder'. It's never happened.
bttt
ID is an argument for alien creation, that we were put here by extraterrestrials.
ID promoters don't tell you this, because 'God' then becomes an alien race.
Did you stop beating your wife yet?
"""If a god creates anything that he considers evil then he is a dualist god. Creating the option of engaging in evil is creating evil."""
Einstein said once: If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? [Out of My Later Years]
The bible, which is just literature of religion and philosophy in my opinion, states that God recognizes that he created evil.
"An omnipotent, omniscient god could very well create free will - although that would require that he limit himself, which would then make him a limited god."
I beg to differ. Limiting oneself, by choice, does not contradict omnipotence. On a merely human level, the fact that I have the ability to do something does not change simply because I choose not to do it.
That's three (precision important?), and considering that they were the ones who first articulated the concept and are major proponents of the theory, I'd say their input was significant. There's about 160 others who've stepped forward, so far...:)
"PS. And a dualist god is irrelevant to us from a rational standpoint because there is no way to know whether the good or evil dimension is 'speaking' to us - an evil god lies, even if evil only in part. From a rational standpoint, a god who is altogether evil is no different from a god who is altogether not - then it's just semantics - and he is irrelevant for the same reason."
Our current concept of "Evil" comes from the idea that God tests us. (Like a pop-quiz for your soul) He employes Satan (against Man, not against God) to make a case against us.
In other words, "Evil" is simply "not Good" and so God cannot be Evil, as to be Evil is to be Not Godly.
Evil is the lack of Good, just as darkness is the lack of light.
OF COURSE you can create order spontaneously from disorder! Fill a glass with salt water (completely disordered) and let the water evaporate. What you get is a salt crystal, as ordered as you please. Happens all the time.
ID CAN be such, but IDers don't tell you this because they don't buy it normally.
Also, if IDers were to consider God an alien race, where did the aliens come from?
> And the statistics given from the article are for ONE part of a single organism!
Actually, the statistics given are fraudulent. Experiments and comupter simulations have shown taht genetic evolution goes far faster than these "statisticians" would ahve you believe.
Good site!
Many thanks, Sir!
That's entropy physicist. Entropy. Not creating 'order' as in (life) from disorder as in (nothing).
Again, you cannot create order from nothing. Any scientist will come out and tell you that.
It just doesn't happen.
Classic!
Unless the omnipotent, omniscient god creates a self-modifying universe to which he's then indifferent, which would make him an indifferent god, who would be irrelevant to us from a practical standpoint. The same would hold true if the god were not indifferent but ceased to exist (died) for whatever reason. Would be rational, and quite interesting, but irrelevant.
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Mostly parallels what I find MUST be reality.
If I were to try and picture a God I see this. On one end of the scale I this boy with his pocket full of marbles hopping and skipping along without a care. On the other end of the scale is our known earth, solar system, galaxy and probably a small part of the universe.
In between is the fact that each universe is no more than marble. And if this boy has one marble in his pocket he has thousands of marbles. And not a care in the world. The word 'world' of course having no meaning.
"Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in statistics and research design."
...in other words, he knows JACK about evolutionary biology.
A better word would be "chaos" in this case. (in the classical term)
You cannot create a structure out of chaos.
Source please.
If a god remains both omnipotent and omniscient (and also actively engaged) then free will is an illusion. In the absence of free will, god is irrelevant to us from a practical standpoint because there is nothing for us to decide. Nothing happens that is not precisely what the god wants to have happen.
If anything happens that is not precisely what the god wants to have happen, then he is a limited god - even if self-limited. Events are taking place that are contrary to his will. And again, creating the option to engage in evil is creating evil.
Free will is not infinite. I do not have the free will to flap my arms and fly away to the moon of my own volition. Teleportation, telepathy, invisibility, immortality, perpetual youth - I can freely will none of those, nor a myriad of more mundane actions.
Once the will is finite, then it has parameters. If a god created free will, god defined the parameters. If he defined the parameters to include the enactment of anything he deems evil, then he is either an evil god or a dualist god. An evil god, to whatever degree, is rationally irrelevant, because he lies.
He could also be an irrational or a capricious god - but those are practically irrelevant as well.
No. That is not the same.
"An omnipotent, omniscient god could very well create free will - although that would require that he limit himself, which would then make him a limited god."
Yes, to the extent that God gives us free will, He has limited Himself. But for all practical purposes, He's unlimited. He can do anything He wants, including destroy us. That He doesn't destroy us immediately, but gives us time to repent, is His perogative. I'm certainly not in the position to call Him evil for having given me time.
I think perhaps the confusion is between an Omnipotent God (one who can do anything) and an Omnicontrolling God. Not everything that happens is God's will. It's never God's will that man sins. However, it is God's will that we have free will.
To use a simple analogy. It's never my will that my child falls and hurts himself. However, it is my will that my child leans to walk on his own, and that means taking risks and suffering bumps and bruises. God is very much a risk taker.
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