Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win

It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually.

1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well. The most vocal non-scientist proponents of ID are those delightfully fertile Catholics, Evangelicals, and similarly right-leaning middle-class college-educated folk -- the kind whose children will inherit the country. Eventually, the social right will have the sheer manpower to teach ID wherever they please.

Despite what angry ID opponents may tell you, the advent of ID won't hurt American productivity a bit. Belief in ID does nothing to make believers less capable in science or engineering. No geek in the world will find his computer mojo diminished because of his opinions on irreducible complexity. To the contrary: ID might make biology and the natural sciences more appealing to believers who might otherwise find science to be too far removed from God's presence. As ID appeals to the conservative mindset without hurting anyone's skills, why wouldn't the social right embrace it?

To be sure, believers don't need ID to accept modern science. The Catholic Church, for example, made peace with traditional Darwinist theory long ago. Many scientists see no contradiction between Darwinism and their own religious beliefs. Rightly understood, Darwinist theory doesn't diminish God's glory any more than any other set of rules governing the world. An omnipotent God can act through scientific media as well as miraculous interventions.

But if ID is correct, then the intelligent designer of life must have lavished astonishing care and attention upon the human race to give it unique dignity and value -- as well as handicaps and temptations that only virtue can overcome. The God of Moses and Jesus didn't leave fingerprints at this scene, but it's His MO all the way. And as believers are detectives of the Almighty's presence, they're naturally more inclined to follow the clues revealing that familiar pattern.

"Ewww…intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads."

There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90% of the responses to the ID position. Vitriol, condescension, and endless accusations of bad faith all characterize far too much of the standard pro-Darwinian response to criticism. A reasonable observer might note that many ID advocates appear exceptionally well-educated, reasonable, and articulate; they might also note that ID advocates have pointed out many problems with the Darwinist catechism that even pro-Darwin scientists have been known to concede, when they think the Jesus-kissing crowd isn't listening. And yet, even in the face of a sober, thoughtful ID position, the pro-Darwin crowd insists on the same phooey-to-the-boobgeois shtick that was tiresome in Mencken's day. This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults. Pride goeth before a fall.

3) ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.

So you've discovered the missing link? Proven that viruses distribute super-complex DNA proteins? Shown that fractals can produce evolution-friendly three-dimensional shapes? It doesn't matter. To the ID mind, you're just pushing the question further down the road. How was the missing link designed? What is the origin of the viruses? Who designed the fractals? ID has already made its peace with natural selection and the irrefutable aspects of Darwinism. By contrast, Darwinism cannot accept even the slightest possibility that it has failed to explain any significant dimension of evolution. It must dogmatically insist that it will resolve all of its ambiguities and shortcomings -- even the ones that have lingered since the beginning of Darwinism. The entire edifice of Darwinian theory comes crashing down with even a single credible demonstration of design in any living thing. Can science really plug a finger into every hole in the Darwinian dyke for the next fifty years?

4) ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.

ID is a proposition about information. It contends that the processes of life are so specific and carefully ordered that they must reflect deliberate action. Put simply: a complex message implies an even more complex sender. Separating ordered but random data from relevant, purposeful data -- that is, separating noise from messages -- is one of the key undertakings of the 21st century. In nearly every field, from statistics to quantum physics to cryptology to computer science, the smartest people on the planet are struggling to understand and apply the unfathomable power of information that modern technology has bequeathed to them. We have only scratched the surface of the problem-solving power that the Internet and cheap computing power open to us. As superior intellects strive to understand the metaphysics of information, they will find the information-oriented arguments of ID increasingly sensible and appealing. ID will fit nicely into the emerging worldview of tomorrow's intellectual elite.

This emerging worldview will take a more expansive view of science than does the current elite. Consider the "meme" meme. We all know what a meme is: a thought pattern that spreads from person to person and group to group like a viral infection spreading through a population. Yet memes cannot be bisected, or examined under a microscope, or "falsified" via the scientific method. Even so, we can make statements about memes with varying degrees of objective truthfulness. Is it possible to speak of a "science" of concepts? Right now, the scientific establishment says no. This unhelpful understanding of science will soon be discarded in favor of something more useful in the information age.

5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.

The human mind seeks order in everything. The entire body of knowledge available to mankind reflects our incorrigible desire to analyze, systemize, hypothesize, and theorize. It may well be that our brains are physically configured in such a way that we can't help but find order and design in the world. Don't look so surprised, evolutionists -- a brain attuned to order and design is a brain more likely to survive. The ability to detect design is essentially the ability to detect patterns, and the ability to detect patterns is the key to most applications of human intelligence. Hammers tend to find nails, screwdrivers tend to find screws, and the human mind tends to find design. Of course, the propensity to see designs doesn't mean that the designs aren't actually there. But the quintessential human perception is one of design -- and, to the extent that perceptions define reality, a theory built on the perception of design has a huge advantage over its competitors.

The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end. Rightly or wrongly, the future belongs to ID. There's nothing irreducibly complex about it.

Douglas Kern is a lawyer and TCS contributor. To see another view of the debate over ID, read "Descent of Man in Dover" by Sallie Baliunas on TCS today.

"So, if you want to persist in perverting the definition of "Science" to inclue ID, you must not complain when others want to pervert the defintion of "marriage" to include 2 males, 2 girls and a guy or a girl and her horse."

So children learning about intelligent design will promote homosexual marriage and bestiality. You have apparently lost all sense of logic over this debate.

,,,what you are really asking everyone to do is to twist words, definitions, and reality in order to get your way ...Sound familiar?

Sure does. You have perfectly defined youself.

Put that twist in your mental mirror and take a long, hard, introspective look.

I am a very recent convert to ID, not on religious grounds, but on scientific grounds.

Evolution can explain how the snail darter (or any other species) has changed, during the long history of the snail darter's existence on Earth.

Evolution might even explain some differences between very closely related species or groups, as though they are actually one species or group, where eons of existence in very different environments have led to different groups emphasizing certain traits and deemphasizing other traits. Like the differnces between South Asian and African elephants.

But evolution has no answer, in earth's records (fossils and such) for how the snail darter (or any other species) came to exist. There are simply no transitional species in the records, in spite of evolution's theory that the slow change of evolution requires such species to have existed.

The spontaneousness with which species appear together with the complex blueprint and structure of each species, with no direct ancestors, no precedents anywhere suggests that intelligence and not evolutionary change has provided that complexity, that blueprint, that design.

God may even lead us to understand that intelligence some day and participate in its wonders.

Please read what I wrote:

"If there are weaknesses with the way that evolution is taught in school then those need to be corrected. We don't solve the problem by adding more nonsense to the science education of our children."

It's a good thing scientists don't think they can practice law the way some lawyers think they can practice science.

His #3 is particularly egregious.

One reason Islamic countries are such backwaters today is that they let religion trump science and clear thinking.

So children learning about intelligent design will promote homosexual marriage and bestiality. You have apparently lost all sense of logic over this debate.

Too true. I had precisely the same reaction. How is moral relativism a product of moral absolutes?

"just what is the purpose of a 'government school'? I honestly believe it is NOT to get kids to think for themselves or think at all.

In fact, public schools seem to be especially perfect places to minimize the ability of kids to grow their creative tendencies"

This may be the real issue here, the real debate is over the children’s minds, are they to be indoctrinated or do they have the freedom to choose?

"You think God is "nonsense"? Many, many would disagree with you."

That was not my intended meaning. What I consider to be nonsense is the teaching of religion/philosophy as science. Personally, I believe in God and am sympathetic to ID, I just don't think it should be taught as science.

"I know you think you have all the answers, but you don't - no one does."

You seem to know a lot about me. Maybe you have all the answers?

"What are you afraid of?"

Pretty much the same as most people I'd imagine: pain, growing old alone, illness, etc.

Ok I can accept why people would not want ID taught in science class but rather a philosophy class, since many don’t regard this as science, , but why make a big deal about it, there are many things in science class that might be better of taught in other disciplines, math and spelling are two examples that always plagued me which had nothing to do wheather I grasped the science or not. So why not become so vocal about a "non-science subject" if that is how ID is percieved?

Somehow I think that it is not agenda to discount ID as a science but to discount ID or the existence of a creator all together, which seems like such a waist of time, since there a so many other things to do in life…

How can we possibly study intelligent design when we don't even know how to define intelligence.

I do not believe you read the article. The author specifically refuted this objection. It is the conceit of the Darwinians to deny the legitimacy of every question that falls outside their myopic position.

We do not know how to define intelligence because the Darwinian choke-hold on scientific thought has not allowed us to develop a scientific model that even asks the question.

Darwinianism has become an antiquated dogma preventing science from moving into areas that it denies, such as intelligence theory.

You are so right. The debate is what can be pushed on our children and how little control we as parents have over it. The schools promote homosexuality as normal. No surprise they don't want anything remotely connected to God in schools. I have a feeling this isn't really about how concerned everyone is with our children's science education as it is about removing God from every aspect of public life in this country. There would be absolutely no harm in discussing ID with students. Don't you think students have a right to decide what they want to believe? If they find the TOE believable, fine. If they reject it, fine. Many of us learned about evolution and reject it. Many people reject God. You cannot (as much as you would like) force anyone to believe what they don't.

One of the things the law of unintended consequences may produce in this case is that it will be presented in science classes...and the result will be resentful scientists using the most beautifully sarcastic tone of voice while they read the relevant paragraphs, then follow that with something to the effect of "now let's get down to real science."

Rather than enhancing faith, students will be turned off, thinking only dweebs and feebs would buy that. (yes I've been around high school students)

The absolute last thing I want is the schools interfering the the religious education of my kids. And no, teaching science does not do that unless ones' faith is very, very, superficial.

"What are you afraid of?"

Pretty much the same as most people I'd imagine: pain, growing old alone, illness, etc.

Amen, my sweet brother.

Personally, I believe in God and am sympathetic to ID, I just don't think it should be taught as science.

If God is central to an understanding of the nature of reality then teaching the works of God is the proper venue of science.

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