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.

This is golden. Conservatives on FR are totally fine with the concept of lower taxes until someone threatens to defund the things they want. Then they get to use the power of the law to forcibly separate me from my money and spend on something that I'm opposed to, and they're OK with that.

Bullshit. You don't want to "defund" education, you just want to use the same tax revenues to turn the public school system in Christian madrassas, at least as far as science is concerned.

Why are you so fond of being compared with extremist muslims?

I'm not. I'm trying to prove a point: evolutionists believe what they believe with (if you'll pardon the term) such religious fervor that they are willing to compare christians muslim extremists. I guess it doesn't violate Godwin's Law, but it comes pretty darned close.

What's really humorous is something my campus ministry at alma mater does every year: they bring in a creationist scientist to give a speech. When they do, they always invite anyone who wants to come to ask questions and they invite an evolution professor to debate with the creationist. When we first started, no evolution professors would come, so our ministry offers to pay the evolution professor 500 dollars for a one and a half hour debate. That's about 333 dollars per hour for a debate. And in five years, none has ever accepted. Not one.. These evolutionists will preach what they believe in a classroom full of people who have to be there to get there degree but you literally can't pay them to defend what they believe in a public open forum. It's so far past ridiculous that I still have trouble believing it, even having seen it with my own eyes multiple times.

Hmmm, 20 years in the computer industry has taught me one thing. Sometimes computers *don't* do what you tell them to. Programs are stored in memory that is not perfect. Certain events can cause that memory to change. When that happens, usually the program dies (crashes). But sometimes, it has strange and different effects.

Just yesterday, I had one of these "hiccups" or "random mutations" occur. Suddenly one of the programs I was using (and have used hundreds of times before) would cause the entire screen to be painted with a bizarre (and somewhat interesting) pattern when I asked to switch to a particular view of the data. Now this had never happened before, and it will probably never happen again. (I've tried since.)

Now, are you claiming that the DNA in your body is any less prone to change. The Human Genome project tells us that something like 80% or more of our DNA is just "garbage" that has no meaning, and just hangs around doing nothing.

The digital life project works on the idea of random mutations eventually producing useful "offspring". Now 99.99% of the offspring might be useless, but if that 0.01% is useful, then you might get something out of it in the long term. (And in computers, that might mean days, not billions of years.)

I read a study using FPGAs where a genetic algorithm produced a tone identifier circuit that was 50 times smaller than the best human design after only 100 generations. A design which appeared so complex, no human could understand how it worked. Evolution works in a computer system, there's no reason to believe it doesn't work in the natural world.

ID is the theory of "I Don't Know". The argument goes like this:

Mr. Wizard: "Timmy, do you see this bird?"
Timmy: "Yes, Mr Wizard!"
Mr. Wizard: "Well Timmy, how do you suppose this bird got it's wing?"
Timmy: "Well, gosh Mr Wizard, wasn't it born with it?"
Mr. Wizard: "Ha, ha. Well, yes, but I mean, how do you think it evolved?"
Timmy: "Gosh Mr Wizard, I don't know. It's awfully complex."
Mr. Wizard: "Congratulations Timmy, you've just given us proof of Intelligent Design. Clearly, since we don't know how this wing could have evolved, there must have been an intelligent designer who made it all at once."
Timmy: "Holy Cow you're smart, Mr. Wizard."

The fellow makes a very long argument--in which he tries to artificially compartmentalize issues--but appears to miss the essential point, throughout. While we may not understand the complexity of a design, is no argument against there being such a design. That without there being a design, what we do know would make even less sense, should tilt scientific thought towards continued pursuit of the idea of the design.

That said, takes absolutely nothing away from the writers' compartmentalized pursuit of more compartmentalizable issues--as for example his example of Termites. However, the writer is clearly not the one to carry out that pursuit. His preconceptions are too obvious:

Given that the termites are clearly not sentient,

While I am not about to invite a colony in for an after dinner discussion, I do not understand how one can produce evidence of actual intelligence--however specialized--and then conclude, arbitrarily that they have no perceptive abilities. That is cut from the same philosophic error that has led so many to deny the reasoning ability of other species of mammals.

William Flax

You said: 1) Have evolutionists predicted a new species coming from an existing species?
2) Have these predictions been tested and observed?

Have these questions been answered? These questions better be answered if you are going to parade evolution around as a fact and defend it as fact.

I reply: You have an excessive focus on lab experiments. Evolution has correctly predicted that rabbits could not have appeared in earth history before chordates and vertebrates, as shown in the geological record of fossils. 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.

Observational science--forensics, if you wish--is equally good science. You can't reproduce the Rome of Caesar in a lab, but we have good reason to think it existed. Rome was a fact. Evolution is equally well founded, and makes sense.

"If by "real evidence" you mean 4,000 fairy tales about magic fruit and talking snakes, then no, I don't base my beliefs on anything like that."

Good point.
According to polls, 63% of us Americans prefer to believe in talking snakes than in evolution.

I mean, 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? But if I told you this was written in a book 2000 years ago, does it make it more believable? I mean, snakes can't even pronounce English properly!

What's really humorous is something my campus ministry at alma mater does every year: they bring in a creationist scientist to give a speech. When they do, they always invite anyone who wants to come to ask questions and they invite an evolution professor to debate with the creationist. When we first started, no evolution professors would come, so our ministry offers to pay the evolution professor 500 dollars for a one and a half hour debate. That's about 333 dollars per hour for a debate. And in five years, none has ever accepted. Not one.. These evolutionists will preach what they believe in a classroom full of people who have to be there to get there degree but you literally can't pay them to defend what they believe in a public open forum. It's so far past ridiculous that I still have trouble believing it, even having seen it with my own eyes multiple times.

Send me the details. I will want to approve conditions, etc, and I'll need travel expenses and a night's hotel. I'm quite happy in a Motel 6, and if you're within a few hundred miles, I don't mind driving.

Curiously, there is a good scientific explanation for the formation of mitochondria. It turns out mitochondria closely resemble one family of bacteria, the cyanobacteria. They look like bacterial cells (prokaryotic) and they have their own DNA, structured in 'plasmid' loops just like bacterial DNA. The realization is that the eukaryotic cell (the kind of cell higher animals and plants have, with nuclei) originated as symbiotic relationships between different bacterial species. This is described in the Lynn Margulis book Microcosmos. She's the biologist who did much of the work showing mitochondria resemble cyanobacteria.

This evidence of contingency in the development of early life makes me doubt ID. But I'm the sort that believes that God created a universe where life would appear; he used evolution to do the work. (If I may hazard a philosophical musing: Perhaps God did it this way because it was pleasing to him to watch it unfold in the unpredictable but beautiful way that it has unfolded.)

There is a place for saying an idea is dumb. When a child fears there is a monster under the bed, we help him understand on the basis of looking for evidence and give reassurances that he will be safe. When an adult fears monsters under the bed, we understand this as dumb and a need for psychiatric help. If I tell you that automobile engines work because of little faeries pushing the pistons, you would, correctly, say this is dumb. We reject lots of notions because they do not make sense. Every person is a mini-scientist.

Wolfgang Pauli once remarked, "Es ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht nur falsch" --It is not only not right, it is not even wrong--in reply to some nonsense.

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 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'm just searching for the concrete evidence that so many claim exist.

No, because I've seen it happen in a genetic algorithm. Yes, at a highly accelerated rate, but it does work.

At the same time, I've seen the insane overprescription of antibiotics in this country lead to the emergence of super-germs that will threaten the lives of my children and grandchildren. Same effect, different timescale.

From your statement, you should not trust your money in a bank, the weather on the news, the stock market, or anything else run on a computer. My guess is that you do trust at least one of those.

A computer is just a means of simulating things faster than a human can do the same calculation. A tool like a microscope for seeing things I normally can't see.

Now, I can't see a bacteria with my naked eye, but if I look through a microscope, I can. Just like I can't stand and watch 1,000 generations of humans or just about any other animal grow and respond to environmental forces, but with a computer, I can.

Just because I use a tool does not make the result false. Nature is symmetrical, if it happens on a small scale, it happens on a large one. 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.

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