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.

"..but the science of chance"

You and all of us are undeniably a product of chance. IDers have a particular dislike for randomness, because they wish to think that everything is directed by some supra-natural entity (they actually mean the usual God, but pretend to accept other god-like types). Exactly how stars and planets coalesce from a circulating cloud of matter is an on-going area of investigation, but it is clear that accidents resulted in some chunks becoming large enough to perturb the system and thus accumulated at the expense of smaller chunks. This is pretty close to a random series of events.

The dislike for randomness is curious. In fact, every individual is a product of at least quasi-random events. Who we meet and have children with. And from basic facts of sexual reproduction itself, every ovum has a slightly different DNA arising from meiosis, and likewise every sperm. Granted that some parts of the divided-in-two chromosomes carry genetic information from the parent, but it is random which ones happen to combine. There is increasing evidence for a degree of randomness as to the chemical environment in the womb, which appears to have influence on the degrees of femaleness and maleness in the offspring. There is, thus, a large number of random events that are part of the heritage of every individual. (Unless, of course, one takes the view that each egg and sperm were individually directed by God. Nobody in biology would accept this, but as a matter of faith, it is unprovable.) Over the long course of history, there has been quasi-randomness as to which individuals get wiped out by natural disasters, from impacting asteroids to which succumb to disease. Chance has always played a role in life and always will.

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.

That't the first time I've heard that theory. If that is the theory of intelligent design, then I would agree that the theory is at least as stupid as the author of this article.

Good point. I say parents. And as a parent, I want my child to learn the science of evolution. So don't try to fill his head with your religious nonsense and superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

I want my child to learn the truth that God fashioned the universe with his own hand, and I for darned sure don't want people like you trying to fill his head with your atheistic, evolutionary nonsense and pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. And furthermore, I don't want my tax dollars spent to teach such things that I disagree with.

It would appear, that we have a problem.

>> germ theory of disease, the theory of gravitation, astronomy, and the laws of aerodynamics equally "materialist dogma"?

No.. these theories can be tested out in labs, actively observed, and can be reproduced for the most part.

The theory of evolution, on the other hand, cannot. Only trace evidence exists.

Starlight can be observed to bend under the influence of gravity, lending credibility to the theory of relativity and the concept of gravity. Apples drop to the earth when they fall from a tree, once again displaying the theory in action.

I can't give you a statistical argument offhand, because the books aren't available on the web.

But here's a good introductory discussion by Dembski, first arguing that the insistence of Darwinists that design cannot even be considered is as unscientific as to say that only design can be considered; then raising the issue of "irreducible complexity," perhaps the main statistical argument of intelligent design theory. He cannot give mathematical details in a brief overview, but much greater detail is provided in Behe's book that he refers to.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9810/dembski.html

Very briefly stated, "irreducible complexity" refers to complex systems which cannot be explained as gradually evolving because all of the parts are necessary for the system to be useful. Thus amino acids and lengthy, complicated DNA chains do not arise gradually. Typically, dozens of different, complex amino acids are not only necessary in higher species but even in one-celled creatures.

How do you explain how maybe 17 complex amino acids, all of which are necessary for life, came into being at the same time? A single amino acid, although extremely complex in itself, is of no use to anything. Neither are half a dozen. You need a certain minimal number before life exists. If you do the numbers on the likelihood of all of those complex chemicals coming together accidentally, you begin to find that twelve or twenty billion years is not long enough to account for it. Especially since entropy tends to break down, not build up, complex systems.

This, too, is only an overview. For details, you need to read the original work.

Similarly, nobody has ever disproven that life was created by a thousand headed snake-like monster.

I believe that you may be the first person in the history of the earth to make that postulation. Are donations to your religion tax deductible?

All intelligent design postulates is that there is or may be evidence to suggest that something supernatural and intelligent seems to, or must have, guided the process of the creation and the sustaining of life. If that intelligence happens to be a thousand headed snake-like monster, then we'd best be prepared to meet him and I'd suggest that we do all that we can not to make him angry.

How do you explain how maybe 17 complex amino acids, all of which are necessary for life, came into being at the same time?

There are 20, not 17 amino acids in the basic set, plus a few more unusual ones. And nobody thinks they came into existence at the same time. Asparagine and glutamine, for instance, are clearly derived from aspartic and glutamic acids, since their tRNAs are synthesized from tRNA-Asp and tRNA-Glu. There is other good molecular evidence for a more limited set of original amino acids.

A single amino acid, although extremely complex in itself, is of no use to anything. Glycine is 'extremely complex'? It has fewer atoms than the butane in a cigarette lighter.

I would like to know why "materialist" understandings are OK in understanding germs (a form of life) and gravity, but "improper" in understanding the origin of species.

The amino acid argument is such a crock, it's hard to know where to begin:

Amino acids are readily created in aqueous solution containing simple organic molecules; this has been demonstrated over and over.
Amino acids assemble themselves into polypeptides very readily under the same conditions.
There's nothing magical about the set of commonly-observered amino acids; proteins would have assembled from other amino acids as well.
Once small molecules start self-assembling in aqueous solution over a very long period of time, there's no limit to the size and complexity of molecules that can and will be created.
The idea that an amino acid has 'to be of use' to be created is silly. They *will* be created if the chemical conditions are right. The creation of complex molecules and the necessary precursors for life is inevitable.

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