The Other Intelligent Design Theories

Intelligent Design is only one of many “alternatives” to Darwinian evolution

There is rich irony in how the present battle over Creationism v. Darwinism has taken shape, and especially the ways that this round differs from previous episodes. A clue to both the recent success — and the eventual collapse — of “Intelligent Design” can be found in its name, and in the new tactics that are being used to support its incorporation into school curricula. In what must be taken as sincere flattery, these tactics appear to acknowledge just how deeply the inner lessons of science have pervaded modern culture.

Intelligent Design (ID) pays tribute to its rival, by demanding to be recognized as a direct and “scientific” competitor with the Theory of Evolution. Unlike the Creationists of 20 years ago, proponents of ID no longer refer to biblical passages. Instead, they invoke skepticism and cite alleged faulty evidence as reasons to teach students alternatives to evolution.

True, they produce little or no evidence to support their own position. ID promoters barely try to undermine evolution as a vast and sophisticated model of the world, supported by millions of tested and interlocking facts. At the level that they are fighting, none of that matters. Their target is the millions of onlookers and voters, for whom the battle is as emotional and symbolic as it ever was.

What has changed is the armory of symbols and ideas being used. Proponents of Intelligent Design now appeal to notions that are far more a part of the lexicon of science than religion, notably openness to criticism, fair play, and respect for the contingent nature of truth.

These concepts proved successful in helping our civilization to thrive, not only in science, but markets, democracy and a myriad other modern processes. Indeed, they have been incorporated into the moral foundations held by average citizens, of all parties and creeds. Hence, the New Creationists have adapted and learned to base their arguments upon these same principles. One might paraphrase the new position, that has been expressed by President Bush and many others, as follows:

What do evolutionists have to fear? Are they so worried about competition and criticism that they must censor what bright students are allowed to hear? Let all sides present their evidence and students will decide for themselves!

One has to appreciate not only irony, but an implied tribute to the scientific enlightenment, when we realize that openness to criticism, fair play, and respect for the contingent nature of truth are now the main justifications set forward by those who still do not fully accept science. Some of those promoting a fundamentalist- religious agenda now appeal to principles they once fiercely resisted. (In fairness, some religions helped to promote these concepts.) Perhaps they find it a tactically useful maneuver.

It’s an impressive one. And it has allowed them to steal a march. While scientists and their supporters try to fight back with judicious reasoning and mountains of evidence, a certain fraction of the population perceives only smug professors, fighting to protect their turf — authority figures trying to squelch brave underdogs before they can compete. Image matters. And this self-portrayal — as champions of open debate, standing up to stodgy authorities — has worked well for the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID). For now.

Yet, I believe they have made a mistake. By basing their offensive on core notions of fair play and completeness, ID promoters have employed a clever short-term tactic, but have incurred a long-term strategic liability. Because, their grand conceptual error is in believing that their incantation of Intelligent Design is the only alternative to Darwinian evolution.

If students deserve to weigh ID against natural selection, then why not also expose them to…

This is the deist compromise most commonly held by thousands — possibly millions — of working scientists who want to reconcile science and faith. Yes, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and our earliest ancestors emerged from a stew of amino acids that also led to crabs, monkeys and slime molds who are all distant relatives. Still, a creative force may have been behind the Big Bang, and especially the selection of some finely tuned physical constants, whose narrow balance appears to make the evolution of life possible, maybe even inevitable. Likewise, such a force may have given frequent or occasional nudges of subtle guidance to evolution, all along, as part of a Divine Plan.

There is one advantage — and drawback — to this notion (depending on your perspective): it is compatible with everything we see around us — all the evidence we’ve accumulated — and it is utterly impossible to prove or disprove. Not only does this let many scientists continue both to pray and do research, but it has allowed the Catholic Church and many other religious organizations to accept (at long last) evolution as fact, with relatively good grace.

Most Judeo-Christian sects dislike speculating about possible origins of the Creator. But not all avoid the topic. Mormons, for example, hold that the God of this universe — who created humanity (or at least guided our evolution) — was once Himself a mortal being who was created by a previous God in a prior universe or context.

One can imagine someone applying the very same logic that Intelligent Design promoters have used.

There is no way that such a fantastic entity as God could have simply erupted out of nothing. Such order and magnificence could not possibly have self-organized out of chaos. Only intelligence can truly create order, especially order of such a supreme nature.

Oh, certainly there are theological arguments that have been around since Augustine to try and quell such thoughts, arguing in favor of ex nihilio or timeless pre-existence, or threatening punishment for even asking the question. But that’s the point! Any effort to raise these rebuttals will:

1. make this a matter of theology (something the ID people have strenuously avoided). 2. smack as an attempt to quash other ideas, flying against the very same principles of fair play and completeness that ID proponents have used to prop up this whole effort.

IDOID will have to be let in, or the whole program must collapse under howling derision and accusations of hypocrisy.

Yes, you read me right. Recent advances in cosmology have led some of the world’s leading cosmologists, such as Syracuse University’s Lee Smolin, to suggest that each time a large black hole forms (and our universe contains many) it serves as an “egg” for the creation of an entirely new “baby universe” that detaches from ours completely, beginning an independent existence in some non-causally connected region of false vacuum. Out of this collapsing black hole arises a new cosmos, perhaps with its own subsequent Big Bang and expansion, including the formation of stars, planets, etc. Smolin further posits that our own universe may have come about that way, and so did its “parent” cosmos, and so on, backward through countless cycles of hyper-time.

Moreover, in a leap of highly original logic, Smolin went on to persuasively argue that each new universe might be slightly better adapted than its ancestor. Adapted for what? Why, to create more black holes — the eggs — needed for reproducing more universes.

Up to this point we have a more sophisticated and vastly larger-scale version of what Richard Dawkins called the evolution of evolvability. But Lee Smolin takes it farther still, contending that, zillions of cycles of increasingly sophisticated universes would lead to some that inherit just the right physical constants and boundary conditions.

Well, now it’s our turn to take things even farther than Smolin did. Any advocate of completeness would have to extend this evolutionary process beyond achieving mere sapience like ours, all the way to producing intelligence so potent that it can then start performing acts of creation on its own, manipulating and using black holes to fashion universes to specific design.

In other words, there might be an intelligent designer of this world … who nevertheless came into being as a result of evolution.

Sound a little newfangled and contrived? So do all new ideas! And yet, no one can deny that it covers a legitimate portion of idea space. And since “weighing the evidence” is to be left to students, well, shouldn’t they be exposed to this idea too? Again, the principles now used by proponents of ID — fair play and completeness — may turn around and bite them.

Perhaps the whole thing does not have a clear-cut beginning or end, but rolls along like a wheel? That certainly would allow enough macro-time for everything and anything to happen. Interestingly, the cyclical notion opens up infinite time for both evolution and intelligent designers … though not of any kind that will please ID promoters. Shall Hindu gurus and Mayan priest kings step up and demand equal time for their theories of creation cycles? How can you stop them, once the principle is established that every hypothesis deserves equal treatment in the schools, allowing students to hear and weigh any notion that claims to explain the world? 5. Panspermia

This one is venerable and quite old within the scientific community, which posits that life on Earth may have been seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos. Panspermia was trotted out for the “Scopes II” trial in the 1980s, when Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinge were among the few first-rank scientists to openly disbelieve the standard Origins model — the one that posits life appeared independently out of nonliving chemicals in Earth’s early oceans. Their calculations (since then refuted) suggested that it would take hundreds of oceans and many times the age of the Earth for random chemistry to achieve a workable, living cell.

Alas for the Creationists of that day, Hoyle and Wickramasinge did not turn out to be useful as friendly experts, because their alternative offered no comfort to the biblical Genesis story. They pointed out that our galaxy probably contains a whole lot more than a few hundred Earth oceans. Multiplying the age of the Milky Way times many billions of possible planets — and comets too — they readily conceded that random chance could make successful cells, eventually, on one world or another. (Or, possibly, in the liquid interiors of trillions of newborn comets.) All it would take then are asteroid impacts ejecting hardy cells into the void for life to then spread gradually throughout the cosmos. Perhaps it might even be done deliberately, once a single lucky source world achieved intelligence through … well … evolution. (Needless to say, Creationists found Hoyle & Wickramasinge a big disappointment.)

So far, we have amassed quite a list of legitimate competitors … that is, if Intelligent Design is one. Now a cautionary pause. Some alternative theories that I have left out include satirical pseudo-religions, like one recent internet fad attributing creation to something called the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” These humorous jibes have a place, but their blows do not land on-target. They miss the twin pillars of completeness and fair play, upon which promoters of Intelligent Design have based their attack against secular-modernist science. By erasing all theological details, they hoped to eliminate any vulnerabilities arising from those details. Indeed, since the Spaghetti Monster is purported to be an Intelligent Designer, they can even chuckle and welcome it into the fold, knowing that it will win no real converts.

Not so for the items listed here. Each of these concepts — adding to idea-space completeness and deserving fair play — implies a dangerous competitor for Intelligent Design, a competitor that may seduce at least a few students into its sphere of influence. This undermines the implicit goal of ID, which is to proselytize a fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible.

There are other possibilities, and I am sure readers could continue adding to the list, long after I am done, such as…

* We’re living in a simulation… * We’ve been resurrected at the Omega Point… * It’s all in your imagination … and so on.

I doubt that the promoters of Intelligent Design really want to see a day come when every biology teacher says: “Okay, you’ve heard from Darwin. Now we’ll spend a week on each of the following: intelligent design, guided evolution, intelligent design of intelligent designers, evolution of intelligent designers, the Hindu cycle of karma, the Mayan yuga cycle, panspermia, the Universe as a simulation…” and so on.

Each of these viewpoints can muster support from philosophers and even some modern physicists, and can gather as much supporting evidence as ID. In any case they are all equally defensible as concepts. And only censoring bullies would prevent students from hearing them and exercising their sovereign right to decide for themselves, right? Or, perhaps, they might even start private sessions after school, to study the science called … biology.

A day may come when the promoters of Intelligent Design wish they had left well enough alone.

There is no reason to give equal time for Hindu and Mayan cycles . . .

There is little, if any, reason to introduce intelligent design into every nook and cranny of scientific expression, either. ID is a tentative, overarching theory according to which any example of organized matter performing specific functions might be understood. It is not science or scientific in and of itself any more than tentative suggestions to the contrary, but it is a principle under which science may comfortably take place.

The outcry from Darwinists over the mere suggestion of intelligent design in a public, academic, scientific context is telling. It bespeaks anything but science.

Look at the intricate design all around you.

Argument from assertion.

Do you realize, for example, that a bat's sonar is so sophisticated that we don't fully understand its mechanism?

Argument from incredulity.

Evolution says this is a random mutation --

Demonstration of an incomplete understanding of the subject (note: it is more than a product of random mutation).

from inorganic matter to boot.

This statement is false.

Will you agree that either evolution is true or it isn't?

And if it's not true, then isn't the answer, necessarily, intelligent design?

False dichotomy. If evolution is proven false then the origin of species diversity becomes an unknown. Intelligent design does not win by default in such a situation. Moreover, note that "Intelligent Design", as pushed by its major proponents, accepts that evolution has occured.

ID is a tentative, overarching theory according to which any example of organized matter performing specific functions might be understood.

This is your definition of ID. Intelligent Design as stated by its major proponents is a subject only examining biology, not all matter in general. Please do not confuse your redefinition of ID with what is discussed commonly in contrast with evolution.

Paddlefish, i think you've missed the boat here. Either life is so complex that it had to be designed or it isn't. One need not be a fundamentalist to see that. One could be angry at his creator, and reject any relationship with, or duty to, Him altogether, and still acknowledge that there IS a creator or designer.

Your predicate seems to be that ID requires faith. I'm coming at it from the other way. Being a biology major and having been deeply schooled in evolutionary theory, I didn't see enough evidence nor could I assemble enough faith to buy into it. I think an examination of biological complexity declares a creator.

I'm willing to admit that their are elements of both history and faith in my support for Biblical Creationism.

Please explain the historical elements.

If only the Darwinian secularists were as honest.

What of those who accept the theory of evolution who are not "secularists"? How are people who accept the theory of evolution not honest? Please be specific.

Even in today's news -- backwards evolution (Darwin's finch). In reality, nothing evolved at all. The finches with longer beaks predominated, then fell into the minority, then resumed predominance. The genes were there in the population mix all along. They didn't mutate or evolve in any evolutionary sense.

So if you're denying that this selection induced variation within single species means anything, as to the possibility of the species genuinely evolving into new types, then you must surely deny that the various species of Galapagos finches are related by common ancestry? (Else why protest so much about the significance of more minor changes?)

This puts you in a fairly unique position among modern creationists. Few (and I don't think any of the "leading" figures) hold to fixed species. Most accept the common ancestry of far more diverse forms than the Galapagos finches. For instance the entire Family of Equids (horses, asses and donkeys) is a paradigmatic example of a single "created kind".

Why not just forget Darwin and then all the others wouldn't be considered either. Oh, that's right, there is an agenda that needs to be promoted. Forget I even mentioned it.

Evolution says this is a random mutation -- from inorganic matter to boot. There is none so blind as he who will not see.

Read the follow:

In addition, experiments have made it clear that many mutations are in fact "random," and did not occur because the organism was placed in a situation where the mutation would be useful. For example, if you expose bacteria to an antibiotic, you will likely observe an increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance. In 1952, Esther and Joshua Lederberg determined that many of these mutations for antibiotic resistance existed in the population even before the population was exposed to the antibiotic — and that exposure to the antibiotic did not cause those new resistant mutants to appear.

Random mutations happen all the time. I am confused why you would disbelieve it given the proof of antibiotic bacteria among other things.

Thank you for your reply, but you're missing the point entirely. I'm not making any statement about the validity of ID or evolution. I'm commenting on the fact that ID'ers are not being truthful about their real agenda which is converting people to their Biblical interpretaion. The vast majority of ID'ers are fundamentalist Christians who are attempting to impose their fundamentalist Christian Biblical interpretations on the public under the rubiic of "science." See The History of Creationism I just think it's ironic that they aren't following Biblical mandates in their attempt to impose their Biblical views on everybody.

I think an examination of biological complexity declares a creator.

That is not ID (most people who understand TToE believe in a Creator). Examination of who built a Universe that is so complex belongs in the area of theology or philosophy, not science.

Many scientists come to the same conclusion as you -- in many different disciplines. You don't see a physics version of ID, do you?

There is little, if any, reason to introduce intelligent design into every nook and cranny of scientific expression

Here we agree. In fact, since there's no example of a specific physical case where ID has had any detectable effect, there's no reason to introduce it into *any* 'nook and cranny' of scientific expression.
So we could limit the discussion to "there are those who believe there must be some intelligence behind the behaviour of physical object, but they have no examples or evidence to support their belief."

Works for me.

The outcry from Darwinists over the mere suggestion of intelligent design in a public, academic, scientific context is telling. It bespeaks anything but science.

Fester, And what pray tell can we deduce about the outcry from the likes of Pat Robertson when Dover, PA, decided to oust the school board for pushing ID?

Do you realize, for example, that a bat's sonar is so sophisticated that we don't fully understand its mechanism?

What does that mean? All mammals, including bats, have the same sound processing hardware. The mechanisms of echo-location (which humans possess, incidentally) and aural spatial processing are quite well understood. It is the reason we can artificially induce the experience in humans using off-the-shelf computer technology and slightly clever software algorithms.

The difference in "bat sonar" resolution among mammals is mostly a function of phase discrimination sensitivity, which involves some trade-offs in neuron wiring. Very high resolution phase discrimination requires dedicating a lot of hardware and neural paths, so critters that do not strictly need it tend to dedicate less hardware to the task at the cost of reduced discrimination. The difference between "bad" and "excellent" phase discrimination in mammals is several orders of magnitude timing precision due almost entirely to neuron wiring.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to where the mystery is now that I think about it. It is a relatively straightforward case of two-channel signal processing, with all the flaws and weaknesses implied. We understand it so well that we can very convincingly fool and spoof mammalian brains. Bats, cetaceans, and humans have some of the higher precision sound processing cortices, the microbats (the best) exceeds human phase discrimination by about two orders of magnitude. Some types of fish have phase discrimination that exceeds that of microbats by another order of magnitude or two, but they are also using different biological hardware.

We look for ways to reconcile both, we just don't give 200 years of human scientific thought equal footing with the Creator. When there is a conflict, unless we've misunderstood the Creator, our money is on the Creator.

Which Creator? Whose Creator? Yours? Truth is a popularity contest? The best way to examine a scientific theory is by a show of hands? And what proof do we have of such a Creator?

In philosophy class all that fun stuff can be discussed. Why don't they have ID in physics? Things like quarks and strings looked like they required an Intelligent Designer whe they were first detected. They should study ID there too, right?

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