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.

From the article that you have referenced:

If the evidence proves the hypothesis, it then becomes a theory.

This statement is simply false. Hypothesis are not "proven". They are either rejected, or accepted as explanations in which high confidence is given. Theories are still open to disproof, and as such cannot be considered proven.

Evolution is the belief that life spontaneously erupted from non-living chemicals—all life today coming from that eruption.

This statement is simply fase. The theory of evolution does not, in any way, address the origin of the first life forms. The author, in this statement, demonstrates that he has not actually studied what the theory of evolution explains.

The problem is, the authors of modern science textbooks will include the faked pictures as proof of evolution even when they know of the fraud.

This statement is unsourced. It is true that Haeckel's drawings have been included in even recent textbooks, however the author does not cite any of the claimed books to show that they were in fact using the drawings to advance Haeckel's failed hypothesis. In fact, Haeckel's hypothesis -- that organisms pass through stages of all ancestral forms during the embryoinic stage -- was never well accepted and eventually fully rejected within Haeckel's lifetime, and the hypothesis never became part of the theory of evolution. However, it is a fact that there are certain stages in the embryonic development of mammals that resemble the embryonic stages of previous ancestrals forms; mammals develop a yolk sac in development, even though the sacs remain completely unused -- a throwback to the ancestor egg-laying reptiles. One particular publisher Nonetheless, the author of the article is greatly simplifying the circumstances of the experiment, and also misleadingly downplaying the significance of the results.

This is supposed to prove the theory of “natural selection.” But fraud and lies permeate this deception as well.

The author again demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the scientific method in general. The peppered moth study did not "prove" anything, as nothing in science is proven. The peppered moth studies -- there were more than one -- is presented as an example of natural selection occuring.

As ridiculous as it may seem, the pictures are themselves faked. Peppered moths do not land on tree trunks in nature; they light on the undersurface of small horizontal branches higher in the trees.

The claim that the peppered moth study was a fraud is a common falsehood told by creationists. That the author makes the claim indiciates that the author is himself dishonest, or the author is receiving information only from dishonest sources, and now actually researching the validity of his sources.

There are multitudes of other misleading statements, false conclusions and outright lies common to pro-evolution literature. These things continue to be included in modern science textbooks and articles.

The author does not reference any such claims, however. The author has shown the existence of exactly one fraud, then misrepresented the implications of the fraud by claiming that it is used as evidence for the theory of evolution, when it is not. The author has also wrongly claimed that two legitimate experiments are fraudlent. The author has clearly not followed up on his research, or the author himself is not honest.

If reptiles somehow changed and became mammals, there should be fossils representing the intermediate steps. But there are none.

This is simply a false statement. The author has apparently done no research, and is using an incorrect assumption as evidence.

According to anthropologist Tom Kemp, in his famous review, Mammal-like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals, “In no single adequately documented case is it possible to trace a transition, species by species, from one genus to another.”

It would be helpful to have the full context of the statement in order to better evaluate its meaning, however no creationist source that I have found is willing to provide any more than one or two sentences in most cases of quotations. Nonetheless, this statement only means that there is no established transitional lineage that covers every species in a line of descent. No biologist expects such a discovery to occur, however, as such a discovery would require an enormous amount of good fortune given that fossilization itself is a very uncommon event. In other words, the author is taking the fact that occasionally transitions amongst a lineage are found skipping a species or two, rather than having every single species in a chain represented, as evidence that no transitional forms exist. This is not an honest representation.

This admission of missing links is nothing new, as is demonstrated by this statement from 1930 by Dr. A.H. Clark in The New Evolution: Zoogenesis: “No matter how far back we go in the fossil record of previous animal life upon Earth, we find no trace of any animal forms which are intermediate between the various major groups or phyla.”

The author should be aware that extensive discoveries have been made since 1930.

Not one “missing link” has been discovered.

This statement is false.

Even Darwin was aware of the missing evidence for evolution. Evolutionist Sir Edmund Leach stated in Nature 293:19 (1981), “Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so.”

Sir Edmund Leach was speaking of Darwin's belief that evolution was gradual (as opposed to oiccuring in rapid spurts of triggered by sudden environmental changes followed by periods of relative stagnation), not the theory of evolution as a whole. This is evident in the context of the Leach's entire writing.

Evolutionists claim that if one creature is physically similar to another, it is evidence of a common ancestor.

Note that no source is provided, nor any explanation that common origin is determined through more than just physical similarity, nor even the standards by which "physical similarity" is judged.

The possibility that bones in the forelimbs are similar because they were planned and created by the same Designer seems to elude the thinking of evolution scientists. Why?

Note that the author fails to explain why a "Designer" should be assumed, and what evidence exists for a Designer.

The idea that life sprang forth from some primordial ooze is at the foundation of the evolutionary concept—that is what evolutionists claim caused life on Earth to begin.

This is incorrect. The theory of evolution does not, in any way, rely upon the means by which the first life forms came into existence. Even if the first life forms were ultimately brought into existence by a supernatural entity, the theory of evolution is unaffected. The author again demonstrates his lack of understanding of the scope of the theory of evolution.

“After the microscope was invented in 1683, the masterly work of Tyndall and Louis Pasteur proved conclusively that the ‘law of biogenesis’ [that life can come only from life] held true for microscopic forms of life as well!

This is not a factual claim. Pasteur demonstrated that previously held beliefs regarding the emergence of maggots and other organisms that appear in rotting flesh were incorrect. He did not, in any way, demonstrate the impossibility of "nonliving" elements coming together to form "life".

“George Wald, professor of biology at Harvard, admits, ‘One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation’

This is a misleading quote. Wald was speaking of human perceptions, because he believed that such an event could not be made to occur within a single human lifetime. It is clear that Wald believes that there is evidence for abiogenesis (which, I will add, is not a part of the theory of evolution).

There is something wrong with a thought process ending with an “impossible” conclusion. At best, it is irrational; at worst, it is intentional deception. Either way, such reasoning is commonplace in the literary support for evolution.

The author has misrepresented the conclusions of Pasteur's work and misrepresented the statements of other scientists as a means to claim that a process that evolution does not address is impossible. I fail to see how this demonstrates any flaws in the theory of evolution.

Educator Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “The most difficult thing for any human seems to be to admit being wrong—to confess error of belief and conviction—to unlearn false knowledge as well as to learn true knowledge”

I can agree with this statement, given the number of times I have witnessed creationists here on FreeRepublic steadfastly refuse to acknowledge error. For example, a creationists known as 'nmh' claimed that Antony Flew had rejected the theory of evolution, even though I was able to quote to the individual a statement from the relevant article showing that Flew did in fact accept the theory of evolution. Rather than acknowledge her error, nmh insulted me. Later, when I reminded nmh of her previous mistake regarding Antony Flew, she denied ever making a comment about him at all, even though I was able to link directly to the post where she had made her original incorrect statement about the man. More recently, creationist mlc9852 claimed that dinosaur DNA had been discovered in fossilized remains. To support the claim, mlc9852 referenced an article that specifically stated that no DNA had been recovered. Rather than acknowledge the error, mlc9852 referenced several other articles; two of them were satirical articles containing deliberately false information, and one was a reference to a 1994 announcement that was later debunked. Despite being clearly in the wrong, mlc9852 has never acknowledged this error. It appears that steadfast refusal to admit error is a common trait amongst creationists here on FreeRepublic.

The “theory” of evolution has repeatedly been proven wrong,

The author references no such proof, however.

There is only one scenario that fits all the evidence perfectly, and that is creation! The facts support the planned, guided and purposeful design and creation of everything in the physical universe.

The author also provides no support for this claim, nor any reason to believe that the "CREATION" that is supported by the evidence is the same "CREATION" that the author believes has occured.

The presence of only levo-amino acids in living materials is so mathematically improbable (see sidebar, above), the only way it makes sense is if it was purposely designed—and that requires a Designer and Creator. No other model works.

This statement references an oft-used "probability" model that assumes that all nucleotides coming together at once, and presumes that all permutations of nucleotides can possibly come about from one organism to the other. There is no reason to believe such a claim, and in fact reason to believe that such a claim is false, and as such the probability argument is founded upon faulty assumptions. A rebuttal to many creationist probability claims can be found here. Note also that the author -- in referencing the character "Satan" -- appears to be endorsing his specific creation view, without justification for ruling out all other possible creation views.

It would appear that the author has either not studied the subject at all, and has taken all of his information from misinformed or dishonest sources without fact-checking, or the author himself is not being fully honest.

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