Introduction: The Illusion of Design [Richard Dawkins]

Natural History Magazine ^ | November 2005 | Richard Dawkins

[snarks_when_bored]

Introduction: The Illusion of Design

By Richard Dawkins

The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings and wagon-wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes, and solar systems).

Mount Rushmore belonged firmly in the second category until the sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved it into the first. Charles Darwin moved in the other direction. He discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics—the laws according to which things “just happen”—could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion. To such people, if a heart (or an eye or a bacterial flagellum) looks designed, that’s proof enough that it is designed.

No wonder Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” was moved to chide himself on reading the Origin of Species: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.” And Huxley was the least stupid of men.

Charles Darwin discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design.

The breathtaking power and reach of Darwin’s idea—extensively documented in the field, as Jonathan Weiner reports in “Evolution in Action”—is matched by its audacious simplicity. You can write it out in a phrase: nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for building embryos. Yet, given the opportunities afforded by deep time, this simple little algorithm generates prodigies of complexity, elegance, and diversity of apparent design. True design, the kind we see in a knapped flint, a jet plane, or a personal computer, turns out to be a manifestation of an entity—the human brain—that itself was never designed, but is an evolved product of Darwin’s mill.

Paradoxically, the extreme simplicity of what the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called Darwin’s dangerous idea may be its greatest barrier to acceptance. People have a hard time believing that so simple a mechanism could deliver such powerful results.

The arguments of creationists, including those creationists who cloak their pretensions under the politically devious phrase “intelligent-design theory,” repeatedly return to the same big fallacy. Such-and-such looks designed. Therefore it was designed.

Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth.

To pursue my paradox, there is a sense in which the skepticism that often greets Darwin’s idea is a measure of its greatness. Paraphrasing the twentieth-century population geneticist Ronald A. Fisher, natural selection is a mechanism for generating improbability on an enormous scale. Improbable is pretty much a synonym for unbelievable. Any theory that explains the highly improbable is asking to be disbelieved by those who don’t understand it.

Yet the highly improbable does exist in the real world, and it must be explained. Adaptive improbability—complexity—is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve and that natural selection, uniquely as far as science knows, does solve. In truth, it is intelligent design that is the biggest victim of the argument from improbability. Any entity capable of deliberately designing a living creature, to say nothing of a universe, would have to be hugely complex in its own right.

If, as the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle mistakenly thought, the spontaneous origin of life is as improbable as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747, then a divine designer is the ultimate Boeing 747. The designer’s spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations. Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does he need to exist at all?

The achievement of nonrandom natural selection is to tame chance. By smearing out the luck, breaking down the improbability into a large number of small steps—each one somewhat improbable but not ridiculously so—natural selection ratchets up the improbability.

Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

As the generations unfold, ratcheting takes the cumulative improbability up to levels that—in the absence of the ratcheting—would exceed all sensible credence.

Many people don’t understand such nonrandom cumulative ratcheting. They think natural selection is a theory of chance, so no wonder they don’t believe it! The battle that we biologists face, in our struggle to convince the public and their elected representatives that evolution is a fact, amounts to the battle to convey to them the power of Darwin’s ratchet—the blind watchmaker—to propel lineages up the gentle slopes of Mount Improbable.

The misapplied argument from improbability is not the only one deployed by creationists. They are quite fond of gaps, both literal gaps in the fossil record and gaps in their understanding of what Darwinism is all about. In both cases the (lack of) logic in the argument is the same. They allege a gap or deficiency in the Darwinian account. Then, without even inquiring whether intelligent design suffers from the same deficiency, they award victory to the rival “theory” by default. Such reasoning is no way to do science. But science is precisely not what creation “scientists,” despite the ambitions of their intelligent-design bullyboys, are doing.

In the case of fossils, as Donald R. Prothero documents in “The Fossils Say Yes” [see the print issue], today’s biologists are more fortunate than Darwin was in having access to beautiful series of transitional stages: almost cinematic records of evolutionary changes in action. Not all transitions are so attested, of course—hence the vaunted gaps. Some small animals just don’t fossilize; their phyla are known only from modern specimens: their history is one big gap. The equivalent gaps for any creationist or intelligent-design theory would be the absence of a cinematic record of God’s every move on the morning that he created, for example, the bacterial flagellar motor. Not only is there no such divine videotape: there is a complete absence of evidence of any kind for intelligent design.

Absence of evidence for is not positive evidence against, of course. Positive evidence against evolution could easily be found—if it exists. Fisher’s contemporary and rival J.B.S. Haldane was asked by a Popperian zealot what would falsify evolution. Haldane quipped, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” No such fossil has ever been found, of course, despite numerous searches for anachronistic species.

There are other barriers to accepting the truth of Darwinism. Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth. I personally find the idea of cousinship to all living species positively agreeable, but neither my warmth toward it, nor the cringing of a creationist, has the slightest bearing on its truth.

Even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter.

The same could be said of political or moral objections to Darwinism. “Tell children they are nothing more than animals and they will behave like animals.” I do not for a moment accept that the conclusion follows from the premise. But even if it did, once again, a disagreeable consequence cannot undermine the truth of a premise. Some have said that Hitler founded his political philosophy on Darwinism. This is nonsense: doctrines of racial superiority in no way follow from natural selection, properly understood. Nevertheless, a good case can be made that a society run on Darwinian lines would be a very disagreeable society in which to live. But, yet again, the unpleasantness of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

Huxley, George C. Williams, and other evolutionists have opposed Darwinism as a political and moral doctrine just as passionately as they have advocated its scientific truth. I count myself in that company. Science needs to understand natural selection as a force in nature, the better to oppose it as a normative force in politics. Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

In spite of the success and admiration that he earned, and despite his large and loving family, Darwin’s life was not an especially happy one. Troubled about genetic deterioration in general and the possible effects of inbreeding closer to home, as James Moore documents in “Good Breeding,” [see print issue], and tormented by illness and bereavement, as Richard Milner’s interview with the psychiatrist Ralph Colp Jr. shows in “Darwin’s Shrink,” Darwin’s achievements seem all the more. He even found the time to excel as an experimenter, particularly with plants. David Kohn’s and Sheila Ann Dean’s essays (“The Miraculous Season” and “Bee Lines and Worm Burrows” [see print issue]) lead me to think that, even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter, albeit an experimenter with the style of a gentlemanly amateur, which might not find favor with modern journal referees.

As for his major theoretical achievements, of course, the details of our understanding have moved on since Darwin’s time. That was particularly the case during the synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian digital genetics. And beyond the synthesis, as Douglas J. Futuyma explains in “On Darwin’s Shoulders,” [see print issue] and Sean B. Carroll details further for the exciting new field of “evo-devo” in “The Origins of Form,” Darwinism proves to be a flourishing population of theories, itself undergoing rapid evolutionary change.

In any developing science there are disagreements. But scientists—and here is what separates real scientists from the pseudoscientists of the school of intelligent design—always know what evidence it would take to change their minds. One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact.

Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned explicator of Darwinian evolution, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, where he was educated. Dawkins’s popular books about evolution and science include The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976), The Blind Watchmaker (W.W. Norton, 1986), Climbing Mount Improbable (W.W. Norton, 1996), and most recently, The Ancestor’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), which retells the saga of evolution in a Chaucerian mode.

[Coyoteman]

301?

[furball4paws]

Bad Bingo.

Double Plus Ungood - the opposite of Cheers.

[Dimensio]

And only lately?

I have to agree with RWP, and for the same reason. Prior to coming to FR I thought that the majority of those who didn't accept evolution as valid science were simply ignorant of biology -- which isn't hard, since it's not well-emphasized in any educational level through high school and only emphasized at the college level for those who wish to study it specifically. However, after a few years on FR and witnessing the outright brazen and shameless dishonesty of so many creationists and their presumptous arrogance in absolutely refusing to accept that they might possibly be mistaken (even in the face of outright proof that they are wrong on any particular issue, going so far as to deny making statements that it can be proven that they made after their statements are shown to be in error) I've come to realise that many of them are completely and totally wicked.

The rejection of evolution by many here isn't ignorance, at least not the innocent kind. It's some kind of willful desire to not only deny reality but to shamelessly insult and lie about those who accept it.

[grey_whiskers]

Are you accepting speciation as a legitimate fact or theory?

For the sake of argument...

The point is the models of simulated evolution as described by posters on these threads (insofar as I have read them) are not complex enough for me to have confidence that they give accurate predictions as to what happens, or at what rate, in biological systems.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Cheers!

[longshadow]

placemarker

[snarks_when_bored]

Just catching up, g_w, so I'm combining responses to all of your posts in this one post:

Response to your #251:

Howzabout, "Geez, we still don't know for sure." ??

Besides, I seem to recall reading on several other crevo threads that the theory of evolution is not intrinsically about abiogenesis.

Or is that only when it's convenient for one side or the other? ;-)

Since we don't know how life began on Earth, I do indeed think it advisable to say that we don't know. And, yes, judging from what I've read, it's true to say that the theory of evolution is not intrinsically about abiogenesis.

Response to your #256:  The 'prion king', eh? Sorry I didn't think of it!

Response to your #257:

Plenty of organic compounds have been spotted floating around in space.

Details, please? I know that there are, I just want the lurkers to have a list of what specific compounds are. :-)

frgoff provided a short list: methane, some alcohols, formaldehyde, the simpler amino acids. I knew about those, but was also thinking about the relatively recent announcements about finding vast quantities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that also contain nitrogen (PANHs) in interstellar space. Links:

Life's Building Blocks 'Abundant in Space'

NASA Discovers Life's Building Blocks Are Common In Space

The Photoproduction of Organic Residues in Laboratory Interstellar Ice Analogs

Scientists Toast the Discovery of Vinyl Alcohol in Interstellar Space

'Impact' Comet Is Rich in Carbon

Response to your #277:

Dante called him "il maestro di color che sanno"

Translation please, for those of us who don't speak Greek?

Translation:  "The master of those who know."

(And I know you know that it ain't Greek...(grin).)

[Aquinasfan]

No offense Aquinasfan, but Plato is Numero Uno!!! :^)

No way! 8-)

I respect your opinion, so I have to ask you why.

I do find it ironic in the extreme that advocates of Empiricism (not you) would put an Idealist like Plato on a pedestal.

[Right Wing Professor]

actually, assuming the Christian God is rife with the very assumptions that make science possible...., uniformity of matter, and the predictability/consistency of His activity with regard to laws of behavior.

I don't see any connection between a deity and the uniformity of matter. And anyone who reads the Old Testament and declares the deity was consistent isn't reading it very carefully. Angry and vengeful yes. Consistent, I don't think so. "Let's see, I'll create man, and give him free will. No, he used it, let's punish him. Oops, he's using that facility to communicate to get uppity; let's confuse him. Oh, now he's been very evil, let's wipe him out, all but a few. Oh dear, that was a mess, let's promise not do it again. Hey Abe, kill the kid. No don't!"

[Aquinasfan]

Can you [or anyone here] answer the resulting rational question? -- Who designed the Designer's "spontaneous origin"?

Dawkins is exposing his lack of training in philosophy here. It's a problem not uncommon in scientists.

Consider that in everything we observe, what a thing is is different from whether that thing exists. These are two real questions which refer two two separate realities. In God, what he is and that he is are one and the same thing. This is not true for all other created things. God's nature is to exist. He is eternal, without beginning or end.

[Argument from motion (change)]

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

[Argument from efficient cause]

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

[Argument from contingency]

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

Whether God exists?

[Snowbelt Man]

"Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth."

Even more people cannot bear to think that they were created in God's image and will have to give an account to Him for their lives. One thing that I do agree with - the unpalatability of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

[bobdsmith]

Consider that in everything we observe, what a thing is is different from whether that thing exists. These are two real questions which refer two two separate realities. In God, what he is and that he is are one and the same thing. This is not true for all other created things. God's nature is to exist. He is eternal, without beginning or end.

What stops me from inserting the universe in place of God in that paragraph? Above is just a drawn out way of saying "God doesn't need a creator because he's a special case". Well I can just claim "the universe doesn't need a creator because it's a special case".

[snarks_when_bored]

"Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth."

Even more people cannot bear to think that they were created in God's image and will have to give an account to Him for their lives.

It's not clear to me why one should fear the judgment of an infinitely wise and infinitely merciful deity.

One thing that I do agree with - the unpalatability of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

Indeed.

[Right Wing Professor]

Dawkins is exposing his lack of training in philosophy here. It's a problem not uncommon in scientists.

You wish. I'm afraid quaint Scholasticism is hardly a platform from which you can refute Darwin. The argument from motion was obselete once Newton formulated his three laws; the argument from possibility when it was discovered that under the right circumstances nature can break symmetry spontaneously and create new phases of matter, or even new matter, without any proximate cause.

The fact is, all of this sophistric reasoning about how the world must be survives only as long as we are ignorant about how the world is.

[Aquinasfan]

The argument from motion was obselete

What is the argument from motion?

[Aquinasfan]

I stopped counting when I was in my mid-thirties, but by then there were over a hundred women with whom I had sex. I'm no Wilt Chamberlain, but I'm sure it's over three hundred now. Does that make me a bad person, or bring doubt on my reason?

Your actions are deplorable and yes, your actions bring doubt on your ability to reason.

You're so morally confused that there's no possibility of meaningful dialogue between us, so all I can do is hope and pray for your eventual repentence and turning to God. And yes, I know that you don't want my prayers, but you'll be the object of them anyway.

[betty boop]

And it appears it's not a 'law given by a law-giver', it's a consequence of symmetry.

Hello there, dear RWP!!! So good to see you! (Really missed you a lot.)

WRT the above: the symmetry of what, to what? How is there symmetry in the universe to begin with -- especially if we assume a chaotic initial state? How does one get from chaos to symmetry?

The word symmetry has Greek roots: syn (according to) + metron (measure). We are speaking of the beauty of form arising from balanced proportions. How can this sort of thing be an accidental production? What is the "measure," and where does it come from?

I just get the impression that Dawkins, et al., are severely editing down the universe by editing out significant portions of its total reality. FWIW

Thanks for writing, RWP!

[Aquinasfan]

Show some science behind these claims of miracles.

All of these examples have been studied extensively. Just Google on them. Anyway, you wouldn't want to take the word of a religious extremist. Do your own scientific investigation.

Here's one:

Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano

[don asmussen]

Aquinasfan wrote:

It is rational to assume that where there is a law there is a law-giver, and where there is design there is a designer.

Dawkins answers:

"-- Any entity capable of deliberately designing a living creature, to say nothing of a universe, would have to be hugely complex in its own right. -- -- The designer's spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations.

Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does he need to exist at all? --"

Can you [or anyone here] answer the resulting rational question? -- Who designed the Designer's "spontaneous origin"?

Dawkins is exposing his lack of training in philosophy here. It's a problem not uncommon in scientists.

On the contrary, he countered your assumption very neatly, exposing a flaw in your philosophy. - Leaving a question that you've failed to answer.

Consider that in everything we observe, what a thing is is different from whether that thing exists. These are two real questions which refer two two separate realities. In God, what he is and that he is are one and the same thing. This is not true for all other created things. God's nature is to exist. He is eternal, without beginning or end.

Consider that neither you [nor anyone here] can answer the resulting rational question; -- Who designed the Designer's "spontaneous origin"?

-- Consider that it is unanswerable..

Is it not rational therefore to assume that the people of the USA can recognize only Constitutional law as binding? -- And that "We the People" are our own "authority", -- not your particular concept of a "moral Authority" - a Godlike Designer?

[betty boop]

bb, I think Dawkins means that the changes wrought over deep time by natural actions can produce structures that appear to be designed.

Oh, I definitely get that, snarks. All studies of the origin of physical laws inevitably fall into the category of myth however. I''d be thrilled to see your links, if you have time to locate and post them.

As for the "appearance of design," doesn't Dawkins realize that things might "appear" to be designed because they actually are designed? That humans are just awfully good at spotting "design" in nature? I don't mean that a designer is running around actively producing natural forms; my conjecture is that something like an "algorithm in the beginning," as my dear friend Alamo-Girl puts it, "loaded in" that which conduces to design in the beginning. It does not fully specify absolutely every detail of organic and inorganic forms, for there is a random aspect built into the structure of things. But what it does do is constrain evolution and make it subject to laws.

The point is, any algorithm in the beginning is not something that could have been produced by natural causes.

Been struggling with Greek metaphysics recently: especially Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. Basically that's where my "myth" is coming from. Did you know that the Greek word Kosmos means "order?" According to the Plato, the cosmos (universe) is an evolutionary development of a living entity engaged in a process of being-in-becoming. On my interpretation, Being is that which does not vary; becoming is ever variable. The universe is produced by the tension between the two. I see a direct analogy to the first and second laws of thermodynamics here....

As for the word "mimicry," however Dawkins uses it, there has to be something to mimic before there can be mimicry.

Just my two-cents worth, Snarks. Thanks so much for writing!

[betty boop]

As do creationists.

Not so, b_sharp. Creationists always start with Step 1.