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.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your insights! I greatly appreciate the excerpt of Aquinas' Shorter Summa and especially this observation:

Brings to mind a certain Deity whose followers always seem to get wrapped up in these crevo threads...

"Before Abraham was, I AM"

Indeed.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply! Physical laws are among the guides to such systems.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for all of your excellent posts on this thread! They are treasures and very engaging. And there is soooo much I'd love to discuss, but I'm just too worn out and must call it a night. Sigh ...

[grey_whiskers]

I was told Adm. Grace Hopper used that saying in a graduation speech at William and Mary.

Sigh. She did so much to get the DoD into high-end computing... :-)

[BnBlFlag]

One thing's for certain. We'll all either blink off into oblivion or wake up face to face with God. We'll just have to see.

[RunningWolf]

There is no symmetry in the void. It cannot be observed, moved, rotated. It is null. There are no fields, no points, no space, no time in the void. No geometry, ergo no symmetry.

No Alamo-Girl, You are to nice. You are talking over a head not past one.

But to your post, even the human concept of a void fails.

Agree?

Wolf

[hosepipe]

[ Again, there are two basic worldviews concerning the physical realm. One sees the physical realm as three spatial dimensions evolving over time. The other sees the physical realm as four dimensions - three of space, one of time. There are many extensions of the second view for multiple spatial and temporal dimensions, e.g. string theory. ]

Thank You.. You didn't have to include this, in this way..
Us, paleo-science types appreciate it.. if there are more than ONE of us.. LoL..

Wonder what "speed" God transverses this Universe at.. Wonder if spiritually "speed" is an obsolete concept.. Just a thought.. In that case time might not be variable but speed may be.. Really Photons are Sooo slow.. too slow.. To maintain this Universe efficiently a much faster mode of transportation would be needed, much faster than light speed.. Human bodies couldn't do it.. I know I know.. I'm dreamin again.. I do that..

But I'm not kidding, mostly..

[ml1954]

Thanks for the reply. However, I already knew these things. But the refresher is appreciated.

[js1138]

That is a philosophy not a science.

Excuse me for confusing empiricism with science.

[Snowbelt Man]

Your argument makes alot of sense. so long as God's view of justice is the same as yours. however, your view is not the view presented by the Scriptures nor especially by the teachings of Christ. if it's all a fable (like all the virgins for the suicide bombers), then you're good. if it's not a fable and no sin (no matter how small or finite) can be in the presence of the living God, then you're in trouble. the real issue is what is the truth and, as the writer of the article which started this whole discussion stated: the unpalatability of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

[Doctor Stochastic]

"By the Leeks of Babylon, E.I.E.I.O,
There we sat, there, yea, we wept, E.I.E.I.O.
With a boo-hoo here, and a boo-hoo there,
....
By the Leeks of Babylon, E.I.E.I.OOOOO"

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements!

But to your post, even the human concept of a void fails.

Truly, the human mind is limited and we mortals suffer from the "observer problem"; therefore, Spiritual revelation is more certain than any other type of knowledge. But those who have never experienced God's revelations in Jesus Christ, the indwelling Spirit, Scriptures and Creation cannot appreciate the difference or that certainty.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your engaging post!

Wonder what "speed" God transverses this Universe at.. Wonder if spiritually "speed" is an obsolete concept.. Just a thought.. In that case time might not be variable but speed may be..

Being transcendent, God is not bound by anything "in" creation whether physical or spiritual.

You might find it interesting that some Jewish mystics do not see the firmament (Genesis 1) as a geometric barrier - here (physical) and there (spiritual). Rather, they see the "there" as "here" and the boundary between the two, the firmament, as the speed of light.

In that interpretation, the sense of physical reality is "slow motion".

[Alamo-Girl]

Please accept my apology - I didn't intend to be didactic, but rather to make sure we were on the same page.

[hosepipe]

[ Being transcendent, God is not bound by anything "in" creation whether physical or spiritual. ]

Like "We" are in "heaven".?..

[Alamo-Girl]

Like "We" are in "heaven".?..

If you are speaking of the Jewish mystic interpretation of the firmament, then yes, each person is alive in both the spiritual and physical sides of the firmament (both here and there) though he may not be aware of it. Thus a person may unknowingly already be (spiritually) an inhabitant of "heaven" or "hell".

Christians, however, are aware of being alive in timelessness while yet in the flesh:

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Col 3:3

So yes, Jewish mysticism notwithstanding, as Christians you and I are both "in heaven".

I see physical death as a "weighing of the anchor". In your metaphor, it would be getting off the donkey. In the Jewish mystic interpretation, it would be a separation of body and spirit, so that the speed of light is no longer a boundary.

[cornelis]

Thanks for flagging me yesterday. I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond. Here's a bit from Wilhelmsen, Hilaire Belloc, No Alienated Man:

The ancient Arabs spoke of a creature having life in two worlds: his body was rooted in the earth, but his soul swept out across the horizons to a world beyond. Let us call him by his name: Man. This balance which is Man is a tension rarely maintained in the course of human existence.

Let us call the one who situates his destiny in this world, and who habituates his gaze to the things this side of the horizon, Aristotelian Man. Let us call the one who despises the limits of the horizons, and who contemplates the world beyond, Platonic Man.

This first alienation of man from himself was healed in the ancient world by the Incarnation. Aristotelian Man, like St. Thomas the Doubter, could put his fingers in the side of his Creator; and Platonic Man, like the mystic John, found the Word, but it was the Word made Flesh. Revelation restored to man the unity that was himself . . . This unity was achieved as a reality both personal and corporate for a period of time in that small segment of the globe known as Western Europe.

Human unity was gradually lost, and a new man came into being. This man ha his life neither in the rooted things of the world nor in a heaven beyond. Nor is he Christian Man, man reconciled to himself. This new man looks neither outward and above nor outward and round about him. He looks within, and attempts to find salvation by a penetration and purgation of the hidden depths of his own personality. This is Modern Man, man twice alienated from himself, and he has not yet found his soul. "Je est un autre," said Rimbaud. "I IS an Other." And yet the Other which he is, is shrouded in darkness; and it is in this crucifixion of himself that Modern Man has come to see, without knowing that he sees, the hidden irony of the Cross.

Rimbaud was to wreak his vengeance on this Other he could not find by denouncing poetry, and by turning to what consolations the sands of Africa and the keel of a slave ship could offer an alienated man. He was a forerunner of what has become the dominant motif of the Western soul as expressed in its literature: the Man of Guilt.

Guilt is the effect of estrangement; it follows on a renunciation, explicit or implicit, of some dimension of the human spirit which is essential to the integral perfection of man. This renunciation has nothing to do with asceticism, which is a discipline sanctified and defined by the Christian tradition, having as its goal the flowering of human existence. The ascetic artist who prunes away the irrelevant so that the end may be achieved. Alienation is altogether different. It is the renunciation of something without which the end cannot be. Hence, wherever you find this sense of guilt so preoccupying modern man, you find a rupturing of the human heart, a positive surrender of some value which is consubstantial with achieved, completed, personal perfection. Being cannot be mocked with impunity.

[cornelis]

Belloc ping at #817.

[caffe]

This is especially true to Darwins crowd; they can call themselves anything they wish but it is still your basic atheistical approach to creation.
Scientists do define rules of true science but if they break their own rules it is forgiven. Yet they throw hissy fits to advocates of ID. They are afraid of exposure , an examination of their lies, misrepresentations, and lack of scientific vigor. Light always exposes the darkness of their illusions.

[bobdsmith]

But whether or not ID is science is the important issue