Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?
If you’ve ever participated in online debates about the theory of evolution, you know the standard arguments used by evolutionists. Their “trump card” is the claim that Intelligent Design (ID) theory is simply outside the realm of science. This claim is not that ID has insufficient empirical corroboration, although they often make that claim too. This particular claim is that ID is not even a valid scientific theory because it is “unfalsifiable.”
The notion that Intelligent Design theory is fundamentally “unscientific” is based on the philosophy originated by Karl Popper (1902-1994), who postulated a set of rules for science known as “Falsificationism.” The main idea is that a hypothesis or theory does not qualify as “scientific” unless it is “falsifiable” (which is independent of whether it is actually “true” or “false”). Popper is revered by evolutionists, but certainly even they would agree that we should not blindly accept his word as revealed truth. So let us consider some of the implications of his “falsifiability” criterion.
Consider first the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist.” If a spaceship landed on earth carrying aliens from another planet, this hypothesis would obviously be disproved or “falsified.” If an intelligent message were indisputably received from a non-man-made source in space, that would also disprove the hypothesis. Hence, this hypothesis clearly meets the falsifiability criterion and is therefore “scientific” according to Popper’s definition.
Now consider the opposite hypothesis, namely that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists.” How could this hypothesis be falsified? The only way to falsify it would be to prove that absolutely no intelligent life exists anywhere in the entire universe other than on (or from) earth. Because that is obviously impossible to prove, this hypothesis fails the falsifiability criterion and is therefore “unscientific.”
According to Popper’s criterion, therefore, the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist” is “scientific,” but the opposite hypothesis, that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists,” is not. But wait a minute ... if the former “scientific” hypothesis is disproved, then the latter “unscientific” hypothesis is obviously proved! Hence, a hypothesis about the natural world can be proved true yet still be “unscientific” according to Popper’s criterion. Popper’s definition of science is therefore misleading at best.
Popper’s followers readily concede that what they call an “unscientific” hypothesis can be true. For example, the hypothesis, “nutritional supplements can improve a person’s health,” is “unscientific,” yet it is also certainly true. The problem is that their misleading technical definition of science is used by evolutionists to deceive the public about Intelligent Design theory. Hence, many have been fooled into believing that, because ID theory is “unscientific” (according to Popper), it must also be untrue or somehow bogus.
Several years ago the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project was initiated. Large radio telescopes were set up to receive radio signals from space, and massive computing facilities were used to analyze those signals in search of “intelligent” messages that could be presumed to have originated from an “intelligent” life form. Apparently, nobody informed the SETI team that their motivating hypothesis — that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists” — is “unscientific.” Or did SETI go to all that trouble and expense only to corroborate the hypothesis that extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist?!
Suppose an apparently “intelligent” message were detected by SETI. The first question would be whether the message really originated from space and not from a man-made source, but suppose a man-made source could be ruled out. The next question would be whether the message really originated from an intelligent source, or whether it was merely a statistical fluke that only appeared to have come from an intelligent source.
Suppose the message contained the first 100,000 binary digits of pi, repeated indefinitely. Now, one cannot “prove” with absolute mathematical certainty that such a sequence cannot occur by random chance, but most reasonable people would agree that the probability is extremely low. In fact, most would agree that the probability of a such a signal originating from an “unintelligent” source is zero for all intents and purposes.
The repeating pi signal coming from a non-man-made source in space would therefore conclusively prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and it would prove it even if the location and identity of the source were never determined. But according to Popper’s falsifiability criterion, the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists” does not even qualify as “scientific.” Thus, SETI would be in the strange position of having proved a truly monumental — but “unscientific” — fact about the universe!
The hypothesis of extraterrestrial intelligence can shed some badly needed light on the philosophical debate over whether or not intelligent design theory is “scientific.” The philosophical question is not about how much order or complexity is needed to reasonably prove the existence of Intelligent Design; that is a scientific and mathematical question. The philosophical question is whether any amount of evidence for ID could be enough to get evolutionists to concede that ID is even a possible explanation. Apparently the answer is no, because they have ruled ID “out of bounds” from the start.
Evolutionists often point out that Intelligent Design theory “makes no testable predictions and explains nothing.” But what “testable predictions” can be made based on the hypothesis that extraterrestrial intelligence exists? None. So, what do evolutionists say about the potential for intelligent messages from deep space? Do they insist that such messages wouldn’t prove anything and should simply be ignored? Of course not — yet that is the logical equivalent of the evolutionist position on ID. The irony is that evolutionists would probably be the first to embrace the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence because it would transform the origin of life from a “miracle” to a “statistic,” as Carl Sagan once explained. Indeed, most or all of the SETI participants probably are evolutionists!
Both professional and amateur evolutionists will continue to arrogantly assert that Intelligent Design theory cannot possibly be “scientific.” If a famous philosopher said it, apparently that’s all the “proof” they need — common sense notwithstanding. And that’s just the start of their many dubious assertions. After explaining that ID is “unfalsifiable,” many evolutionists then proceed to explain that it has indeed been falsified anyway! “It can’t be done, but we did it anyway just for good measure!” And the significance of the fact that their premise and their conclusion are identical apparently escapes them.
Another popular evolutionist canard is that Intelligent Design theory is nothing more than a cover for Biblical creationism. Never mind that many ID advocates were originally evolutionists before they studied the matter in depth. By the same “logic,” evolution could be considered a cover for atheism or communism, of course. Karl Marx himself wrote, “Although it is developed in the crude English style, this [Darwin’s On the Origin of Species] is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.” Both atheists and creationists may indeed be biased, but attributed biases are never directly relevant to the actual validity of any scientific theory. The validity of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is completely independent of whatever personal biases he may have had!
In any extended online debate over evolution, some genius will inevitably declare that Intelligent Design is meaningless until the actual “Designer” is physically located and identified. That is logically equivalent to claiming that an intelligent message from deep space would not prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence until the source of the message was explicitly located and identified. It is the logical equivalent of claiming that a computer program cannot be considered intelligently designed if the identity of the designer is unknown. It is also logically equivalent to claiming that police cannot conclude that a murder was committed until they identify the murderer.
A related and equally absurd notion is that purely naturalistic evolution must remain the accepted theory until the “Designer” can be understood and explained scientifically. That is the logical equivalent of a prosecutor claiming that a criminal defendant must be presumed guilty unless or until another culprit is found. The truth is that, just as a criminal defendant can be exonerated before an alternative suspect is identified, purely naturalistic evolution can be disproved before an alternative theory is fully understood or even available.
The ultimate irony here is that, given Popper’s definition of science, the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution itself is based on an “unscientific” foundation. How did the first living cell come to be? If Intelligent Design is categorically rejected, then that first cell must have come together more or less by random chance. Mathematicians and physicists have argued (and claim to have proved) that the simplest conceivable living cell is far too complex to have come together by random chance, but evolutionists always reply that, given enough time and space, “anything” can happen. In this case, the evolutionists are correct: proving that the first cell could not have formed by random chance is impossible. It would be like proving that the full text of the Gettysburg address never spontaneously appeared on the Sahara desert due to random winds. But that is just another way of saying that the purely naturalistic hypotheses of abiogenesis is unfalsifiable, hence “unscientific” according to Popper’s falsifiability criterion. [When cornered with this undeniable fact, evolutionists usually claim that abiogenesis is “separate” from evolution. But that’s not quite true: evolution depends on abiogenesis. Evolution obviously could not have occurred if the first living cell had never come into existence!]
The point here is not that Intelligent Design theory is true and purely naturalistic evolution is false. The point is that reasonable people can disagree on the issue, and both positions should be respectfully permitted to co-exist in the spirit of free and open inquiry. Alas, that is far from what is happening today. A misleading definition of science is being used to exclude ID a priori. A judge recently ruled that even mentioning ID is prohibited in the science classes of a particular public school system. That kind of censorship is certainly more in the spirit of the Soviet Union than of the United States. Professors have been publicly censured by their peers for espousing ID. One can only wonder if Isaac Newton would be censured today for his professed belief in the intelligent design of the universe.
Centuries ago the church was the ultimate authority, and dissenters from orthodoxy were excommunicated and punished for their supposed heresy. But science and the church have reversed positions in modern times, and secularized scientific institutions now have the upper hand. Scientists who deviate in their public writings or teachings from the prevailing naturalistic orthodoxy are now ostracized, ridiculed, and sometimes even denied tenure or research funding. Those dissenters are modern day Galileos who are standing up to the Neo-Darwinian dogma and the misleading attacks by its believers, who fear the truth just as the church did centuries ago.
Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us ... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words. —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
Baloney.
Popper may have been an atheist, and may personally have admired Darwin's theory, but he knew a real science from a real worldview. He once said of Darwinism that it was not so much a true science as it was a "metaphysical research programme," i.e., a certain philosophically-determined way of looking at things that could provide a basis for asking certain kinds of questions (and therefore filtering out certain kinds of answers) about phenomena regarding origins of life and origins of species.
Much later in his life he claims to have "recanted" his earlier position, but he never completely reversed himself. He claimed that he now admitted that certain processes were "possible" without commenting on the infinitesimally small probabilities of those processes; nor was he acquainted at that time (or even up until the end of his life) with any of the arguments from the ID camp, including the unsolvable problem of a quaternary digital code inside the cell. He never understood, or at least never admitted, that the real problem to be solved regarding life is not "complicated biochemistry," because most of the biochemistry is straightforward; the real problem is information. Where did the information come from? especially since the theory that treats of that subject -- "information theory" -- asserts that random processes (such as randomly caused mutations, or changes, in a configuration of discrete elements) always results in deterioration of information, not an addition to it.
Popper is bad choice for the anti-ID camp to side with because he was also extremely critical of Darwinism in fundamental ways. He even gave a very positive review to an early (1970s) critique of Darwinism by a lawyer named Normal MacBeth, whose book "Darwin Retried" effectively uses a kind of "cross-examination" approach to showing the many weak links in the Darwinian case for evolution.