After over 20 years of existence we still hear about Intelligent Design (ID).
Why is that?
In fact just what IS ID?
Here's a simple explanation based on Michael Behe's, Phillip Johnson's & William Dembski's works:
Intelligent design asserts that:
"...certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
Technically, ID avoids specifying the nature of the Intelligent Designer though its three 'founders' (the 3 men noted above) created the hypothesis in order to circumvent the legal restrictions on teaching religion in science classes (for evidence of this see 'The Wedge Document' here: http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf).
Many ID proponents use it to support their belief in God.
The main rhetorical props of ID are:
Irreducible complexity:
The central supporting argument of the ID thesis.
Micheal Behe specifies this term as being:
"...a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".
Specified Complexity:
Michael Dembski defines this as:
"...anything with a less than 1 in 10 to the 150th power chance of occurring by (natural) chance.
Fine-tuned Universe:
An argument which asserts that the 'fine-tuning' of universal constants which make matter and life possible are not solely attributable to chance.
Some examples are:
Gravity between fundamental particles, the relative strength of nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and the ratios of masses of such particles etc.
ID proponents argue that if any of these values are different even by an infinitesmal degree, the universe would be dramatically different, thus making it impossible for many chemical elements, reactions and other features of the Universe (base elements, galaxies, electro-magnetic, biochemichal or even thermal processes).
Given the above premise is true, it is argued that an intelligent designer of life was needed to ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve any particular phenomenon, process, element, organism etc.
The reasons that these central props fail to support the concept of ID are as follows:
Irreducible complexity:
Behe's favorite examples for IC include the bacterial flagellum, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.
The problem with IC is that it assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary and therefore could not have been added sequentially.
One part of a system can develop at first to be merely advantageous and then later become necessary as other components change.
In addition evolution often proceeds by altering preexisting parts or by removing them from a system, rather than by adding them.
Interestingly Behe himself has admitted that he has used "sloppy prose" in describing IC, and that his "argument against Darwinism does not add up to a logical proof".
In fact each of the systems Behe has used to illustrate the concept of IC have been shown to have had antecedent systems with various component elements from that system (cilia, flagella, blood clotting system etc.) missing but still producing a functioning sytem - though performimng a different function.
In fact during the Dover Trial testimony from Behe and opposing expert witnesses like Fedducia and Miller proved that:
"Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large".
Specified Complexity:
The basic conceptual soundness of Dembski's argument has been widely discredited by the scientific and mathematical communities. Some of these counter-arguments can be referenced in:
- Branden Fitelson, Christopher Stephens, Elliott Sober (1998)
How Not to Detect Design: A review of William A. Dembski's The Design Inference—Eliminating
Chance Through Small Probabilities, Cambridge University Press,
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/dembski.pdf
- Richard Wein (2002).
"Not a Free Lunch But a Box of Chocolates: A critique of William Dembski's book No Free Lunch."
http://www.toarchive.org/design/faqs/nfl/.
In addition SC has yet to be shown to have wide applications in any other field despite Dembski's assertions to the contrary.
Dembski's "explanatory filter" is eliminative, because it eliminates explanations sequentially: first regularity, then chance, finally defaulting to design. John Wilkins and Wesley Elsberry argue that this procedure is flawed as a model for scientific inference because the asymmetric way it treats the different possible explanations renders it prone to making false conclusions.
This and other critiques can be read here:
- John S. Wilkins, Wesley R. Elsberry (2001).
"The Advantages of Theft over Toil: The Design Inference and Arguing from Ignorance".
Biology and Philosophy 16: 711–724.
http://www.talkdesign.org/cs/theft_over_toil.
- Mark Perakh (2005).
"Dembski 'displaces Darwinism' mathematically -- or does he?".
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/newmath.cfm.
- Jason Rosenhouse (Fall 2001).
"How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics".
The Mathematical Intelligencer 23 (4): 3–8.
http://www.math.jmu.edu/~rosenhjd/sewell.pdf.
Note that the criticisms are not just from biologists but from mathematicians too.
Fine-tuned Universe:
Almost all scientists have responded that this argument cannot be tested and is not scientifically productive. Even when taken as mere speculation, these arguments are poorly supported by existing evidence.
In essence these arguments amount to the claim that life is able to exist because the Universe is able to support life.
The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible.
Life as we know it might not exist if things were different, but a different sort of life might exist in its place. A number of critics also suggest that many of the stated variables appear to be interconnected and that calculations made by mathematicians and physicists suggest that the emergence of a universe similar to ours is quite probable.
A similar argument is the often-used Creationist canard of evolution contravening the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
This is a misapplication of thermodynamic principles. The second law applies only to closed systems whilst the Earth is an open system since it obtains energy from an independent, external source - the Sun.
If this argument were applicable to biological systems, living things could not be born and grow, as this also would be a decrease in entropy.
However, like evolution, the growth of living things does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, because living things are not closed systems—they have external energy sources (e.g. food, oxygen, sunlight) whose production requires an offsetting net increase in entropy.
In addition, despite its more than 20 years of existence, ID has yet to produce a single solid piece of research or peer reviewed paper.
No established scientific journal has yet published an intelligent design article.\
Instead, intelligent design proponents have either published popular books in order to take make a populist appeal, or they have set up their own journals with "peer review" which lack impartiality and rigor, consisting entirely of intelligent design supporters.
"..."ID leaders know the benefits of submitting their work to independent review and have established at least two purportedly "peer-reviewed" journals for ID articles. However, one has languished for want of material and quietly ceased publication, while the other has a more overtly philosophical orientation. Both journals employ a weak standard of "peer review" that amounts to no more than vetting by the editorial board or society fellows."
"..."With some of the claims for peer review, notably Campbell and Meyer (2003) and the e-journal PCID, the reviewers are themselves ardent supporters of intelligent design. The purpose of peer review is to expose errors, weaknesses, and significant omissions in fact and argument. That purpose is not served if the reviewers are uncritical"
In addition Judge John E. Jones, a conservative Judge ruled on the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Board Trial that:
"For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID [intelligent design] would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child. (page 24)
A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (page 26)
The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. (page 31)
The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. (page 43)
Throughout the trial and in various submissions to the Court, Defendants vigorously argue that the reading of the statement is not ‘teaching’ ID but instead is merely ‘making students aware of it.’ In fact, one consistency among the Dover School Board members' testimony, which was marked by selective memories and outright lies under oath, as will be discussed in more detail below, is that they did not think they needed to be knowledgeable about ID because it was not being taught to the students. We disagree. (footnote 7 on page 46)
After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science.
They are:
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and
(3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. (page 64)
[T]he one textbook [Pandas] to which the Dover ID Policy directs students contains outdated concepts and flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case. (pages 86–87)
ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID. (page 89)
Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause. (page 132)
Articles illustrating the above criticisms include:
- Brauer, Matthew J.; Forrest, Barbara; Gey Steven G. (2005).
"Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution".
Washington University Law Quarterly 83 (1).
http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/83-1/p%201%20Brauer%20Forrest%20Gey%20book%20pages.pdf.
- Isaak, Mark (2006). "Index to Creationist Claims". TalkOrigins Archive.
http://www.toarchive.org/indexcc/CI/CI001_4.html.
- Jones, Judge John E. III. (2005)
Decision on Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science
To summarise:
Whilst ID might technicaly not be religious in its arguments, it is unquestionable (see the Wedge Document described earlier) that its founding proponents had one clear agenda in mind - the reintroduction of Scientific Creationism into Public School science classes via the arguments inherent to Intelligent Design.
ID is NOT Science because it is neither predictive, testable, nor useful to science.
ID does not attempt to explain scientific phenomenon but rather attempts to muddy scientific inquiry by the inclusion of supernatural and unscientific philosophies.
Irreducible Complexity, the central argument underpinning ID, has proved unsupportable via example or evidence and stands refuted by the continuing research being undertaken in all the various examples used by Behe.