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The
secular argument of "Intelligent Design"
Intelligent
design ("ID") is presented as an alternative to natural
explanations for the development of life. It stands in opposition to
conventional biological
science, which relies on the scientific
method to explain life
through observable processes such as mutation
and natural
selection. However, intelligent design has no scientific evidence
published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or similar to support it.[11]
The stated purpose of
intelligent design is to investigate whether or not existing empirical
evidence implies that life
on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent
agent or agents. William
A. Dembski, one of intelligent design's leading proponents, has
stated that the fundamental claim of intelligent design is that
"there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in
terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in
any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."[13]
In a leaked Discovery Institute memo, commonly known as the Wedge
Document, however, the supporters of the movement were told,
"We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a
positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories,
which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design. Design
theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist
worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and
theistic convictions."[14]
Proponents of intelligent design
look for evidence
of what they term "signs of intelligence": physical
properties of an object that point to a designer (see: teleological
argument). For example, if an archeologist finds a statue made of
stone in a field, he may, ID proponents argue, justifiably conclude that
the statue was designed and then reasonably seek to identify the
statue's designer. He would not, however, be justified in making the
same claim if he found an irregularly shaped boulder of the same size.
Design proponents argue that living systems show great complexity, from
which they infer that some aspects of life have been designed.
Intelligent design proponents
say that although evidence pointing to the nature of an
"intelligent cause or agent" may not be directly observable,
its effects on nature can be detected. Dembski, in Signs of
Intelligence, states: "Proponents of intelligent design regard
it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of
intelligent causes. Note that intelligent design studies the effects
of intelligent causes and not intelligent causes per se." In
his view, one cannot test for the identity of influences exterior to a
closed system from within, so questions concerning the identity of a
designer fall outside the realm of the concept. However, no rigorous
test that can identify these effects has yet been proposed.[15][16]
According to a 2005 Harris poll,
ten percent of adults in the United States view human beings as "so
complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help
create them".[17]
Although some polls commissioned by the Discovery Institute show more
support, these polls have been criticized as suffering from considerable
flaws, such as having a low response rate (248 out of 16,000), being
conducted on behalf of an organization with an expressed interest in the
outcome of the poll, and containing leading questions.[18]
Origins
of the concept
Philosophers have long debated
whether the complexity of nature indicates the existence of a purposeful
natural or supernatural designer/creator. The first recorded arguments
for a natural designer come from Greek
philosophy. In the 4th century BC, Plato
posited a natural "demiurge"
of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his
work Timaeus.
Aristotle
also developed the idea of a natural creator of the cosmos, often called
the "Prime
Mover," in his work Metaphysics.
In De Natura Deorum, or "On the Nature of the Gods"
(45 BC), Cicero
stated that "the divine power is to be found in a principle of
reason which pervades the whole of nature."[19]
The use of this line of
reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as
the teleological
argument for the existence of God.
The most notable forms of this argument were expressed in the 13th
century by Thomas
Aquinas in his Summa
Theologiae,[20]
design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and
by William
Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802).[21]
Paley used the watchmaker
analogy, which is still used in intelligent design arguments.
| The
Watchmaker argument
The watchmaker analogy
consists of the comparison of some natural phenomenon to a watch.
Typically, the analogy is presented as a prelude to the teleological
argument and is
generally presented as:
- If you look at a watch,
you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an
intelligent watchmaker.
- Similarly, if you look
at some natural phenomenon X (a particular organ or organism,
the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe)
you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an
intelligent creator/designer.
In this presentation, the
watch analogy (step 1) does not function as a premise to an
argument -- rather it functions as a rhetorical device and a
preamble. Its purpose is to establish the plausibility of the
general premise: you can tell, simply by looking at something,
whether or not it was the product of intelligent design.
In most formulations of
the argument, the characteristic that indicates intelligent design
is left implicit. In some formulations, the characteristic is
orderliness or complexity (which is a form of order). In other
cases it is clearly being designed for a purpose.
Arguments that emphasize
the appearance of purpose (as in Voltaire, see below), often
appeal to biological phenomena. It seems natural to say that the
purpose of an eye is to enable an organism to gather information
about its environment, the purpose of legs is to enable an
organism to move about in its environment, and so on. Even for
non-biological phenomena, scientific explanations in terms of
purpose were accepted well into the 19th century. Natural
phenomena were explained in terms of how they were designed for
the benefit of humanity. It was held for instance, that the
highest mountains on earth are located in the hottest climates by
design -- so that the mountains might condense the rain and
provide cool breezes where mankind needed them the most. (Ref.)
In arguments that
emphasize on orderliness or complexity, the argument is often
supplemented by a second argument that proceeds this way:
Phenomenon X (the
structure of the solar system, DNA, etc.) must be the result of:
- random chance, blind
fate, etc.
- natural causes,
natural law
- intelligent design
In the case of a watch, for
example , neither (1) nor (2) is plausible. The complexity of a
watch means that it could never have come about through random
chance or through any natural process; it must have been
designed by an intelligent watchmaker. Similarly (the argument
continues), the complexity of X means that it could never have
come about through random chance or through any natural process;
it must have been designed by an intelligent designer.
This argument is basically
a process of elimination: three possible explanations are offered.
When the first two (random chance, natural causes) are ruled out,
intelligent design is left standing as the only plausible
explanation.
The Achilles heel of the
argument is that it fails if there exists a plausible explanation
of phenomenon X in terms of natural processes. And this makes it
vulnerable to advances in science, which has progressively found
more and more naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena, and
progressively abandoned explanations in terms of teleology.
The location of mountains, for instance, is now explained in terms
of plate
tectonics. The
structure of biological organisms is explained in terms of natural
selection. The
structure of the solar system is explained in terms of the nebular
hypothesis and its
refinements. And so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
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In the early 19th century, such
arguments led to the development of what was called natural
theology, the study of biology
as a search to understand "the mind of God." This movement
fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens
that ultimately led to Darwin's
theory of the
origin of species. Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer
is embraced today by many believers in theistic
evolution, who consider modern science and the theory of evolution
to be fully compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer.
Intelligent design in the late
20th century can be seen as a modern development of natural theology
which seeks to change the basis of science and undermine evolution
theory. As evolutionary theory has expanded to explain more phenomena,
the examples that are held up as evidence of design have changed. But
the essential argument remains the same: complex systems imply a
designer. Examples offered in the past included the eye (optical system)
and the feathered wing; current examples are mostly biochemical:
protein functions, blood clotting, and bacterial flagella
(see irreducible
complexity).
The earliest known version of
the particular line of reasoning that would come to be called
"intelligent design" began, according to Dr
Barbara Forrest, "in the early 1980s with the publication of The
Mystery of Life's Origin (MoLO 1984) by creationist chemist Charles
B. Thaxton with Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen. Thaxton worked
for Jon A. Buell at the Foundation
for Thought and Ethics (FTE) in Texas, a religious organization that
published MoLO."[22]
Intelligent design deliberately
does not try to identify or name the specific agent
of creation — it merely states that one (or more) must exist.
Although intelligent design itself does not name the designer, the
personal view of many proponents is that the designer is the Christian
god.[23][14][24]
Whether this was a genuine feature of the concept or just a posture
taken to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from the
teaching of science has been a matter of great debate between supporters
and critics of intelligent design. The Kitzmiller
v. Dover Area School District court ruling held the latter to be the
case.
Origins
of the term
Though unrelated to the current
use of the term, the phrase "intelligent design" can be found
in an 1847 issue of Scientific American and in an 1850 book by Patrick
Edward Dove.[25]
The term is also used in an address to the 1873 annual meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science by Paleyite
botanist George
James Allman:
No physical hypothesis founded
on any indisputable fact has yet explained the origin of the
primordial protoplasm, and, above all, of its marvellous properties,
which render evolution possible—in heredity and in adaptability, for
these properties are the cause and not the effect of evolution. For
the cause of this cause we have sought in vain among the physical
forces which surround us, until we are at last compelled to rest upon
an independent volition, a far-seeing intelligent design.[26]
The term can be found again in Humanism,
a 1903 book by one of the founders of classical pragmatism,
F.C.S.
Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition
that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent
design." A derivative of the term appears in the Macmillan
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) in the article on the Telological
argument for the existence of God : "Stated most
succinctly, [the argument] runs: The world exhibits teleological
order (design, adaptation). Therefore, it was produced by an intelligent
designer." The term "intelligent design" was also used in
the early 1980s by Sir Fred
Hoyle as part of his promotion of panspermia.[27]
The predominant modern use of
the term began after the Supreme
Court of the United States, in the case of Edwards
v. Aguillard (1987), ruled that creationism
is unconstitutional in public school science curricula. Stephen
C. Meyer, cofounder of the Discovery
Institute and vice president of the Center
for Science and Culture, reports that the term came up in 1988 at a
conference he attended in Tacoma,
Washington, called Sources of Information Content in DNA.[28]
He attributes the phrase to Charles
Thaxton, editor of Of
Pandas and People. In drafts of the book Of Pandas and People,
the word 'creationism' was subsequently changed, almost without
exception, to intelligent design. The book was published in 1989
and is considered to be the first intelligent design book.[29]
The term was promoted more broadly by the retired legal scholar Phillip
E. Johnson following his 1991 book Darwin
on Trial, which advocated redefining science to allow claims of
supernatural creation.[30]
Johnson, considered the "father" of the intelligent
design movement, went on to work with Meyer, becoming the program
advisor of the Center
for Science and Culture in forming and executing the wedge
strategy.
Concepts
Irreducible
complexity
-
In the context of intelligent
design, irreducible complexity was put forth by Michael
Behe, who defines it as "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."[31]
Behe uses the analogy
of a mousetrap to illustrate this concept. A mousetrap consists of
several interacting pieces — the base, the catch, the spring, the
hammer — all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work.
Removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap.
Intelligent design advocates assert that natural selection could not
create irreducibly complex systems, because the selectable function is
present only when all parts are assembled. Behe's original examples of
alleged[32][33]
irreducibly complex biological mechanisms instead include the bacterial flagellum
of E.
coli, the blood
clotting cascade, cilia,
and the adaptive immune
system.
Critics point out[34][35]
that the irreducible complexity argument assumes that the necessary
parts of a system have always been necessary and therefore could not
have been added sequentially. They argue that something which is at
first merely advantageous can later become necessary as other components
change. Furthermore, they argue, evolution often proceeds by altering
preexisting parts or by removing them from a system, rather than by
adding them. This is sometimes called the "scaffolding
objection" by an analogy with scaffolding, which can support an
"irreducibly complex" building until it is complete and able
to stand on its own.[36]
Behe himself has since confessed to "sloppy prose," and that
his "argument against Darwinism does not add up to a logical
proof."[37]
Irreducible complexity has remained a popular argument among advocates
of intelligent design; however, in the Dover trial, the court held 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."[38]
Specified
complexity
-
The intelligent design concept
of "specified complexity" was developed by mathematician,
philosopher, and theologian William
Dembski. Dembski states that when something exhibits specified
complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously), one
can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it
was designed) rather than being the result of natural processes. He
provides the following examples: "A single letter of the alphabet
is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is
complex without being specified. A Shakespearean
sonnet
is both complex and specified."[39]
He states that details of living things can be similarly characterized,
especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional
biological molecules such as DNA.
Dembski defines complex
specified information as anything with a less than 1 in 10150
chance of occurring by (natural) chance. Critics say that this renders
the argument a tautology:
Complex specified information (CSI) cannot occur naturally because
Dembski has defined it thus, so the real question becomes whether or not
CSI actually exists in nature.
The conceptual soundness of
Dembski's specified complexity/CSI argument is strongly disputed by the
scientific community.[40]
Specified complexity has yet to be shown to have wide applications in
other fields as Dembski asserts. John Wilkins and Wesley
Elsberry characterize Dembski's "explanatory filter" as eliminative,
because it eliminates explanations sequentially: first regularity, then
chance, finally defaulting to design. They 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.[41]
Richard Dawkins, another critic of intelligent design, argues in The
God Delusion that allowing for an intelligent designer to
account for unlikely complexity only postpones the problem, as such a
designer would need to be at least as complex [42]
Fine-tuned
universe
-
Intelligent design proponents
also raise occasional arguments outside biology, most notably an
argument based on the anthropic
principle that the universe is "fine-tuned," an argument
that claims that the many features that make life possible cannot be
attributed to chance. These include the values of fundamental
physical constants, the strength of nuclear
forces, electromagnetism,
electron-neutron mass ratios and gravity,
as well as a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the thermodynamic
concept of entropy.[43][44][45]
Intelligent design proponent and Center
for Science and Culture fellow Guillermo
Gonzalez argues that if any of these values were even slightly
different, the universe would be dramatically different, with many chemical
elements and features of the universe like galaxies
being impossible to form.[46]
Thus, proponents argue, an intelligent designer of life was needed to
ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve that
particular outcome. Scientists almost unanimously have responded that
this argument cannot be tested and is not scientifically productive.
Some scientists argue that even when taken as mere speculation, these
arguments are poorly supported by existing evidence.[47]
Critics of both intelligent
design and the weak
form of the anthropic
principle argue that they are essentially a tautology;
in their view, these arguments amount to the claim that life is able to
exist because the universe is able to support life.[48][49][50]
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.[51]
Intelligent
designer
-
Intelligent design arguments are
formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid identifying the
intelligent agent they posit. Although they do not state that God is the
designer, the designer is often implicitly hypothesized to have
intervened in a way that only a god could intervene. Though Dembski in The
Design Inference speculates that an alien culture could fulfill
these requirements, the authoritative description of intelligent design[52]
explicitly states that the universe displays features of having
been designed. Acknowledging the paradox,
Dembski concludes that "no intelligent agent who is strictly
physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the
origin of life."[53]
The leading proponents have made statements to their supporters that
they believe the designer to be the Christian
god, to the exclusion of all other religions.[23]
Beyond the debate over whether
intelligent design is scientific, a number of critics go so far as to
argue that existing evidence makes the design hypothesis appear
unlikely, irrespective of its status in the world of science. For
example, Jerry Coyne, of the University
of Chicago, asks why a designer would "give us a pathway for
making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its
enzymes" and why he or she would not "stock oceanic islands
with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the
suitability of such islands for these species." Coyne also points
to the fact that "the flora and fauna on those islands resemble
that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very
different" as evidence that species were not placed there by a
designer.[54]
Previously, in Darwin's
Black Box, Behe had argued that we are simply incapable of
understanding the designer's motives, so such questions cannot be
answered definitively. Odd designs could, for example, "have been
placed there by the designer... for artistic reasons, to show off, for
some as-yet undetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable
reason." Coyne responds that in light of the evidence, "either
life resulted not from intelligent design, but from evolution; or the
intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to
make it look as though it had evolved."[55]
Asserting the need for a
designer of complexity also raises the question "What designed the
designer?"[56]
Intelligent design proponents say that the question is irrelevant to or
outside the scope of intelligent design.[57]
Richard Wein counters that the unanswered questions a theory creates
"must be balanced against the improvements in our understanding
which the explanation provides. Invoking an unexplained being to explain
the origin of other beings (ourselves) is little more than question-begging.
The new question raised by the explanation is as problematic as the
question which the explanation purports to answer."[58]
Dawkins sees the claim that the designer does not need to be explained,
not as a contribution to knowledge, but as a thought-terminating
cliché.[59][60]
In the absence of observable, measurable evidence, the very question
"What designed the designer?" leads to an infinite
regression from which intelligent design proponents can only escape
by resorting to religious creationism or logical contradiction.[59][61]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
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