Some Common Criticisms of Intelligent Design Theory
This post responds to a few common misconceptions about evolution and intelligent design well expressed in a response to my post, Intelligent Design– Dennett Space Alien Example by Dr. Kenneth Pimple:
You write that “The naked anger at the idea of intelligent design is one of the best signs that it’s plausible.” By that logic, Darwinian evolutionary theory is also plausible, correct?
Yes, that’s quite right. The anger that Darwin inspired was a sign of its plausibility. There are interesting parallels, which someone might write up. Anti-Darwinists also commonly attacked Darwin’s motives instead of his arguments (”He’s really just trying to promote atheism” versus today’s “He’s really just trying to promote Christianity”) and relied on emotional appeals to authority (”His theory is blindly naturalistic” and “This is just what one man thinks; most experts think otherwise,” versus today’s “His theory really isn’t scientific” and “Hardly any scientists think that”)
I think you missed the point of Dennett’s example. Whether the intelligent designer is God or aliens is irrelevant. All that does is put us back in the quandry Darwin faced when he had no mechanism to explain natural selection. Now we do have a mechanism - it’s called genetics. Calling it an intelligent designer without specifying anything else about the designer amounts to mere hocus pocus.
“Genetics” is only part of an answer. The idea of mutations does fix one of the biggest deficiencies of Darwin’s original theory— how you get new characteristics for selection to act on— but there still are problems with how we get the right mutations.
Keep in mind, too, that intelligent design isn’t just about evolution. It also points to odd coincidences needed for physics to generate the world we observe.
I think people get angry about intelligent design theory because it masquerades as science, but it is actually non-science. Intelligent design theorists essentially say that if they can’t explain something (like how the eye evolved), it can’t be explained - except by referring to an intelligent designer, which they can’t explain. It’s giving up.
And what do the anti-ID people use for explanation? Nothing at all. They just say, “Yes, it’s implausible, but randomness must have produced it somehow. And whatever produced it, it can’t be an intelligent designer”. That’s less of a theory than intelligent design has.
I also think you’re wrong about the missing link argument. There are many, many links in the fossil record between ancient life forms and current ones, and there are many, many links between ancient mammals and human beings. If the record as it stands is not good enough for you, could you specify what a knock-down convincing missing link would look like?
The issue here is not whether there are *any* current life forms whose evolution from ancient life forms we can trace. There certainly are– I’ve heard the horse described as one. But that’s no more relevant than the fact that there are some life forms that have existed essentially unchanged over most of the fossil record– the horseshoe crab is one of them, I think. We can’t use the horse to say that we have proof that all organisms have evolved smoothly, and we can’t use the horseshoe crab to say that no organism has evolved.
(We can use the horse as evidence that *some* creatures have evolved smoothly, which is applicable to the evolution/creationism debate, but that isn’t the ID debate.)
Rather, the question is whether we have found the number of intermediate forms that we ought to have found. I’ll address that in a separate post.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Eric - Thanks for the response. Here are some more comments.
I’m glad we’re agreed that the theory of natural selection is plausible. But I assume you do not mean to imply that every argument that inspires anger is plausible.
It seems strange to characterize the problem as “how we get the right mutations.” At the heart of the theory of natural selection is that it isn’t teleological - evolution is not aimed at a particular end that can be called “right” in any absolute sense. Many mutations are not adaptive; a few are. The adaptive mutations are the ones that give their organisms (or should one say the organisms carrying them? the organisms created or effected by them?) a survival advantage. But an adaptive mutation in one setting might well be maladaptive in another. If you want to call adaptive mutations “right,” I guess that’s an acceptable shorthand (if a bit misleading) - it also suggests that there isn’t much problem with “how we get the right mutations”: We get mutations, and the ones that wind up surviving are the right ones. We get lots of wrong ones, too.
Also I have to acknowledge that I know that genetic mutations are not the only mechanisms of natural selection, but I’m not enough of an expert on evolutionary theory to name or defend them all.
I take it this referring to the anthropic principle, which can be put something like this: “If any of a number of the fundamental variables of physics were the least bit different than they actually are, the universe would not be suitable for life as we know it. Since this universe is suitable for life, and for intelligent life, it must have been meant to be the home of intelligent life.”
As a statement of faith or an inspirational philosophy, this isn’t too bad, but as a logical argument it’s pathetic. I think the term is “post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”
Also, the qualities that make the universe suitable for intelligent (human) life make it suitable for almost all other living things. Why (if we’re trying to be scientific or even merely logical) should we assume that human beings are the aim of all creation? Why not beetles? Why not bacteria? They both outnumber us considerably. Or, going the other way (from the numerous to the rare), why all intelligent life? Why not just Aryans? Or homosexuals? Since they’re more rare, maybe they’re more special, showing that the universe was created for them. Or, most logically, the universe was created for “me, Al Franken.” (Joke alert.)
See above about how we get the right mutations. And if anyone says “it can’t be an intelligent designer,” s/he isn’t being scientific. It could be an intelligent designer, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for it and positing an intelligent designer does not advance any scientific conversation. Not yet, anyway.
I’m extrapolating here and I’m sure you’ll correct my mistakes, but it sounds to me that you accept that evolution works at least in some instances. That suggests that you would be opposed to tossing evolution out of the high school science curriculum, which in turn suggests that, at most, you would support ID being taught along with evolution as a kind of corrective. If some examples of evolution are convincing, then presumably ID only shows up some holes in the theory of evolution. If this opinion is yours, and is characteristic of intelligent design promoters, why do they so often sound like they think ID deals a death blow to evolution?
I don’t think many evolutionists argue that “all organisms have evolved smoothly.” (Of course organisms don’t evolve; species do; but that’s quibbling.) Species evolve at different rates, as one would expect from a partially random process. And the longevity of the horseshoe crab doesn’t only fail to show that no organism has evolved, it doesn’t even show that no new species evolved from the horseshoe crab. I don’t know if it actually happens, but it seems logically possible that what one might call a “parent” species persists even after one or more “child” species evolve from it.
I’m also surprised that an economist would be so disparaging of random processes. Didn’t your patron saint, Adam Smith, teach us all about the invisible hand of the market? That actions of individuals working with no end in mind except their own self-interest (which therefore is, in the aggregate, random) create an orderly (and complex) market? Isn’t economics actually quite similar to the theory of natural selection?
Ken
September 7th, 2005 at 11:07 am
(1) It isn’t a matter of right or wrong mutations a priori, but how we
get from our starting point (simple one-celled creatures, or, even
earlier, simple molecules) to where we are now. We need the mutations
to span that gap.
(2) I’m not settled what to think of the anthropic argument, but
thre’s enough there for it to be worth thinking about. The logic is
like this:
1. Generating a universe that “works” requires a lot of things to fit
together just right. “Works” does not mean just that results in
humans, but that results in, say, living things. If you chose
parameters randomly, there would be, say, a 1 in a billion probability
of getting the results we see.
2. If, on the other hand, there is a purposeful designer, it is easy
to explain why things fit together so well.
3. Thus, we should believe in a purposeful designer.
4. But, we must admit the caveat that this method will result in a
mistake in 1 in a billion cases, and for all we know, we are that
case.
The argument is a little like a hypotethical Paley watch one.
Suppose we visited Mars and found a watch lying there. One
hypothesis is that it was created by a designer; another is that it
was created by chance drifting of molecules (which is possible, if
extremely unlikely).
The original Paley argument failed because it asked how complex
creatures could result from random processes, and Darwin solved that
problem
(3) I do think that evolution is a good theory, and that ID just
makes it a better theory.
You couldn’t sensibly teach ID in schools without also teaching
evolution. I’m not sure of who’s saying what, but ID is distinct from
Creationism– that is, the belief that organisms were all created at
one time by God and evolution has been nonexistent or unimportant.
A Creationist might well bring up the same anomalies that the ID
proponent does as a criticism of evolution, but the conclusion would
be different. The Creationist would say, “Evolution has these
problems, so accept Creationism instead.” The ID implication is,
“Evolution has these problems, but they are all solved if you accept
the existence of a designer. Thus, we end up with a stronger theory of
evolution, not a weaker one.”
I’ve certainly seen some misleading rhetoric. The ID people tend to
talk disparagingly of “Darwinists” while accepting in the same
articles most of Darwin’s theory.
I think evolution should be taught in the schools. I’m less sure
about ID, because it is a more advanced topic, like DNA or the Krebs
Cycle. I think the effect of teaching it would, however, be to
actually increase the number of students who come out believing in
evolution, since ID undermines Creationism and suggests that
evolution and religious belief are compatible and complementary.
September 7th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Eric – I see that our positions are a great deal closer to each other than I had thought.
I still think the anthropic principle is not scientific. You bring up the watchmaker example. “Suppose we visited Mars and found a watch lying there. One hypothesis is that it was created by a designer; another is that it was created by chance drifting of molecules (which is possible, if extremely unlikely).” The reason I don’t think this proves anything about the intelligent designer is that the watch – or anything we can find that we could have built – could have been designed by some creature not much unlike us. We know we exist, so there isn’t a great leap of faith to say that creatures not much unlike us – that is, creatures capable of making watches – exist.
But if you look at the universe or many of the really complicated things in it – like an eye – the kind of Designer you have to posit is not one that we’ve ever seen. It takes a tremendous leap of faith to posit an Intelligent Designer who could have designed the entire universe. We certainly couldn’t. There might be an argument that one of these days in the not-to-distant future we’ll be able to design an eye – that is, we might one day be more like The Intelligent Designer than we are now – but the fundamental scientific problem remains: How did The Intelligent Designer come into being?
You don’t have to push this very far to think that the start of it all must have been something like God. That answer might be right. (I happen to believe it is.) But it isn’t scientific.
You also wrote: “I do think that evolution is a good theory, and that ID just makes it a better theory.”
The challenges ID poses might make evolutionists work harder to make their case, but I stand by my assertion that ID is not scientific.
I believe that there are truths, and a subset of truths are scientific truths. The latter are the ones that can be demonstrated or discovered by science. The former include truths like the existence (or non-existence) of God. So as far as I can see, the only thing on this topic that we might really disagree on is whether ID is scientific.
Take care,
Ken
September 11th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
The point of the watchmaker example was that finding a watch on Mars would be susceptible of two interpretations– (1) the watch was generated by random processes and does not require any change in our opinions of whether there is intelligent life out in space, and (2) there is intelligent life out in space, a drastic new change in what we believe. I think (2) is the only reasonable conclusion, even though it goes against current science.
Whether or not ID is scientific drifts through the controversy in a strange way. The main thing is to determine what is true, rather than whether it is to be classified as scientific. In my example of the watch on Mars, is it unscientific to use intelligent beings as an explanation? It all depends on how you define “scientific”, but it certainly would be silly not to use that explanation.
September 14th, 2005 at 7:31 am
Eric – As you might have guessed, the main reason I responded to your first post was the movement to include intelligent design in high school science courses. In that context, the main thing to determine is what is true by scientific standards - which, as I mentioned elsewhere, does not cover everything that is true. Just everything that should be taught as science.
You write: “In my example of the watch on Mars, is it unscientific to use intelligent beings as an explanation? It all depends on how you define “scientific”, but it certainly would be silly not to use that explanation.”
In this case, I’d be happy to rely on the scientific imperative that the best explanation is the most parsimonious explanation – Occam’s razor. It’s only one aspect of what qualifies an explanation as scientific, but it does the job here (at least to my satisfaction).
You wrote: “The point of the watchmaker example was that finding a watch on Mars would be susceptible of two interpretations– (1) the watch was generated by random processes and does not require any change in our opinions of whether there is intelligent life out in space, and (2) there is intelligent life out in space, a drastic new change in what we believe. I think (2) is the only reasonable conclusion, even though it goes against current science.”
There’s actually a third explanation: God did it. But we’ll leave that aside for simplicity’s sake.
Your option (2) is better from a scientific standpoint than your option (1) because it is more parsimonious (assuming we’ve really eliminated the possibility that some human being was responsible for placing the watch on Mars). The idea that there’s intelligent life out in space may be a drastic change for what some people think, but as far as I know most scientists are quite open to the possibility; it’s one of the reasons there’s been so much excitement about finding planets outside of our solar system. (It would be drastic to conclude that there’s intelligent, indigenous life on Mars, but that’s not a necessary conclusion from the existence of the watch there.)
At the risk of being tiresome, I’ll bring up another example – When you allowed that the horse provides a good example of evolution, you concluded: “We can’t use the horse to say that we have proof that all organisms have evolved smoothly.”
That’s true as far as it goes, but parsimony forces us to conclude that if the horse could evolve, other things could; and if other things could, they probably did. It isn’t proof (depending, of course, on how you define “proof”), but it’s the way science works. It would be non-parsimonious to say that a drastically different mechanism were responsible for the development or creation of other species unless and until that mechanism could be demonstrated as well as evolution has been.
September 18th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Remember, Intelligent Design is not saying that the horse and other creatures did not evolve. It is pointing out that although evolution seems to work pretty well for explaining how horses arose, it has problems explaining how other creatures arose. Thus, if we are forced to use the same theory of random mutation for all creatures– say, horses, for which there is good evidence and bats for which evidence goes the other way– then we will have to say that evolution is a bad theory. If, instead, we allow for all, or even just a little, of mutation to be God-directed, then evolution works out much better.
Parsimony is certainly important, but a theory that can’t explain the evidence is worse.
And remember– random mutation has not been demonstrated in a strong sense. Rather, it’s virtue as a theory is that we do think random mutation occurs anyway, so it is parsimonious to call it in as an explanation, together with natural selection, for new species.