Intelligent Design — Introduction

2005.09.25   prev     next

Phillip Johnson’s book Darwin On Trial has spawned a movement which is now called Intelligent Design, or ID for short.  What follows is a summary of ID (as I interpret it), and a short list of recommended reading for those who are just discovering it.

ID asserts that:

• The mutation-selection mechanism of Darwinian evolution does not have the creative powers attributed to it, and natural selection serves only as a maintainer of genetic code.
• Life on earth was designed by intelligent beings. Speciation is not a natural phenomenon, except perhaps when it involves complexity-neutral or complexity-reducing changes.
• The designers most likely exist outside this universe, and the laws of physics in which we live are their invention. Those laws have been specially engineered to support complex life such as exists on Earth.
• The designers may have manipulated our solar system to create a planet (Earth) on which complex life could thrive.
• The designers possess an intelligence that is similar in nature to human intelligence. Their design process involves trial, error, and progressive improvement, such as can be seen in human design work (e.g. the automobile; the computer).
• The designers are not concerned with the fates of all human individuals; nor have they given us codes of morality to follow. (However, the designers may be fully aware that laws against murder and stealing will arise naturally in human society.)
• Ideas of an infinitely perfect, hyper-benevolent, omniscient designer are religious in origin, and there is no scientific evidence that intelligent design ever exhibits these characteristics.
• The science community currently backs evolution because:
  

  a.	mutation-selection evolution has an elegant simplicity which scientists like to find, and which fits the historical trend of apparently-complex phenomena falling to simple explanations,
  b.	much of the evidence against evolution was not available until over a hundred years after Darwin published,
  c.	once a theory becomes firmly entrenched in the science community, the peer-review system protects it from attack, and the theory will yield to negative evidence only after a few generations of attrition,
  d.	most scientists view evolution not just as a theory, but as a vital piece of a philosophical wall that protects science from being destroyed by fundamentalist religion, and
  e.	most scientists are acclimated to the concept of a hyper-perfect designer (see previous bullet), and mentally attach this concept to all anti-evolution arguments.

Recommended Reading:

Darwin On Trial, Phillip Johnson — Foundational ID material; consider this a primer to the whole ID movement.

Johnson is Christian, and although he refrains from promoting his religion in this book, his later books include direct promotions of Christianity as the valid source of human knowledge. In those later books, Johnson notes that to attempt to prove one's own accuracy is to commit circular logic; then he cites this circularity as reason to yield to the authority of the Christian God. But Johnson fails to notice that the problem he identifies is a general issue for all arguments, including his own, pro-Christian position. I am confident that there is no solution to this circularity issue — I simply must begin with the assumption that I am rational and capable, and proceed from there.

Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe — Key argument against evolution as a complexity-builder, replete with specific biochemical examples.

Behe is also Christian, but keeps his religious views out of his ID arguments.

The Design Revolution, William Dembski — Latest, comprehensive defense of ID by the new leader of the movement.

Dembski appears also to be Christian, but is much more careful than Johnson to explicitly separate his ID arguments from Christian theology. However, this book does exhibit attempts to loosely tie ID in with Christianity, and contains a promise (pp. 25 and 62) that his next book will be devoted to that subject. (For my comments on Dembski’s previous book, No Free Lunch, see my two articles in the ISCID archive.)

The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez — Latest book to work on the subject of bio-tuning in the laws of physics and in our solar system.

Shows that the bio-coincidences of our universe apply not only to the survival of complex life such as ourselves, but also to our opportunities for scientific discovery. Although obviously relevant to ID, this book’s thesis is logically separable from the anti-evolution ID branch, since evolution is not entirely incompatible with the universe-designed-for-intelligent-life proposition.

Questioning Cosmological Superstition, Rich Halvorson — Discusses how the science of cosmology has been badly distorted by the desire to evade the design conclusion.

Although Halvorson’s message is that isotropy is heavily verified and homogeneity heavily refuted, he is careful to avoid drawing any firm conclusion that we are thus at the center of the universe — he even mentions possible ways to avoid that conclusion if avoidance is desired. Halvorson’s main point is that this widely-held desire — to exclude any form of geocentricism from cosmology — has resulted in the scientifically indefensible adoption/enshrinement of homogeneity.

The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, Stephen Meyer — Focuses on empirical studies that show proteins to be extremely isolated islands of function; not connected by incremental intermediates.

Meyer appears to be Christian, although this paper does not mention religion.

Under heavy fire for being the first peer-reviewed science journal — The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (BSW) — to publish an openly pro-ID paper, the BSW has since renounced their own publication of Meyer’s work, claiming that his paper somehow evaded their normal review process, and would not have been published otherwise.

Click here for a preview copy of my new book, Mechanism, on Intelligent Design, self-reference, and other deep subjects.