DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY
What About Intelligent Design and Creation?
Although scientists often have the immediate response that Creation is religion, not science, it is valuable to look at it from a different perspective. Perhaps, it is the perspective of our ancestors some 2500 years ago. They were faced with the world, pretty much as we know it, about which they could make a great many observations. From their accumulated knowledge, they built the current-best hypothesis to explain the currently-available data. That is, Creation is a perfectly valid hypothesis. Probably, this is why virtually every culture developed some version of a creation story, different though they may be.
At the current time, we have much more data about the world than was available some two millennia ago. Hypotheses that we make now should be consistent with, and explanatory of, the currently-available data. Does Creation still fit?
From discussions I have had with Creationists in online forums, it is clear that for some Creationists, at least, God is a part of the natural world as they define it. Therefore, claiming that Creation is an appeal to the supernatural, and the supernatural is, by definition, beyond the natural world, sounds like weasel-words. Although this explanation is valid in some sense, it invokes a feeling that science rejects God as a matter of principle. As long as this feeling persists, we will have the argument that science dogmatically refuses to consider an entire branch of thinking. To me, this reasoning renders inoperable the argument that the supernatural is outside the bounds of science.
It is better to argue that a scientific explanation is based upon data--that is, we reason from the data to reach a conclusion. Historically, as noted above, Creation was the best explanation available. As additional data were found, the best-fit explanation changed. The data led to the development of the Theory of Evolution. It is important to note that the data do not rule out supernatural involvement; the data simply do not require that we invoke the supernatural. While it may be necessary to argue that any particular creation scenario must be revised to fit the available data (e.g. God worked through evolution to create life, and that the six days of creation were not necessarily 24-hour days, and the Flood was local rather than global), it remains impossible either to prove or disprove the supernatural. Phrased differently, whatever God or gods may have been involved, they left no footprints.
That is: it is not the purpose of science classes to undermine religion. Nor is it the purpose to change anyone's religion. The purpose is merely to examine the world--God's Creation, if you will--and try to fit the observations into a coherent framework, reasoning from the data and not from a pre-defined conclusion.
Creationists often ague that scientists begin with the theory of evolution, and then seek evidence to support it. This is not correct. However, it seems to be true when we teach the conclusions of scientists rather than presenting the evidence upon which the conclusions are based. This is why it is so important that we provide students with data that they can examine themselves.
In scientific explanations, there is always the likelihood that there will something for which we do not have complete information. We may have enough information to justify the explanation, but it is likely that we do not have 100% of the details filled in. Evolution is such a theory. It is the nature of science to have uncertainty; it is not the nature of religion, which supposes Absolute Truth. To one who is searching for absolute truth, and believes that science promises it, a theory that leaves any detail uncertain is an impossibility. To a scientist who is comfortable with uncertainty, this poses no problem. It's the way life is.
Intelligent Design (ID) grows out of this lack of comfort with uncertainty. (It is also an alternate political mechanism for getting creation to be taught in science classrooms, but that is not the issue in this discussion.) In general, the "theory" of Intelligent Design posits that if there is something (anything, really) for which we do not have a complete historical description, with 100% of the details filled in, then it is simply impossible for there ever to be a scientific explanation. By default, Creation wins.
(At present, the name of the Creator is unspecified, although the Wedge Document states quite clearly that the goal of ID is "to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions… that nature and hurnan beings are created by God ." In addition, the judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover ruled that ID is, in fact, biblical creation in a new form.)
There are a couple of logical leaps here that are unjustified. First, it seems unlikely that, for any issue that we do not fully understand today, we will never advance our understanding further. Second, the immediate appeal to the supernatural omits an important scientific step: identifying and evaluating alternative possibilities. ID proponents should be worried that, if they conclude today that X can only be the product of intelligent design, and next week we complete the scientific explanation, then not only will their conclusion be rendered invalid, but their logical process will be as well.
The important point for the classroom, should this issue arise, is that it is perfectly all right to have things we do not fully understand. We trust in human ingenuity to work out more details in the future, and possibly finish putting the puzzle together. In the meantime, we propose a scientific explanation that is based upon the available data. This emphasizes how important it is to understand the Nature of Science -- that it is an endeavor that seeks to explain what we find in the world, and that it is not a pre-ordained list of Absolute Truths.
There are also much more serious issues with ID. It has been presented by its proponents as a scientific alternative to evolution. Let's evaluate this assertion, examining the two primary lines of reasoning.
Irreducible Complexity cannot be achieved by random evolution:
The centerpiece of ID logic is complexity. Behe has presented it as follows: if the removal of one part of a complex structure causes that structure to fail, then that structure is "irreducibly complex." Since evolution would require that such structures develop from imperfect precursors, it "stands to reason" that the presumed evolutionary precursor would be missing one or more parts, and would be unable to function. Thus, they cannot evolve, and require a designer.
Inherent in this logic is the assumption that a complex structure simply cannot exist in a form that is just a bit less efficient than the current version. The logic excludes the possibility of existing structures being co-opted for a new function. It excludes the possibility of simpler, less complex structures that achieve the same function, just not as well. Indeed, it is a fundamental assumption of ID theorists that complex structures simply cannot arise from simpler precursors.
Most disturbingly, ID proponents "prove" that evolution could not have created complex structures by calculating the probability that all of the parts would spontaneously come together and function just like they do now. This calculation relies upon a model of evolution in which new structures appear suddenly, fully-formed just as they are today. As mentioned above, this assumes that slightly less complex precursors are simply not possible.
Because evolution does use precursor structures, altering them slightly over time, and because evolution does involve the occasional co-opting of structures for new jobs, this argument for ID is based upon a false premise of how evolution works. That is, ID is a fine alternative for the particular caricature of evolution in which new structures arise out of nowhere. But, since this logic does not address evolution as we currently understand it, it is not an alternative to true evolutionary theory.
Complex Specified Information:
Dembski uses a similar argument to Behe's, but based on information rather than structures. In living things, the information is coded as DNA. Thus, DNA represents complex information. Can it have arisen by evolution, or is a designer needed? Dembski's logic is that the probability of random mutation (even with selection) generating the exact sequence of the human genome is vanishingly small. It can't happen. But the probability of generating some other DNA sequence, which has no function (i.e. junk DNA) is pretty good. How do we distinguish "important" information from "junk"? In Dembski's explanation, the key is specification. His analogy is shooting an arrow at a wall. Hitting the wall is no big deal. But hitting it at a pre-specified spot (a target) takes real skill. Thus, we can determine "junk" information (anywhere on the wall) from "important" information (actual genes) by determining whether it was pre-specified.
How do we determine what was pre-specified? We simply calculate the probability of it arising on its own.
Unfortunately, this logic makes the assumption that evolution has always had the sequence of the human genome as a goal, or target. Although this is a common misconception, there is, in fact, no goal of evolution. The known mechanism of evolution is entirely unable to "aim" at any kind of target. The actual theory of evolution does not propose that humans have been the goal of evolution. It merely states that change occurs. Therefore, like Behe's argument, Dembski's is based on a false premise of how evolution works. Again, ID may be a fine alternative to this caricature of evolution, but it is not an alternative to the actual theory of evolution.
These two summaries may be sufficient to illustrate that the scientific and mathematical premises upon which ID is based are incorrect. If evolution worked as Behe and Dembski envision that it does, then, perhaps, ID might be logical. But, evolution doesn't work that way, so the arguments of ID are not valid.
ID "Theory" Does Not Banish the "Uncomfortable Parts" of Evolution
The official tenets of ID appear to be that "irreducibly complex structures" (i.e. structures for which we cannot describe 100% of the details, and--importantly--for which ID proponents cannot imagine evolution working) are the result of intelligent design. Other, less complex things may well be the result of evolution.
This poses an interesting conundrum. The vertebrate eye is one of these presumably irreducibly complex structures. If we posit, as ID proponents do, that the vertebrate eye was designed, then we are forced to conclude that it was designed at or before the time of the earliest fish, some 500 million years ago or so. All subsequent changes are merely microevolution.
If we consider the structures of humans and chimpanzees, virtually all of them are very similar. If any of them (like the eye) is "irreducibly complex," then it must have been designed before the evolutionary divergence of humans and chimps. That is, humans and chimps must share a common ancestor, as described in evolutionary theory. If die-hard creationists were to realize that ID fails to require that humans are created separately from other animals, but instead seems to accept the "monkey-to-me" aspect of evolution, they might be very uninterested in bringing it into the classroom.
last updated: Dec. 22, 2008