Creationism and intelligent design are not science, explains Natalia Pasternak
The authors of Intelligent Design offer no scientific hypothesis for the origin of species, other than the religious explanation that everything was designed by an intelligent creator
By Natalia Pasternak *
The anti-evolution movement, as we know it today, started in the USA. In the early 20th century, evolution began to be taught in American high schools. Soon thereafter, a Christian movement was formed — predominantly Protestant — with great fear that the study of evolution would keep young people from believing in God. In the period from 1919 to 1927, several legal attempts were made to ban the teaching of evolution in American schools, with temporary success.
These prohibitions gained international prominence after a Tennessee professor named John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in a public school, contrary to current state law.
Evolution was once again taught in US public schools in the late 1950s, generating the second wave of anti-evolutionism. In 1968, the US Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional.
Religious at the time, still concerned with the souls of children, then tried to determine that, at least, the Bible should be taught alongside biological science. The problem was that the American Constitution confers secular status on public institutions, such as taxpayer-funded schools.
For some time, the most elegant way out seemed to be, then, to give scientific myth to the creation myth. In 1972, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) was created.
To the frustration of those involved, in 1987, the Supreme Court decided that the “Science of Creation” was just a religious position, and therefore, it should not be taught in schools as a scientific theory. But creationists did not give up easily, and the movement continued to grow.
Protestant Christians continued to preach creation as a science, simply to escape the legislation that prohibited religious teaching in schools run on public money. If creation could be presented as a science, the problem would be solved.
An organization devoted to promoting creationism, Answers in Genesis, opened a Natural History Museum in Kentucky in 2007, at an approximate cost of $ 27 million. There, for a trifle of US $ 70.00, you can visit the collection and also have an exclusive experience in the “replica” of Noah’s Ark.
The book “A Deluge of Evidence” goes for $ 13.00 at the gift shop. The Museum has already received 3.5 million visitors since its inauguration.
Intelligent design has no scientific explanation for the origin of the Universe
It was in this context, of masking the Bible as a science, that the “theory” of Intelligent Design (DI) was created, created to circumvent the legal barriers to the teaching of creationism in schools. The proposal was to open space for teaching “alternative explanations” to evolution, always within science classes.
Intelligent Design never had any interest in doing scientific research. It was — and remains — a political ploy to infiltrate religion in US public schools.
DI does not offer any scientific explanation for the origin of the Universe, living beings, or species. Its whole “scientific” basis consists in trying to refute the Theory of Evolution, pointing out supposed holes or inconsistencies in the modern synthesis, as the combination of current ideas on evolution, developed from the original works of Darwin and Wallace, with the more advanced knowledge about genetics and biochemistry.
Among these attempts, the most recurrent argument used by ID proponents is that of “irreducible complexity”. This argument postulates the existence of biological systems of such complexity that it would be impossible to reduce them to a step-by-step process, supposedly necessary for them to be the product of natural selection.
The greatest defender of irreducible complexity is Michael Behe, who published, in 1997, the book “Darwin’s black box”, where he offers several examples of such systems.
No living organism evolves for a particular purpose
All that Behe was able to demonstrate, however, was a total misunderstanding of how evolution works. According to the author, a complex system, to be a product of Darwinian evolution, would have to be dismountable in several parts, and each part should have had a function that offered the organism a selective advantage, always in the direction indicated by the final structure.
To illustrate this line of thought, Behe uses the example of a mousetrap, and the bacterial flagellum, a complex structure that some bacteria use for locomotion.
Let’s start with the mousetrap. Behe argues that a mousetrap, to function fully, needs all its parts. If we remove one of the parts, it no longer works. And the parts alone are also useless. Thus, the mousetrap is a system of irreducible complexity.
We cannot reduce it to an evolution where each stage, each part of the mousetrap, conferred an advantage on the rat hunter and, therefore, could be a product of natural selection. Also, Behe advocates that innumerable mutations would be necessary for each stage to reach its final destination.
He ignores the fact that evolution is not directed. Unlike something designed for a function, no living organism evolves for a particular purpose. Evolution occurs blindly and at random. Thus, the different parts of a mousetrap could say, have been selected for conferring advantages that have nothing to do with the death of rodents.
The “function” of the parts is not necessarily related to the final function of the mousetrap. The parties may also not have conferred any advantage, but simply not being harmful, they remained there. Keneth Miller illustrated this very well when she used a mousetrap trigger as a tie pin, in a US judgment on ID.
