Intelligent Design: Science or Pseudo-science
Examine the noise → Examine the categories
UPDATE: It’s been just over 10 years since the Kitzmiller v. Dover case (end of 2015). From Wikipedia, “The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” The piece below is written to shed some light on the complexity of this subject, so as to help readers avoid broad brush simplistic “anti-intellectual religionist” caricatures of people who still argue for Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design: the great Scopes-like controversy of this generation. That baseless belief of a rag tag bunch of Bible-thumping fundamentalists who sadistically try to pull pseudoscientific wool over the eyes of poor, uneducated, unsuspecting citizens and send us back to a pre-scientific stone age where the Earth was at the center of the Universe, the sick were bled out for treatment, and... ugh… it’s just creationism in a cheap tuxedo!
Ok. I’m taking a deep breath from my reenactment of the anti-Intelligent Design rhetoric. While I do, and incase you think that was an unfair representation, here are a couple of real world social media examples that could be multiplied exponentially:
“ID [Intelligent Design] advocates have no shame. Between this clown [Michael Behe] and Ben Stein, it’s no wonder the US is falling way behind in education. These mofos are so like Muslims in that regard. They want everyone back in the Stone Age.”
“These people advocating for intelligent design must live in a bubble our under a rock. REPLY: No. They’ve just found that lying for their religion can be profitable.”
“It [Intelligent Design] makes people stupid.”
The popular political and social battle is quite entertaining in a ridiculous tabloid headline sort of way. That is, if one is able to stand back from either side of the poisoned well. Proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) argue Darwinists are full of ambiguous “just-so” stories and claim they are trapped in a sinking paradigm, unwilling to swallow their pride and give up on the lost cause of neo-Darwinian explanations as the sole answer to biological complexity. Critics of ID cite religious motivations and the mountain of genetic, fossil, and anthropological evidence pointing towards large scale neo-Darwinian evolution, brush off any potential evidential issues as minor anomalies soon to be resolved, and basically do what I did in the first paragraph. For example, the biological anthropology textbook I’m currently reading—a standard university edition—comments:
“Rather than offering RATIONAL explanations for features that might challenge Darwinian theory, advocates of intelligent design offer criticisms that cannot be addressed by further research. The whole BELIEF SYSTEM of intelligent design therefore stands well outside of science—in the realm of FAITH—rather than offering a scientific alternative to evolution by natural selection.”
According to the author’s throw-loaded-terms-at-young-students-without-them-knowing-it section, students should avoid the irrational explanations intelligent design advocates advance because their non-scientific, faith held belief system is valueless to the conversation regarding biological diversity and human evolution.
I don’t believe this is meant to be a fair representation of ID, to be fair. It’s more of a necessary historical nod and philosophical sleight of hand. Perhaps written in literary frustration for having to even waste paper and ink on ID. University of Wisconsin historian of science and critic of ID, Ronald Numbers, cites this type of pejorative cheap shot as “the easiest way to discredit ID” without having to deal with its specific claims.
Intelligent Design… is now almost synonymously attached in the eyes of many with politically conservative believers in God.
Speaking of loaded terms, I present Intelligent Design. This chameleon has been weighed down with religious connotations, and is now almost synonymously attached in the eyes of many with politically conservative believers in God. Oops. Big public relations problem for a proposed “scientific” theory that already has the initial tinge of creationism. Critics have successfully pounced on this misstep and capitalized in the public square, science classrooms, and federal courts.
But enough with word games. Let’s shed the rhetorical noise and charitably define ID on its terms.
Here are some key definitional concepts about ID from the New World Encyclopedia and Discovery Institute website:
Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection” [1] Intelligent design cannot be inferred from complexity alone, since complex patterns often happen by chance. ID focuses on just those sorts of complex patterns that in human experience are produced by a mind that conceives and executes a plan.
Differences from creationism: Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence.
ID does not specify the identity or nature of the designer… ID may be considered to consist only of the minimal assertion that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent agent.
Once you get behind the great Oz’s curtain, ID is nothing more than the minimal claim that certain features of the world, and the data we currently have on it, are best explained by design and not chance. It affirms random mutation and natural selection and has nothing to say of large scale evolution from a single common ancestor. In fact, some of its most well known proponents hold to universal common ancestry — something kept from most young earth fundamentalists in the pews.
The religious connotations have also created the popular notion that belief in God and ID advocacy are synonymous. “How could you believe in intelligent design (i.e., God) and not believe in ID?” people ask. Ironically, one of the most outspoken critics of ID is Brown University cell biologist, Ken Miller; a Christian. Francis Collins, famed leader of the Human Genome Project and director of the National Institutes of Health, is another Christian physician-geneticist who is a critic of ID. It’s simply not the case belief in God and ID advocacy go hand in hand. Here’s why.
ID’s claim is not about the Judeo-Christian God or even an uncaused cause of the universe. It’s only claiming “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”
For example, something as small as bacterial flagella — the rotary-motor-like propulsion system of a bacterium (notice: only the flagellum of these particular cells, not the rest of their structure or system they function within) — has been argued by ID theorists to be an example of a designer’s intercession, because if any part of this miniature biological motor was removed, the flagellum wouldn’t function. Therefore, goes the argument, it couldn’t have gradually become more complex in typical Darwinian terms; it was all or nothing for the little motor.
ID is no grand philosophical claim about ultimate reality, just like neo-Darwinist claims aren’t.
This severely simplified version of an argument given by ID advocates is a mere scientific objection to standard neo-Darwinian explanations. Forget the truth or falsity of such an objection. That’s not the point. Point being: ID is no grand philosophical claim about ultimate reality, just like neo-Darwinian claims aren’t. One can take ID claims or Darwinian claims and try to take another philosophical step, no doubt. Yet, to find those types of claims you’d have to venture into the big isms (i.e., materialism, idealism, theism, etc).
All that to say, ID isn’t a secret Bible thumper’s way of inserting a fallacious God of the gaps scientific argument, or even a neo-Darwinist replacement theory, though many in the religious community use it that way. It is more analogous to crime scene investigators putting the empirical evidence of a crime scene together, and from the collected data, inferring the best explanation of whether the weapon that killed the victim needed an intelligence to fire it, or the weapon was able to fire by some other Darwinian-like means—maybe a strong wind affected the projectile’s trajectory, maybe a mechanical piece of the weapon malfunctioned which then enabled it to self-fire randomly.
So, is ID science or not?
To answer that question, we must figure out what science is. Easy right? And so we run smack into the great and mighty demarcation problem—an unsolved problem in the philosophy of science exploring what actually makes something science as opposed to non-science. There have been numerous proposed definitions and criteria, but all of them suffer in some way or form.
Sean Carroll, a philosophically literate theoretical cosmologist and senior research associate of the Department of Physics at Caltech, has attempted classify science into three statements pertaining to what scientists do in no certain order:
- Think of every possible way the world can be, and call each possibility a “hypothesis”.
- Observe how the world actually is, and call those observations “data” or “evidence”.
- Where possible, choose the hypothesis that provides the best fit for the “data” or “evidence”.
So basically, according to Carroll—one the world’s leading scientists who is not an advocate of ID and has no religious bone to pick — following the scientific method is adequate grounds to call something science. That’s it. Remember, Carroll isn’t saying anything that follows the scientific method is “good science” or “correct science”; it’s just science. Fears echo that Carroll’s criteria isn’t restrictive enough and want to add extra criteria, like methodological naturalism, in spite of the philosophical inconsistencies that invariably emerge.
The demarcation problem has and continues to beat many a philosopher and scientist into submission. It’s not something the faint of heart typically pursue, and unfortunately, not something the philosophically illiterate voices—often the loudest voices — in the scientific community and their rabid internet fan-bases seem to care about. A tired vestige of early 20th century logical positivism.
With all of the what-is-ID + what-is-science discussion in mind, here are some reasons to think ID is science.
1. Intelligent Design uses the scientific method to infer design.
The scientific method typically starts with an observation of how the world is, or at least seems to be. A key observation design theorists study is complex and specified information (CSI).
Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski has developed a method where complex and specified data can be distinguished from the complex and unspecified sort. For those with a math phobia, he explains the difference through an interesting analogy:
“Suppose an archer stands 50 meters from a large blank wall with bow and arrow in hand. The wall, let us say, is sufficiently large that the archer cannot help but hit it. Consider now two alternative scenarios. In the first scenario the archer simply shoots at the wall. In the second scenario the archer first paints a target on the wall, and then shoots at the wall, squarely hitting the target’s bull’s-eye. Let us suppose that in both scenarios where the arrow lands is identical. In both scenarios the arrow might have landed anywhere on the wall. What’s more, any place where it might land is highly improbable. It follows that in both scenarios highly complex information is actualized. … The obvious difference between the two scenarios is of course that in the first the information follows no pattern whereas in the second it does. …[but] Patterned information, though a step in the right direction, still doesn’t quite get us specified information … patterns can be concocted after the fact so that instead of helping elucidate information, the patterns are merely read off already actualized information.
To see this, consider a third scenario in which an archer shoots at a wall. As before, we suppose the archer stands 50 meters from a large blank wall with bow and arrow in hand, the wall being so large that the archer cannot help but hit it. And as in the first scenario, the archer shoots at the wall while it is still blank. But this time suppose that after having shot the arrow, and finding the arrow stuck in the wall, the archer paints a target around the arrow so that the arrow sticks squarely in the bull’s-eye. Let us suppose further that the precise place where the arrow lands in this scenario is identical with where it landed in the first two scenarios. Since any place where the arrow might land is highly improbable, in this as in the other scenarios highly complex information has been actualized. What’s more, since the information corresponds to a pattern, we can even say that in this third scenario highly complex patterned information has been actualized. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that highly complex specified information has been actualized. Of the three scenarios, only the information in the second scenario is specified. In that scenario, by first painting the target and then shooting the arrow, the pattern is given independently of the information. … Only when the pattern is given independently of the arrow’s flight does a hypothesis other than chance come into play.”
One generalized formulation (there are others), using the scientific method and the observable and quantifiable reality of CSI, can go like this:
- Observation(s) — In our experience, intelligence is the only known cause of high CSI effects. An event is complex if it is highly unlikely and specified if it matches an independent pattern.
- Hypothesis — If a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.
- Experiment — Test a given natural object to determine whether it contains high CSI. One way is to reverse engineer biological structures, for example, through genetic knockout experiments.
- Conclusion — When experiments reveal high CSI, researchers may conclude the structure was designed.
Like any piece of scientific information, ID conclusions are not in the business of “proving” anything and are held tentatively as future experiments may shed additional light.
2. Intelligent Design conforms to methodological naturalism to infer design.
Methodological naturalism is advanced as a way of philosophically restricting science so it only can produce natural explanations. Suppose a bright neon sign just randomly appeared in the sky that read, “Hello humanity, this message was written by God.” Studying this event, finding no natural mechanism or agency involved, and reasonably concluding God actually caused that event would not be allowed by methodological naturalism.
Assuming — remember the demarcation problem — methodological naturalism really is one of the requirements for something to be called “science”, ID still conforms nicely.
…intelligent agency is an entirely appropriate domain of study and inference within the realm of science.
ID doesn’t need to infer supernatural causes. As atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse has quipped regarding ID’s relation to science, “[An] intelligent designer, or intelligent intervener, could be a natural being. So, I’m quite prepared to take it as potential science, or a potentially scientific claim, that we are in fact an experiment being run by a grad student on Andromeda to see what happens.” The observation in the example above is that high levels of CSI are caused by intelligent agents. You and I are intelligent agents which produce high levels of CSI often, and are not supernatural entities able to produce supernatural causes. Intelligent agents and the causes they produce are (e.g., anthropology, archeology, cryptology, forensics) and should be studied by scientists. Therefore, intelligent agency is already deemed an entirely appropriate domain of study and inference within the realm of science.
3. Intelligent Design conforms to uniformitarianism to infer design.
Another methodological requirement advanced in the philosophy of science, and likely necessary for historical sciences— including evolutionary science — is uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the assumption that laws and processes we observe now have always been happening in the past and everywhere in the universe. In other words, the present is the key to the past.
ID relies on uniformitarianism just like neo-Darwinian theory does. Neo-Darwinists study mutation, genetic recombination, and natural selection in the present, recognizing its casual relations and information generating potentials, and then appeal to those sorts of causes to explain particular phenomena discovered in the historical record. Similarly, ID theorists study intelligence in the present, recognizing its causal relations and information generating potentials, and then appeal to that sort of cause to explain particular phenomena discovered in the historical record.
Though mutation, genetic recombination, and natural selection does a good job of explaining some historical phenomena, argue ID theorists, it does not provide the best uniformitarian explanation for ALL historical phenomena and so needs to be expanded or replaced in those instances.
4. The Argument from Peer Review isn’t strong enough.
Peer review is a “reliability check” on scientific literature that purports to protect the integrity of scientific literature. Critics of ID claim that, since papers on intelligent design are not found in peer review journals, ID isn’t science.
The peer review critique is pretty weak on two fronts: theory and facts.
On theory, scientists like the late Stephen Jay Gould are well aware that “the quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises, and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity with other scientists.” Gould makes a common sense logical point that harkens back to the demarcation problem. All new scientific ideas begin unpublished and not accepted, or at least only accepted by a minority of other scientists, especially if they contradict the already accepted paradigm. If a requirement of science was publication in a scientific peer review journal, a paper’s conclusions could go from non-science to science without a single change in content. Think about the arbitrariness of such a demarcating criteria. Does a scientifically deduced conclusion magically become science when it gets published in a peer reviewed journal? At what point in that process does it qualify? Submission? When two peers review and approve? When one journal rejects and another accepts? Before the journal technically publishes and the public can read it, or after?
…it can historically shown that peer review has rejected papers that turned out not just to be scientifically true, but Nobel quality.
Since a “gradual accumulation of incremental knowledge” accounts for much of scientific progress, peer review is an eminently helpful enterprise. And it is often a reliable way to discriminate good science from bad science. Yet, the United States Supreme Court also agrees that peer review “does not necessarily correlate with reliability, and in some instances well grounded but innovative theories will not have been published.” If fact, it can be historically shown that peer review has rejected papers that turned out not just to be scientifically true, but Nobel quality. Tulane physicist Frank Tipler gives numerous examples of this:
“Today it is known that the Hawaiian Islands were formed sequentially as the Pacific plate moved over a hot spot deep inside the Earth. The theory was first developed in the paper by an eminent Princeton geophysicist, Tuzo Wilson: ‘I … sent [my paper] to the Journal of Geophysical Research. They turned it down…. They said my paper had no mathematics in it, no new data, and that it didn’t agree with the current views. Therefore, it must be no good.’”
Not to mention Charles Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species, was not published in a peer review journal. It was a book that spoke to scientific questions and attempted to give scientific answers. No one questions the “science-ness” of his contribution because it didn’t go through formal peer review.
On facts, pro-ID scientific papers have been published in peer reviewed journals. Journal of Molecular Biology, Protein Science, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modeling, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Physics of Life Reviews, Cell Biology International, BIO-Complexity, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, and Annual Review of Genetics have published pro-ID scientific papers in their peer reviewed journals. Even the highly respected Cambridge University Press has published a peer reviewed pro-ID book. Granted, the number of peer review published pro-ID writing and their breadth of topics addressed is tiny when compared to well entrenched and robustly developed scientific paradigms, but that only matters in any compelling sense to those who rely on logically fallacious argumentation.
I see the argument from peer review as the most plausible reason to think ID isn’t science, but upon close scrutiny, it’s not successful.
Reading this must make you think I’m a staunch ID proponent and apologist. Actually, I’m skeptical of ID’s scientific claims, and do agree with the Court’s ruling that it should not be taught in public schools as a viable scientific alternative… yet. But I also think textbooks should stop poisoning the well and thus stifling the very wonder and curiosity open-minded, scientific exploration is supposed to stand for.
I’ve personally gone through an ideological roller coaster with ID. Near the beginning of my education process, I read pro-ID books, watched pro-ID lectures, and thought the case against grand evolutionary theory was ironclad. Then, I began studying and understanding evolutionary theory. I read anti-ID books, watched anti-ID lectures, and thought the case that ID wasn’t even science was ironclad. Now, a little ways into my philosophical education, I see a much more ambiguous picture.
To be skeptical of ID’s claims is one thing; to say ID isn’t science is quite another.
To be skeptical of ID’s claims is one thing; to say ID isn’t science is quite another. The latter takes a philosophical leap its not justified to take. New York University’s, Thomas Nagel — a prominent atheistic philosopher who even assumes the “designer” is a supernatural entity — puts it like this:
“The denier that ID is science faces the following dilemma. Either he admits that the intervention of such a designer is possible, or he does not. If he does not, he must explain why that belief is more scientific than the belief that a designer is possible. If on the other hand he believes that a designer is possible, then he can argue that the evidence is overwhelmingly against the actions of such a designer, but he cannot say that someone who offers evidence on the other side is doing something of a fundamentally different kind. All he can say about that person is that he is scientifically mistaken.”
You may be asking, “What is the takeaway from all of this?”
In short, resting a rejection of ID on inflamed anti-ID rhetoric, fears of pseudo-scientific creationism in a cheap tuxedo, or the movement’s poor public relations campaign and legal missteps is uncharitable, philosophically unjustified, and irrelevant.
If the evidence for ID’s particular claims leave you wanting, be “anti-ID”. Not because you haphazardly disregard it as non-science, but because you think it’s mistaken science.
