Thoughts on origins: Part II - Intelligent Design

Many readers will be aware of the Intelligent Design controversy, though in most important ways the matter is now historical. Intelligent Design remains an important aspect of some theistic apologetic arguments, but the main aspect of the controversy - whether Intelligent Design could be taught in science classes in public schools, as a competitor to the theory of evolution - was settled about four years ago, when, in the Kitzmiller decision, the teaching of intelligent design theory was held to be religious instruction and therefore impermissible.

Other people have spilled much ink and many characters on the merits of that decision, and it's not one I can delve into; however, I'll note in passing that teaching intelligent design does not become religious instruction simply because all or most design proponents are religious, or even because they are motivated primarily by religious concerns.

What I'd rather focus on in this post is the merits of intelligent design as a scientific theory.

It helps, I think, to set forth what intelligent design is. My understanding of it is thus: it is a theory that asserts that certain features of the Universe in general, and of biological life in particular, are best explained by assuming the involvement of an intelligent designer.

The first question to ask, then, is: Is this a scientific theory?

I think not.

Here's why: It offers no pattern, it makes no predictions, and therefore it's not amenable to scientific testing.

In fact, there is not a single experiment that can reliably determine whether a given thing is designed or not. Nor can I think of any way to establish such a metric. Our sole reference point for design is man-made artifacts, and we clearly can't just extrapolate from them to biological life without a large number of assumptions.

But the more important question is this: Is the theory of intelligent design correct, even though it's unscientific?

This is a much harder question to answer.

First, it can only be answered with reference to a particular phenomenon.

A lot of intelligent design theory is deployed against abiogenesis, rather than evolution per se. (As an aside, one consequence of that is that the two may not necessarily be as antagonistic as many suggest.) The cell is undoubtedly highly complex, and my own opinion is that the chances of a functional cell coming into existence on its own are small indeed, even by accretion of parts. More on this later, though.

The other question at issue is whether intelligent design best explains the progression of events from the first proto-cell to the emergence of human life. There, I think the evidence is flimsier. The design proponent must argue that the barriers between certain kinds of life (say, between fish and amphibians) are so great that it is very difficult to find a path between them in which all intermediate forms would be viable.

Finally, intelligent design as a theory has two big problems in the marketplace of ideas. The first is that it's not the established theory - it must fight an uphill battle, and arrayed against it are many of the most respected names in the academy and almost all practicing scientists. The second is that it has to show why a purposeful entity is needed to explain something, which is very hard to do given the mess this world is in.

Next up, I'll be an equal opportunity offender, and turn to the theory of evolution.