INTELLIGENT DESIGN: A SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS CRITIQUE

1. INTELLIGENT DESIGN:A SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUSCRITIQUE I. The Intelligent Design Movement II. Evolutionary Biology III. Evolutionary Theism

2. I. The Intelligent Design Movement • 1925. Scopes trial in Tennessee upheld anti-evolution law defended by biblical literalists. • 1987. U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creation science (claims of scientific evidence for a recent special creation) is not acceptable science but a religious belief, violating separation of church and state (First Amendment). • 2005. U.S. District Court: parents in Dover, PA, challenge local school board requirement that students hear a statement about intelligent design along with the teaching of evolution.

3. Nov. 2005. Dover citizens replace school board members sympathetic to Intelligent Design with opponents of ID. Dec. 2005. Federal district judge in Harrisburg rules that ID is not a scientific theory but a religious belief. Several school board members had acknowledged their religious motivations before the hearings had started. The Dover case has been settled but ID remains an issue in Kansas and many other states, either in local school boards or state boards that set educational standards.

7. ID Claims • Proponents of ID differ from both biblical literalism and creation science which were the subjects of previous court rulings. • They make no reference to the Bible and they accept a long history of life on earth. • But they insist that some organic structures are so complex that they could not have evolved by gradual stages. • Systematic coordination of many parts (e.g. of the eye) must be the product of supernatural intervention by an Intelligent Designer.

8. The overwhelming majority of biologists reject these claims. • For example, the human eye could have evolved by gradual steps from simpler visual systems like those in some other species today. • ID does not lead to hypotheses that can be tested experimentally, a key feature of science. • ID does not lead to research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. This cannot be attributed simply to the biases of the dominant scientific elite that controls journals.

9. “IntelligentDesign” • “Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.” Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. 39

11. A mouse trap would not work if one part were missing. • Similarly, “irreducibly complex systems” only work as a unit. • An intelligent designer must have introduced the coordinated information, either latently in very early cells, or later in their subsequent history. • Reply: The idea of a preconceived order neglects the role of mutations and the organism’s continuing response to a changing environment. • Components serving other functions can be combined in new ways to serve new functions ( see Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God).

12. Individual Parts: Biochemical Machine: Function Favored by Natural Selection No function. Therefore, natural selection cannot shape components.

13. Individual Parts: BiochemicalMachine: New Functions Emerge from Combinations of Components Components Originate with different functions.

14. The Biochemical Argument from Design Depends upon a lack of Selectable Function in Machine Components The Darwinian Explanation Depends upon the presence of Selectable Function in Machine Components.

15. ID proponents rightly object that some biologists such as Richard Dawkins defend atheism, naturalism or materialism as if they were scientifically proven claims. These are indeed philosophical interpretations brought to the data rather than experimentally testable hypotheses. We can accept methodological naturalism,whichsays that science is limited to studying natural causes, without accepting philosophical naturalism, which says that nature is all there is and science is the only path to understanding (“scientism”). Explanatory pluralism suggests that there are a variety of types of explanation answering differing types of question in human life.

16. Richard Dawkins: “The universe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” River of Eden, p. 133

17. ID proponents rightly say that evolutionary theory has led to dubious ethical practices. “The survival of the fittest” has been used to justify unrestr- ained capitalism, colonial domination of “inferior races,” and eugenics programs in Nazi Germany (Social Darwinism). Some sociobiologists claim that human behaviors can be explained and justified by their contribution to the survival of our Paleolithic ancestors. However all these claims should be seen, not as part of evolu- tionary theory, but as questionable extrapolations that ignore the differences between biological and cultural evolution.

18. Gaps in the Evolutionary Account Creationists once pointed to gaps in the fossil record, but many of these have been filled in by transitional forms. To be sure, we do not understand the origins of life or of consciousness, much less self-consciousness. But invoking supernatural intervention would cut short further scientific inquiry concerning such questions. In the past, the “God of the gaps” has retreated with the advance of science, so ID is dubious religion as well as dubious science.

19. “Evolution is a theory, not a fact” 1. Evidence for a long history of descent with modification from common ancestors is so overwhelming that it should be considered a fact, even though the past cannot be observed directly. 2. The theory that mutations and natural selection play a central role in evolution is very strongly supported by a wide range of disciplines: paleontology, physiology, genetics, embryology, molecular biology, and immunology (e.g. evolution of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and new forms of avian flu). The power of the theory is its relevance to so many independent fields of inquiry.

20. 3. There are indeed debates among biologists about the role of other factors, such as historical contingencies, social structures, or developmental constraints on possible embryonic forms, but these debates yield hypotheses that can be tested before they are accepted as theories. 4. No theory can be verified with certainty, but a theory can be falsified by an accumulation of data that conflicts with it or (more rarely) it can be modified in a paradigm shift based on alternative presuppositions (e.g. Newtonian mechanics replaced by quantum theory and relativity in very small or very large structures).

21. Support for the ID Movement Local support has come primarily from evangelical Christians whose motivations are clearly religious rather than scientific. Financial support has come mainly from the religious right through the Discovery Institute in Seattle, with which most of the witnesses supporting ID at recent trials and hearings are affiliated. ID is seen as an opening wedge for the inclusion of Christian beliefs in public education.

24. The Social Context of Fundamentalism Secularism, religious pluralism, and alternative lifestyles and gender roles are seen as threats to traditional “family values”. Search for security in a changing world. Absolutism of truth claims and moral values in response to what is seen as all-encompassing relativism. The power of emotion in religious life has been lost in the formality and intellectualism of main-line churches. Compare the growth of fundamentalism in Islam,fueled not only by nationalism and the legacy of colonialism but also by confrontation with modernization and secularization which threaten traditional values.

25. School Board Issues Local control of school boards. “Parents should decide what they want taught to their children.” “Federal courts are out of touch with local sentiments.” Reply: promulgation of particular religious beliefs violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Science teachers must draw from and accept the standards of the wider community of scientists. National Academy of Sciences (1998): “Science is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”

26. Media Coverage The media has presented the two extremes -- people who believe in God but not evolution, and people who believe in evolution but not God -- as if conflict were inevitable and one had to choose between science and religion. They have tended to leave out those who affirm both God and evolution,or who hold that evolution is God’s way of creating. Let us look at evolutionary theory more carefully and then at alternative ways of relating science and religion.

27. II. EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY The Argument from Design before Darwin: If you find a watch on a heath, you know it was the product of intelligent design and not chance. Similarly, the coordination of complex structures in fulfilling useful functions in nature must be the product of intelligence. Example: the many parts of the eye work together to achieve vision. See William Paley, Natural Theology(1802). Darwin:The adaptation of complex structures to useful functions is the result of the gradual natural selection of such useful structures in the past, not the result of any past anticipation of future functions.

33. The Challenge of Evolution: • To Biblical Literalism. Reply: Many theologians since St. Augustine have interpreted scriptural passages metaphor-ically rather than literally. Since the 19th century, historical scholars have said that the Bible expressed enduring theological insights in terms of the prescientific cosmology of the Middle East. Fundamentalism and “creation science” are more recent views, mainly in the U.S. • To Human Uniqueness. Reply: Humans are descendants of nonhuman ancestors and share many characteristics with them. But they have distinctive capacities such as symbolic thought and language and forms of culture.

34. The ChallengeTo Design. Alternative views of design: Design of laws only (Darwin) 2) Design of initial conditions (Hawking) 3) Control of quantum uncertainties (Russell) 4) Evolutionary convergence (Conway Morris) 5) Emergent levels (Kauffman).

35. Charles Darwin: “I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working of what we may call chance. . . . I cannot think that the world as we see it is the result of chance; yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design.” Letters to Asa Gray, 22 May and 26 November, 1860

36. The Big Bang What happened at the beginning? A singularity at t=0, a point of zero size and infinite energy where the laws of physics break down. Similarities to the biblical account: A beginning of time (rather than a beginning in time). Creation from nothing (or from a quantum vacuum)? Initiation of an ordered irreversible sequence. “Fine-tuning” of the physical constants Each of the constants of the early universe must be within a very very narrow range for life and consciousness to be possible (the Anthropic Principle). Is this a new argument from design?

41. some.

43. Evolutionary Convergence Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solutions (2003) • Very different lineages converge on similar solutions • Camera-like eyes evolved independently at least 6 times • Many physiological and behavioral parallels between marsupial and placental mammals • Similarities in brain structure, communication, and social structure in dolphins and chimps • Chance is less significant in the outcome when there are only a limited number of effective solutions • “The constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of some- thing like ourselves a near inevitability.”

49. An Emergent Hierarchy of Levels See Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion, Chap. 4. Epistemological Reductionism: theories and laws at higher levels can be derived from those at lower levels. Ontological Reductionism: lower-level components are more causally effective than higher-level systems. Causality acts from the bottom up. Emergence: novel forms of order at higher levels are unpredictable from theories and laws governing lower-levels. Top-down Causality: systems at higher-levels influence the boundary conditions of systems at lower levels without violating lower-level laws.

50. Trends in Evolutionary History • No Simple Directionality: blind alleys, retrogression, extinctions, many directions.Opportunism: adaptation to the immediate local environment, not to future needs.More like a sprawling bush than a neatly organized tree (Stephen Jay Gould). • Overall Trends: greaterdiversity, responsiveness and complexity (number of significant connections and levels of organization). Increase in capacity to gather, store, and process information (amoeba, invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals, apes, humans, cultures). • Causality: biologists object when formal or final causes are substituted for the search for efficient causes.