Central Claim of Intelligent Design
“As a theory of biological origins and development, intelligent design’s central
claim is that only intelligent causes adequately explain the complex, information-rich
structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable. To say intelligent
causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, based on
observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from
undirected natural causes.
Simply put, intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence.
Stated this way, intelligent design seems straightforward and unproblematic. Yet
depending on where the intelligence makes itself evident, one may encounter fierce
resistance to intelligent design. Archeologists attributing intelligent design to arrowheads
or burial mounds is not controversial. But biologists attributing intelligent design to
biological structures raises tremendous anxiety, not only in the scientific community but
in the broader culture as well. Why is that?
C.S. Lewis, in his book Miracles, correctly placed the blame on naturalism.
According to Lewis, naturalism is a toxin that pervades the air we breathe and an
infection that has worked its way into our bones. Naturalism is the view that the physical
world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism
doesn’t come right out and say that there’s nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that
nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature.
Naturalism’s answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to
believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order.
Theism (whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim) holds that God by wisdom created
the world. The origin of the world and its subsequent ordering thus result from the
designing activity of an intelligent agent—God. Naturalism, on the other hand, allows no
place for intelligent agency except at the end of a blind, purposeless material process.
Within naturalism, any intelligence is an evolved intelligence. Moreover, the
evolutionary process by which any such intelligence developed is itself blind and
purposeless. As a consequence, naturalism makes intelligence not a basic creative force
within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In particular, humans (the natural obejcts
best known to exhibit intelligence) are not the crown of creation, not the carefully
designed outcome of a purposeful creator, and certainly not creatures mad ein the image
of a benevolent God. Rather, humans are an accident of natural history.
Naturalism is clearly a temptation for science, and indeed many scientists have
succumed to that temptation. The temptation of naturalism is a neat and tidy world in
which everything is completely understandable in terms of well-defined rules or
mechanisms characterized by natural laws. As a consequence, naturalism holds out the
hope that science will provide a ‘theory of everything.’ Certainly this hope remains
unfulfilled. The scandal of intelligent design is that it goes further, contending that this
hope is unfulfillable. It therefore offends the hubris of naturalism. It says that
intelligence is a fundamental aspect to the world and that any attempt to reduce
intelligence to natural mechanisms cannot succeed. Naturalism wants nature to be an
open book. But intelligences are not open books; they are writers of books, creators of
novel information. They are free agents, and they can violate our fondest expectations.
There is an irony there. The naturalist’s world, in which intelligence is not
fundamental and the world is not designed, is supposedly a rational world because it
proceeds by unbroken natural law: that is, cause precedes effect with inviolable
regularity. On the other hand, the design theorist’s world, in which intelligence is
fundamental and the world is designed, is supposedly not a rational world because
intelligence can do things that are unexpected. To allow an unevolved intelligence a
place in the world is, according to naturalism, to send the world into a tailspin. It is to
exchange unbroken natural law for caprice and thereby to destroy science. Thus, for the
naturalist, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then
evolves intelligence. If it starts out with intelligence and evolves intelligence because of
a prior intelligence, then somehow the world becomes unintelligible.
The absurdity here is palpable. Only by means of our intelligence are science and
our understanding of the world even possible. And yet the naturalist clings to this
argument as a last and dying friend.”
-William A. Dembski in The Design Revolution: Answering Tough Questions
about Intelligent Design.
The Science of Detecting Design
“We distinguish readily between the products of nature and the products of
intelligence. Walking on the beach, we may admire the lovely pattern of ripples running
across the sand, but we know it is merely a product of the wind and the waves. If,
however, we come across a sand castle with walls and turrets and a moat, do we assume
it too was created by the wind and waves? Of course not. The material constituents of
the castle are nothing but sand and mud and water, just like the ripples all around it. But
we intuitively recognize that those starting materials have a different kind of order
imposed upon them. Design theory merely formalizes this ordinary intuition— just as all
of science is largely formulized common sense.
An illustration that design theorists often use is Mount Rushmore. If you were
driving through the mountains in South Dakota, and suddenly came upon the faces of
four famous presients carved into the rock, you would not think for a moment that they
were the product of wind and rain erosion. You would instantly recognize the handiwork
of an artist.
A friend of mind once took a ship up the West Coast to Canada, where he was
greeted by a colorful display of flowers spelling out, ‘Welcome to Victoria.’ It was a
sure guarantee that the seeds were not blown there randomly by the wind.
Critics say the concept of design does not belong in science. They argue that it is
a ‘science-stopper’ that puts an end to scientific investigation. The head of an evolution
advocacy group recently told CNN that design theory is ‘not a very good science,
because it’s basically giving up and saying: We can’t explain this; therefore, God did it.’
But that accusation is based on a misunderstanding. The process of detecting design
is thoroughly empirical.
ƒ Detectives are trained to distinguish murder (design) from death by natural
causes.
ƒ Archeologists have criteria for distinguishing when a stone has the distinctive
chip marks of a primitive tool (design), and when its shape is simply the result of
weathering and erosion.
ƒ Insurance companies have steps for deciding whether a fire was a case of arson
(design) or just an accident.
ƒ Cryptologists have worked out procedures to determine whether a set of symbols
is a secret message (design) or just an accident.
It should be possible to formalize the thinking process used in all these examples,
which is exactly what design theory does. Its central tenet is that the characteristic marks
of design can be empirically detected.
Across all the scientific disciplines, researchers also need to know how to identify
the telltale signs that an experiment has been rigged, that someone has tampered with the
results.”
-Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity.
Naturalism: A Philosophy— Not Science
“The dominant view in our culture today is radically one-dimensional: that this
life is all there is, and nature is all we need to explain everything that exists. This is, at
heart, the philosophy of naturalism.
Naturalism begins with the fundamental assumption that the forces of nature
alone are adequate to explain everything that exists. Whereas the Bible says, ‘In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1), naturalists say that in the
beginning were the particles, along with blind, purposeless natural laws. That nature
created the universe out of nothing, through a quantum fluctuation. That nature formed
our planet, with its unique ability to support life. That nature drew together the chemicals
that formed the first living cell. And naturalism says that nature acted through Darwinian
mechanisms to evolve complex life-forms and finally, human beings, with the marvels of
consciousness and intelligence.
Naturalistic scientists try to give the impression that they are fair-minded and
objective, implying that religious people are subjective and biased in favor of their
personal beliefs. But this is a ruse, for naturalism is as much a philosophy, a worldview,
a personal belief system as any religion is.
Naturalism begins with premises that cannot be tested emprically, such as the
assumption that nature is ‘all that is or ever was or ever will be,’ to use a line from the
late Carl Sagan’s popular science program Cosmos. This is not a scientific statement, for
there is no conceivable way it could be tested. It is a philiosophy.”
- Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey in How Now Shall We Live.
Our View of Origins Shapes Everything
“Our view of origins shapes our understanding of ethics, law, education—and yes,
even sexuality. If life on earth is a product of blind, purposeless natural causes, then our
own lives are cosmic accidents. There’s no source of transcendent moral guidelines, no
unique dignity for human life. On the other hand, if life is the product of foresight and
design, then you and I were meant to be here. In God’s revelation we have a solid basis
for morality, purpose, and dignity.
-Nancy Pearcey (Eds. William A. Dembski and James M. Kushiner) in
Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design.
"Unless all that we take to be knowledge is illusion, we must hold that in thinking
we are not reading rationality into an irrational universe but responding to a rationality
with which the universe has always been saturated."
C. S. Lewis, "De Futilitate," in Christian Reflections
Is the Evolutionary Process Our True Creator?
The New York Times recently published an article titled, “The Real Star Wars:
Between Order and Chaos.” The article discusses a new scientific study which describes
the existence of a certain striking order among the galaxies. Since, as the new study
suggests, “the galaxies were not arranged so haphazardly after all,” what should we
conclude explains their arrangement? Should we expect such scientific evidence of order
and design to lead explorers to consider the possibility of an intelligent cause? Don’t
hold your breath! The article instead exhibits an incredible example of the control that
naturalistic philosophy maintains over popular scientific investigation in matters of
origins.
“In a report published in the January 9 issue of Nature, an international
team of astronomers, led by Jaan Einasto of the Tartu Observatory in Estonia, say
they have found reason to believe that superclusters—giant globs of galaxies—
are arranged in a gargantuan, three-dimensional chessboard, extending throughout
the heavens. The cells of this vast cosmic crystal would be almost 400 million
light years on each side. If true, this would be stunning news. There is little
reason to believe that the big bang, the explosion that began the universe,
scattered its debris with more care than any other blast. A universe so fastidiously
and geometrically arrayed would require, as the authors of the Nature report put
it, “some hitherto unknown process that produces regular structures at large
scales”—in short, new laws of physics.”
New laws of physics? Unbelievable! Why not the possibility of an intelligent
cause? To answer this question, we need to recognize that two types of science are
involved in such conclusions. Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, refers to
modern science as, “consisting of two essentially contradictory definitions. On the one
hand, science is empirical research, following the evidence wherever it leads. On the
other hand, science is applied materialist philosophy, which starts with the assumption
that in the beginning were the particles, and impersonal natural laws, and nothing else.
This kind of science rules out of order any question of design or creation” (quoted from
Christianity Today, January 6, 1997).
As an example, Johnson refers to the work of Lehigh University biochemist
Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box. Johnson says, “When a scientist such as
Behe shows the existence of irreducible complexity at the molecular level and infers
design, the materialists do not challenge his facts. They just dismiss the logical inference
from the facts as philosophically unacceptable.” One would think that the scientific
community (which has long considered itself a haven of objectivity in the sea of cultural
relativism) would detect biased investigation when such philosophy controls the
evidence. In large measure this has not been the case. Encouragingly though, many
highly respected scientists and philosophers are joining what has been called the
“intelligent-design” movement. These leaders have united in their belief that the
evidence indicates that, “Darwinian evolutionary theory has failed to solve the puzzle of
life’s origin and development.” They further agree that, “It is extremely improbable that
the high level of complexity found in most life forms could have resulted from chance
occurrences.”
The need of the hour, as Phillip Johnson indicates, is “a separation of the
philosophy from the real science; both in order to have an honest, unbiased, scientific
enterprise; and to protect the public from getting the false impression that scientific
evidence has shown that the evolutionary process is our true creator.” The ancient text of
Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), fits the
evidence for those who have an open mind to consider it.