In a December 21, 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick
wrote:
"It is not enough to say that design is a more likely
scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things.
Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate
organism with trillions of microscopic interactive compo-
nents can be an accident...you have essentially 'lost your
mind'."
Before Darwin, nearly everyone, in every corner of the world,
believed in some type of "Intelligent Design" (the majority still
do), for good reasons. Since the publication of Origin of Species,
science has discovered that living things are far more complex and
clever than Darwin could have ever imagined, and Darwin's expla-
nation for this complexity has become less and less plausible, so
the reasons for believing in Intelligent Design have only increased
in the last 150 years. Even atheist Richard Dawkins wrote that
"biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have
been designed." So how did it happen that a majority of our in-
tellectuals "lost their minds"?
I think I can explain. When one becomes a scientist, one learns
that science can now explain so many previously inexplicable phe-
nomena that one comes to believe that nothing can escape the
explanatory power of our science. When one becomes a biologist,
or a paleontologist, one discovers many things about the origin
of species, such as the long periods involved and the similarities
between species, that give the impression of natural causes. In Ori-
gin of Species, Darwin himself made frequent use of the argument,
"this doesn't look like the way God would have created things"
(though it does look a lot like the way we create things, through
testing and improvements). When one studies history, one may
become overwhelmed by the misery and confusion of the human
condition, and wonder, why is it so hard to see evidence of the hand
of God in human history?
But notably absent from any list of reasons why intellectuals
reject Intelligent Design (ID) is any direct scientific evidence that
natural selection of random mutations or any other unintelligent
process can actually do intelligent things, like design plants or
animals. However strong may be the philosophical, psychological
and religious reasons why many of our greatest minds reject it,
the argument for Intelligent Design is still crystal clear to the
unindoctrinated. Once you allow yourself to seriously consider
the possibility that the human body and the human brain could
be entirely the products of unintelligent forces, you have lost your
mind.
Nevertheless, Le Conte's axiom that everything must have a
natural explanation has become the foundation of all of modern
thought - and indeed it has proven to be a very useful and pro-
ductive axiom. Even many people who believe in God accept Le
Conte's axiom. "Theistic evolutionists" argue that God created
the universe and its laws, and that these laws are sufficient to
explain everything we see today. I have no philosophical or theo-
logical problem with such a view: the laws God created are very
cleverly designed, and they alone probably are sufficient to explain
all of chemistry, geology, astronomy and atmospheric science, for
example, so it is not surprising that many would insist that it
must be possible to explain all of biology using these laws as well.
The problem I have with this view is logical: the known laws of
physics are indeed very cleverly designed, but they are obviously
not clever enough to explain all of biology. The atheistic evolu-
tionist has decided a priori that there can be no design in Nature;
the theistic evolutionist has decided a priori that there can be
design only in the original laws of Nature. ID proponents argue
that we should look at the evidence before deciding where there is
design.
Le Conte's axiom is useful, and philosophically attractive to
many. But to abandon belief in an intelligent designer simply
because of such an axiom is circular reasoning of the worst sort,
yet this is exactly the sort of reasoning on which the whole of
modern philosophy is based.
I have been working on this book for nearly 30 years now (about
3 pages per year!), and much of the material in the first few chap-
ters was written in the late 70s or early 80s; some of this material
appeared in a "Postscript" of a 1985 Springer Verlag book and in
a couple of self-published booklets, because in
those days it was impossible to publish anything critical of evolu-
tion in the scientific journals. Then, the only other people ques-
tioning Darwin's explanation for the development of life were the
so-called "creationists", who were right on the main issue, but who
had a much broader agenda: they were trying to make the case for
a literal interpretation of Genesis, and debates over evolution of-
ten became debates over the historicity of the Biblical account
of Noah and the flood. The modern resurgence of "Intelligent
Design", which really began with the 1996 publication of Michael
Behe's landmark work, Darwin's Black Box [Behe 1996] and which
is led by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture
(www.discovery.org/csc), is quite different from yesterday's cre-
ationist movement. ID supporters claim, quite correctly, that one
can deduce the existence of an intelligent designer from the evi-
dence all around us, particularly in biology, but do not attempt
to go any further than that. In fact, many ID proponents will not
even identify this designer with God, because, they say, the scien-
tific evidence does not tell us anything about the designer. For all
we know, for example, he could have been a "more evolved" visitor
from another planet, as Richard Dawkins speculated in the movie
Expelled. This is true; however, the fine tuning of the laws of Na-
ture obviously cannot be credited to Dawkin's alien, and it seems
reasonable to assume it was the same designer, and the designer
of the laws of Nature is "God" by definition - by my definition, at
least. Naturally, the scientific evidence does not tell us if this is
the God of the Bible, or of the Koran, or of the Aztecs.
Many critics of ID today still try to label ID as "creationism",
because it was so much easier to discredit the old "creationists" -
all you had to do was produce evidence for an old Earth, or for
common descent; then you didn't have to deal with their main
point. Others avoid the real issue by simply dismissing ID as "not
science". Even some scientists who do acknowledge design in bi-
ology still argue that ID is true, but not science! I have noticed
that in debates, when ID proponents cite examples of irreducible
complexity, such as the carnivorous plants, or spectacular examples
from microbiology such as the bacterial flagellum or
other features described in Darwin's Black Box [Behe 1996], Dar-
winists rarely even speculate on how these features might have
evolved through small improvements; they simply dismiss ID as
"not science".
There is a question I would like to see posed, in such a debate, to
one of these critics who dismiss ID as "not science": "suppose we
did discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex,
to your satisfaction - such a spectacular example of irreducible
complexity that you and every reasonable person would agree that
it could not have evolved through small improvements - would the
design hypothesis then be justified?" Of course, there are thou-
sands of features in every living cell which any unbiased observer
would recognize as irreducibly complex, but suppose we found one
that was still more spectacular by far. If he answers, yes, we just
haven't found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated
philosophical objections that "ID is not science" immediately fall,
because he has admitted that design is a legitimate, even if cur-
rently unjustified, scientific hypothesis. If the answer is, no, then
everyone will finally understand that, as W.E.Loennig has stated,
today's evolutionary theory is completely unfalsifiable - there is
no amount of evidence that will change these people's minds.
(Darwin himself, in Origin of Species, acknowledged that the
existence of irreducibly complex features would falsify Darwinism:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." But,
clearly, the gradual development of useful features through useless
stages would be as hard to explain without intelligence as their sudden
appearance, so not only Darwinism, but any theory without
design, would "absolutely break down.")
Perhaps nothing illustrates just how "unfalsifiable" today's evo-
lutionary theory really is than the reaction (or rather, lack of reac-
tion) to the "front-loading" being discovered by modern science in
the genes of primitive animals. Consider, for example, this report
from a recent article in Science [Pennisi 2008]:
"Trichoplax adhaerens barely qualifies as an animal. About
1 mm long and covered with cilia, this flat marine or-
ganism lacks a stomach, muscles, nerves, and gonads,
even a head...yet this animal's genome looks surpris-
ingly like ours, says Daniel Rokhsar, an evolutionary
biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Its
98 million DNA base pairs include many of the genes re-
sponsible for guiding the development of other animals'
complex shapes and organs, he and his colleagues re-
port in the 21 August issue of Nature... Adds Casey
Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University, 'It
is now completely clear that genomic complexity was
present very early on' in animal evolution... 'Many genes
viewed as having particular functions in bilaterians or
mammals turn out to have a much deeper evolutionary
history than expected, raising questions about why they
evolved', says Douglas Erwin, an evolutionary biologist
at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
in Washington."
Front-loading should be completely fatal to Darwinism: there
is no possible selective advantage for the possession of genes for
traits which would not evolve until millions of years later! Yet for
today's evolutionary biologists, such discoveries only "raise ques-
tions about why they evolved." They seem completely incapable
of drawing the obvious conclusion, that without design it is im-
possible to explain the appearance of genes long before the traits
they control appear.
Even if we concede that ID is not science, and thus should not
be taught in the science classroom, that does not justify teaching
bad science as established fact. How about simply admitting we
know hardly anything about the causes of "evolution"? In any
case, you can always define science to exclude ID, but the real
question is not whether it is "science", but whether it is true - is
there, or is there not, clear evidence for design in Nature?
It is commonly believed that Darwinism is based on good sci-
ence, and that those who oppose it simply do not like its philosoph-
ical and religious implications. The truth is exactly the opposite:
Darwinism is based on very bad science, and those who support
it do so primarily because they do not like what they see as the
alternative. If you really examine the reasons individual scientists
support Darwinism, I believe you will find in nearly every case
that they are philosophical (this just looks like natural causes;
we have found natural explanations for so many other previously
inexplicable phenomena) or even theological (problems with the
Bible, disillusion with organized religion, the problem of pain).
(Darwin wrote, "I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems
to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my
father, brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly
punished." Darwin is apparently referring to passages like John 3:18,
"He who does not believe is condemned," which are sometimes
interpreted to mean that all non-Christians are "condemned." If I
thought God were that unfair, I would share Darwin's view of the
Christian God, but that John did not mean this as a condemnation of
all non-Christians is clear from the following verse: "...and this is
the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men preferred
the darkness, because their deeds were evil.") The fact that Darwin's
explanation is still the scientific orthodoxy,
and that his opponents are still labeled kooks, is due not to the
reasonableness of Darwinism, but to the unpopularity of what its
supporters see as the only alternative. Anyone who believes that
opponents of ID are primarily motivated by scientific concerns
about scientific issues should look at the opinions of critics who
disagreed with my 2005 American Spectator article, expressed
in e-mails and in blogs throughout the country. If there were any
that weren't full of anger and personal insults, I didn't find them.
It is clear from my experience that we are never going to change
these people's minds with logic, because the more evidence we find,
and the better our logic, the angrier they become.
Although there is no scientific support for the idea that natural
selection of random mutations, or any other known natural agent,
can explain the complexity of life, some of the philosophical and
theological reasons scientists have for rejecting the alternative (ID)
are pretty powerful, and I think I understand most of them well.
I also wonder why God would create life and species in the way
he did, why we can only see him indirectly, through the things
he has made. I also have problems with the Bible, I also have
been disillusioned with organized religion, and I have especially
struggled with the problem of pain: why is there so much misery
in the world God created?