Jerry E. Deese
Introduction
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has been the subject of intense debate since it was first put forth in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859. While some criticism has been scientific in nature, the most vocal opposition has come from religious opponents. Many feel Darwinism’s claim that undirected natural causes are responsible for the origin and development of life is in direct opposition to fundamental tenets of the Christian religion, particularly the description of creation in the Biblical book of Genesis. Creationism’s arguments against evolution have been dismissed by the scientific community as simply religion masquerading as science, with no basis in fact whatsoever. As a result, evolutionary theory has gained wide acceptance among scientists, though nearly all of the processes that could have produced the wide diversity of observed life through evolution are unknown.
Developments in microbiology over the past three or four decades have significantly affected the creation versus evolution debate. Living organisms are now known to be made up of cells that are actually complex systems themselves, not just amalgamations of a few chemicals from the primordial soup. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is now known to contain the set of instructions which controls the construction and operation of these systems as well as the organism itself, with each constituent cell having a complete copy of the organism’s DNA. This has opened new ways to analyze the probability of a living organism, its DNA, and the information contained in that DNA, arising naturally through random mutation and natural selection. The complexity of living organisms is now known to be orders of magnitude greater than was previously thought. Based on these recent discoveries, new objections to evolutionary theory, whose bases are scientific in nature, have arisen. These new arguments constitute the intelligent design movement.
In this paper, the major contentions of evolution and intelligent design will be summarized. The most important arguments on both sides of the debate will be described, and some conclusions about the impact of the intelligent design movement will be presented. Finally, some consequences of the debate over evolution and intelligent design for the integration of faith and learning will be discussed.
The Basic Tenets of Evolutionary theory
Evolutionary theory has changed somewhat over the years, and some important nuances are often ambiguous. In fact, one of the most frequently heard responses to criticisms of evolution is that the author is not criticizing evolution at all, but his misconceived notion of evolution. Moran finds that common definitions of evolution given by those outside the evolution community, e.g. the Oxford Concise Science Dictionary, are simply incorrect (2). To avoid this pitfall, the definition preferred by Moran will be employed here. That definition appears in Evolutionary Biology by Douglas Futuyama:
In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution…is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes and dandelions. (qtd. in Moran 1)
Moran then interprets this definition more succinctly to mean: “Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.”
The definitions above actually encompass two processes that can be characterized as evolution. The first, usually termed microevolution, involves slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population. This sort of evolution results in changes in the characteristics of a species due to some change in its environment. There is little controversy over microevolution; nearly everyone agrees that microevolution occurs and has been directly observed.
It is the second type of evolution, usually termed macroevolution, that is controversial. Macroevolutionary theory states that successive alterations led from the earliest protoorganisms to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions. Winstead summarizes this process in six main points. (1) A group of organisms tend to reproduce more offspring than the environment can support. (2) Most populations tend to remain fairly constant in size because of various population regulation mechanisms at work, e.g., density-dependent factors and density-independent factors regulating population size. The population comes into equilibrium with its present environment. (3) Competition takes place because so many individuals are introduced into the environment with limited resources. There is a “struggle for existence.” Such a competitive struggle for existence usually includes being better adapted for obtaining the available resources in comparison to other individuals. It is noteworthy that physical combat is not a very important part of this concept. (4) There exists variation among individuals within any species because genetic changes occasionally occur that modify the DNA structure of chromosomes. (5) Variations caused by gene mutations are usually either harmful or useless. However, over the course of time, beneficial mutations may occur. Individuals that inherit beneficial mutations or beneficial gene recombinations are better adapted to survive. This is where the phrase “the survival of the fittest,” or “the process of natural selection,” comes in. Again note that such a competitive struggle for existence usually includes being better adapted for obtaining the available resources in comparison to other individuals and that physical combat is not a very important part of this concept. (6) In a changing environment, those organisms with favorable genetic variations survive. The surviving organisms then reproduce and transmit their DNA to their offspring. Over a long period of time ENTIRELY NEW SPECIES EVOLVE (emphasis is due to Winstead). Organisms that have successful genetic variations not only live longer but also produce more offspring who also inherit the favorable adaptation (1-2).
According to this theory, macroevolution, coupled with abiogenesis, the origin of the first life forms, establishes a natural pathway for the creation of the diversity of life observed today. Protoorganisms assembled in the primordial mixture and mutated. Survival of the fittest determined which of the mutated organisms prospered, presumably those whose mutations provided some competitive advantage. Slowly over millions of years successive adaptations have culminated in the life forms now observed.
Darwin, of course, had no knowledge of DNA and did not know what mechanism produced the changes upon which natural selection operates. Incorporating gene mutation as the source of the adaptations upon which natural selection operates forms the basis of neo-Darwinism.
The role of random chance needs to be carefully delineated at this point, for it is a concept central to the arguments of evolution and intelligent design. Evolutionists are careful to restrict the role of random chance to the generation of genetic variation by mutation. The process of natural selection they argue is not subject to chance but is instead governed by the laws of nature (Issak 2-3).
Reaction to evolutionary theory as described above has spanned the spectrum from total acceptance to complete rejection. Often those who profess no belief in God adopt evolutionary theory to support their position: Life as we know it arose naturally, a consequence of random chance mutation and natural selection with no need for God, a theory identified as naturalism. Others find that a belief in God can be compatible with evolutionary theory, believing that evolution is a manifestation of God’s creativity, a position identified as theistic evolution. Certainly, the creationists, those who interpret the Bible literally, reject evolutionary theory out of hand as contrary to the biblical description of creation. The most vociferous objections to evolution over the decades have come from those who ascribe to creation theory. These arguments have been dismissed as non-scientific, prompting the more recent opponents of evolution, the intelligent design movement, to cast their arguments in more scientific terms.
The Basic Tenets of Intelligent Design
William Dembski, whose work is the origin of much of the description that follows, says that intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent causes can do things that undirected natural causes cannot (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 1). Certainly this is a true statement; no one would argue that the Space Shuttle, or the Empire State Building, could be generated solely by natural causes. Indeed this has been an argument for the existence of God for centuries. In Romans 1:20, Paul argues that the natural world is evidence of God’s existence: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen; being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (NIV). Dembski cites Minucius Felix, Basil the Great, Thomas Reid, and Charles Hodge as examples of theologians making design arguments from the data of nature over the centuries, all in the vein that the majesty of the natural world is such that it could not have arisen apart from design by an intelligent being, God (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 2).
Modern design arguments begin with William Paley’s watchmaker argument, circa 1802. Paley states that if a watch is found in a field, the watch’s adaptation of means to the end of telling time indicates that it is a product of an intelligent mind, not the result of undirected natural processes (qtd. in Behe 211). Living organisms and their subsystems exhibit similar adaptation of means to ends, suggesting that living organisms are the product of intelligence as well. Note that Paley’s argument need not be based on any theology. The attributes of the watch or organism suggest it is a designed system, and those attributes can be considered in a logical scientific argument apart from any theological implications.
The modern intelligent design movement, which has emerged over the past decade or two, has taken that approach. It begins with the work of Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Michael Denton, Dean Kenyon, and Phillip Johnson. The modern intelligent design movement seeks to challenge Darwinism on scientific and philosophical grounds, with no appeal or reference to the Bible or any other religious text. In fact, the intelligent design movement professes no interest in identifying the designer whose presence it presumably requires and confirms. The more recent advocates of intelligent design, including Michael Behe, Stephen Mayer, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski, instead seek to develop a positive scientific research program, wherein intelligent causes become the key for understanding the diversity and complexity of life (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 2).
According to Dembski, “What has emerged is a new program of scientific research known as Intelligent Design. Within biology, Intelligent Design is a theory of biological origins and development. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology, and that these causes are empirically detectable” (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 2). Dembski contends there are well-defined methods that can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected natural causes, citing areas such as forensic science, cryptography, archeology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Detection of intelligent causation is in fact the discovery of information, so that intelligent design properly formulated is a theory of information. Information becomes a reliable indicator of intelligent causation as well as a proper object for scientific investigation. In Dembski’s formulation, then, intelligent design is a theory for detecting and measuring information, explaining its origin, and tracing its flow, contending that intelligent design is not the study of intelligent causes per se but of information pathways induced by intelligent causes (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 2).
As a result, intelligent design is theologically minimalist, detecting intelligence without speculating about the source of the intelligence. Biochemist Michael Behe’s “irreducible complexity,” physicist David Bohm’s “active information,” mathematician Marcel Schultzenberger’s “functional complexity,” and Dembski’s “complex specified information” are different formulations of the same process: the identification of the effects of intelligent design, the detection of information, apart from identification of the designer, or even the method of imparting that information.
Dembski concludes:
It is the empirical detectability of intelligent causes that renders Intelligent Design a fully scientific theory, and distinguishes it from the design arguments of philosophers, or what has traditionally been called “natural theology.” The world contains events, objects, and structures which exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and which can be adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes. Scientists are now in a position to demonstrate this rigorously. Thus what has been a long-standing philosophical intuition is now being cashed out as a scientific research program. (“The Intelligent Design Movement” 2)
At its most basic level, then, intelligent design aspires to be a scientific embodiment of the long-held, common-sense notion that the complexity and diversity of biological systems cannot be explained by undirected natural causes. As a result of its theologically minimalist stance, intelligent design proposes to say nothing about the designer. Moreover, at its most basic level, intelligent design is not concerned about what process the designer may have employed in creating an object, organism, or structure. At least it is expected that knowledge of the process employed in the development of a designed organism is not required to conclude that the organism exhibits design. Observable characteristics of the organism should be sufficient. Intelligent design then has no philosophical argument with theistic evolution, where a designer, not chance, is the source of genetic variation and the process is directed toward some purpose. It is the detection of intelligent causation, not process, that is at the heart of intelligent design.
The target of intelligent design is, in fact, not evolution per se, but evolution where the source of variation is mutation by chance and whose processes are undirected. It is this basic tenet of scientific naturalism, the idea that undirected causes can account for all reality, which intelligent design seeks to dispel. If intelligent design can be verified, naturalism’s rejection of purpose in nature will be nullified and its influence over modern western civilization broken. For this to be accomplished, a refutation, based on scientific arguments, of evolution through variation by chance mutation is required.
Detecting Design
The challenge for the intelligent design movement is not identification of organisms that exhibit characteristics of design. Consider, for example, a hummingbird. Suppose that humankind were to attempt to design and build a device for retrieving nectar from flowers. Certainly the most brilliant team of human designers would be unable to design a device whose sensors, propulsion system, flight control system, energy management system, structure, and maintainability approach the compact efficiency embodied in the systems of the naturally occurring hummingbird. Nearly all living organisms exhibit systems any human designer would proudly claim as evidence of genius had he or she devised one of them. Biologists in fact constantly caution that while biological systems appear to be designed, in reality they are not.
Instead, the challenge for intelligent design is to develop a set of scientifically rigorous criteria that can verify that systems appearing to be designed are indeed the product of design. The key is to show that a system or object could not have arisen by chance and/or undirected natural processes. Key elements in demonstrating this are the complexity exhibited by living organisms at the system level, identified as irreducible complexity, and at the cellular level, where DNA carries what has been termed complex specified information.
Michael Behe originally described the irreducible complexity concept, as it applies to systems, in his book Darwin’s Black Box. According to Behe, an irreducibly complex system is “a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning” (39). An irreducibly complex system is a problem for Darwinian evolution since it makes no sense for such a system to be the product of numerous, successive, slight modifications:
An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional…. 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. (Behe 39)
Irreducibly complex systems could not be built one step at a time since an organism with an incomplete system would be penalized by natural selection for having system “parts” which contribute nothing to the survivability of the organism but require resources for their construction.
If an irreducibly complex system cannot be developed in gradual steps, what alternatives exist? Behe considers several. One is for the system to form all at once by random chance. The probability of assembly by random chance can be estimated and is so low as to be considered impossible for complex biological systems. Behe also considers Margulis’s theory of advancement by cooperation and symbiosis and Kauffman’s complexity theory, ultimately rejecting both as a possible source of irreducibly complex systems because they require pre-existing, already functioning complex systems on which to operate (188-89).
How then do molecular machines, which form the irreducibly complex systems on which the construction and operation of living cells depend, develop according to the theory of evolution? Behe conducted a literature search, first in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME), then in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and finally in books on biochemical evolution, expecting to find significant research on the evolutionary processes which produce irreducibly complex systems at the molecular level. He found none. According to Behe, “In fact, none of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual step-by-step Darwinian fashion” (176). While evolutionists dispute this statement, certainly one can say that the published work in this area is strikingly sparse given its importance.
Finding no credible model for the development of irreducibly complex biological systems in the literature, Behe concludes that such systems are not formed all at once by chance nor gradually through the proposed Darwinian process, but by an intelligent designer. His criterion for concluding a system has been designed is:
For discrete physical systems—if there is not a gradual route to their production—design is evident when a number of separate interacting components are ordered in such a way as to accomplish a function beyond the individual components. The greater the specificity of the interacting components required, to produce the function, the greater is our confidence in the conclusion of design. (194)
Building on the ideas of Michael Behe, William Dembski has proposed specified complexity as the criterion for identifying the presence of design. This concept relies on the idea that an object or system that exhibits design must be specified: it must have a purpose or task to accomplish. Secondly, it must be complex: it must have a sufficient number of components so that it could not have been assembled by chance. Dembski relates specified complexity to information theory. A set of data is specified and complex if it conveys information through its order and that order has a sufficiently small probability of having been assembled by chance.
Dembski cites as an example Shakespeare’s line: ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL (No Free Lunch 179-84). This line contains 28 characters each chosen from a set of 27 possibilities, the 26 capital letters of the English alphabet plus the blank space. It is specified since it conveys a particular message to anyone who reads English. It may also be complex. One can calculate the probability that this particular arrangement of letters could have arisen by random chance. If there are 27 choices for each of 28 locations, the probability of any particular set of 28 characters being chosen at random is (1/27)28 = 8.4 x 10-41, a number most would consider small.
Is the number small enough to infer complexity? The answer is not absolute since one could go to a computer, type out 28 random characters and produce a sequence of characters whose probability of appearing by chance is 8.4 x 10-41. To be reasonably certain that a sequence was not produced by chance, one needs to establish a minimum probability below which chance occurrence is unlikely. This probability would be the upper limit for specified complexity. The maximum probability allowed for specified complexity is subjective and is normally determined according to some rational argument based on the system or object of interest.
Dembski defines a universal probability upper bound of 10-150, based on an estimate of the total number of processes that could have occurred in the universe since its beginning. Estimating the total number of particles in the universe at 1080, the number of physical state transitions a particle can make at 1045 per second (the inverse of the Planck time, the smallest physically meaningful unit of time) and the age of the universe at 1025 seconds, the total number of processes involving at least one elementary particle is at most 10150 (No Free Lunch 22). Thus, anything with a probability of less than 10-150 is unlikely to have occurred by chance, though the possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out. This probably corresponds to choosing a random sequence of 105 characters from the 27 possibilities discussed above.
Since all the information required to construct and operate a living organism is carried in its DNA, a sequential arrangement of four different nucleotides, a specified complexity probability calculation like the one above can be applied to biological systems. DNA can be thought of as a message formed from a four-letter alphabet. The DNA of a particular organism has a specific task to accomplish, the construction and operation of a unique living organism, so DNA is specified. It is formed by sequentially ordering a large number of molecules each of which is one of four nucleotides, so DNA is complex. Bacteria have several million nucleotides, fungi have several tens of millions, humans have about three billion, and some flowering plants have several hundred billion. The ordering for any one of these is specific to that organism. The probability of a random assembly of a specific sequence of one million nucleotides, each being one of four possibilities, is 10-600,000-far below the universal limit of 10-150.
Certainly no one makes the claim that organisms as complex as a bacterium could be assembled by random chance all at once. Rather, the neo-Darwinist evolutionary claim is that complex life forms evolved from simpler life forms through a series of variations caused by gene mutations, subject to natural selection. In order for the mutation/natural selection mechanism to apply, there must be some pre-existent life form, or at least a pre-existent self-replicating molecule, on which it can operate. From the complex specified information point of view, then, the problem has two parts. The first is the origin of a self-replicating molecule, abiogenesis. The second is the process of developing more complex organisms from simpler organisms, in effect generating complex specified information, as the DNA of complex organisms is longer and contains more information than the DNA of simpler life forms. Dembski argues that both processes involve the generation of complex specified information and thus must be the result of design.
Dembski goes on to analyze specified complexity in terms of information theory, applying the Law of Conservation of Information of Medawar and the No Free Lunch Theorems of David Wolpert and William Macready. The argument is somewhat technical and lengthy, so only the conclusion will be stated here: Natural causes are incapable of generating complex specified information and a gradual, incremental approach to generating complex specified information will never work (No Free Lunch 206-07).
Intelligent Design’s Challenge to Neo-Darwinism
The main challenges that intelligent design presents to the currently accepted evolutionary theory of the development of modern life forms can now be summarized. Current knowledge of the complexity of the cells of living organisms indicates these cells actually consist of complex systems whose construction, operation, and control are directed by the DNA they contain. The development of irreducibly complex systems, those made of multiple parts, all critical to the functioning of the system, cannot be accounted for under the mutation/natural selection scenario of gradual, incremental development. Furthermore, the information contained in the DNA of a living organism is complex and specified and cannot be generated under a natural, gradual, incremental approach. Finally, there is no work in the literature describing a detailed neo-Darwinism account of how irreducibly complex systems could have come about.
The Reaction to Intelligent Design
Proponents of evolution have been under sustained attack since its inception over 130 years ago. As a result, a “circle the wagons” mentality has developed among some evolutionists. Any challenge to the theory is to be discredited and refuted completely and those who dare to criticize the theory are to be accorded no respect whatsoever, regardless of their credentials. Consider the remarks of Richard Wein in “Not a Free Lunch But a Box of Chocolates,” his critique of William Dembski’ s No Free Lunch, the most recent and most extensive exposition of intelligent design:
Some readers may dislike the frankly contemptuous tone that I have adopted toward Dembski’s work. Critics of Intelligent Design pseudoscience are faced with a dilemma. If they discuss it in polite, academic terms, the Intelligent Design propagandists use this as evidence that their arguments are receiving serious attention from scholars, suggesting this implies there must be some merit in their arguments. If critics simply ignore Intelligent Design arguments, the propagandists imply this is because critics cannot answer them. My solution to this dilemma is to thoroughly refute the arguments, while making it clear that I do so without according those arguments any respect whatsoever. (4)
Notice the use of inflammatory words like pseudoscience and propagandists. This type of attitude is all too prevalent and actually discredits the pro-evolution argument, making it seem to be based more on fanaticism than on sound science. This attitude also affords the proponents of intelligent design an easy answer when questioned about the lack of peer-reviewed literature on intelligent design. Predisposition of those in the established scientific community towards evolution effectively forces evolution critics to present their work in alternative ways. As one might expect, the reaction to intelligent design in the established scientific community has been for the most part critical, if not hostile.
After years of defending evolution, its proponents have actually developed categories for different types of attacks. This is a convenient strategy. Once a particular criticism has been categorized, the response to that type of criticism, refined over a number of years, can be immediately invoked against the latest charges. Such a strategy has been applied in several different instances to intelligent design.
The first and most often used response to a criticism of evolution is to associate it with creationism and characterize the argument as “religion masquerading as science.” Because intelligent design seeks to discredit evolution in favor of design by an intelligent being, it is certainly open to this criticism. Intelligent design advocates strive to avoid discussion of who the designer might be, preferring to focus on the scientific arguments, but their critics are quick to connect intelligent design and religion. As an example, Barbara Forrest titles her critique of intelligent design “The Newest Evolution of Creationism,” and says, “At heart, proponents of intelligent design are not motivated to improve science but to transform it into a theistic enterprise” (12). While this may or may not be the motivation of proponents of intelligent design, their arguments should be addressed on the basis of scientific merit or lack thereof.
Another standard response to a criticism of evolution is to label it as a “god of the gaps” argument, or an argument from ignorance. The logic is as follows: Intelligent design says there is no known natural process which could account for the diversity of life observed today, so it must have been designed. Naturalists would reject that conclusion, arguing that some natural process may account for the development of the life forms that are observed; it is just that they have not been discovered yet. Rather than rejecting natural processes and invoking design, it is more appropriate to say we do not know how these life forms developed, but will continue research with the expectation that a natural cause will be discovered.
Past examples where design has been wrongly inferred because of ignorance of the true natural cause are easy to find. Wein cites two: fairy rings and moon craters (13). Fairy rings are rings of mushrooms caused by a fungus spreading through grass at a uniform rate. If the natural process producing the circular pattern were not known, one could wrongly conclude the mushrooms had been arranged that way. Observing the circular shape of moon craters led Kepler to propose that inhabitants of the moon must have created them. This seems silly once the true cause of moon craters, impact by meteors, is understood.
Clearly a proposal that involves a non-natural explanation for any natural phenomenon is subject to the argument from ignorance criticism, which explains why it is used so often against anti-evolutionary concepts. In such a situation, where all known natural causes cannot explain the development of life, the two conclusions are both the result of faith-based arguments. One side places their faith in an intelligent designer as the cause; the other places their faith in the discovery of as yet unknown natural processes as the cause.
A third criticism frequently applied to anti-evolution arguments is the so-called “tornado in a junkyard” criticism. This criticism, normally applied to calculations of the probability of some biological structure occurring by a random combination of components, stems from a quote attributed to astronomer Fred Hoyle: “The current scenario of the origin of life is about as likely as a tornado passing through a junkyard beside Boeing airplane company accidentally producing a 747 airplane” (qtd. in Wein 64). Evolutionists consider this type of calculation to be a straw man, since neo-Darwinism does not predict that complex structures form all at once from individual components, but gradually over time as a result of incremental changes. Wein applies this criticism to Dembski’s calculation of the probability of the formation of the flagellum of the bacteria E. coli by chance. Dembski’s calculation is for the probability of construction of the flagellum from components by random chance and is subject to this criticism. But the point of this calculation is to show that direct formation is impossible and then to go further and examine indirect pathways for the development of irreducibly complex systems, ultimately showing them to be impossible as well.
Several other criticisms of Behe’s irreducible complexity idea are summarized in “Rebuttals to Common Criticisms of the Book Darwin’s Black Box,” by Robert DiSilvestro, and in No Free Lunch, by Dembski. Most deal with ways to address the difficulty irreducible complexity presents for neo-Darwinism by attempting to discredit the concept.
Answering the Challenge of Intelligent Design
The major impact of the intelligent design movement is to clearly focus on the current shortcomings of neo-Darwinism. There are two main problems with the theory that all life as we know it descended from protoorganisms assembled in the primordial mixture by chance mutation and natural selection. The first is the natural assembly of a self-replicating protoorganism; the second is explaining how the many irreducibly complex systems in advanced organisms could develop gradually in incremental steps. Rather than discrediting intelligent design, evolutionists need to demonstrate how self-replicating protoorganisms can form naturally in conditions consistent with those on an emerging earth and how irreducibly complex systems can develop in a gradual, incremental, undirected manner to establish the veracity of neo-Darwinism.
It was thought that the mystery of the origin of life would soon be explained in the early 1950s. Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago set up an experiment designed to replicate conditions thought to exist on the emerging earth at the time the first protoorganisms are thought to have developed. Using an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen over a pool of water, Miller used sparking electrodes to simulate lightning, introduce energy into the system, and cause the normally unreactive gases to interact. Miller found that his experiment produced several kinds of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins that form the basis for living organisms. Subsequent experiments have been able to produce nearly all twenty of the amino acids that are present in living organisms, as well as the components of DNA and RNA (Behe 166-67).
It turns out that producing these building blocks of living organisms is simpler than joining them together to form protein with biological activity. The presence of water strongly inhibits amino acids from forming proteins, so that in the fifty years since Miller’s encouraging experiments, little progress has been made. Consider the comments of Klaus Dose, an origin-of-life researcher:
More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in confession of ignorance. (qtd. in Behe 168).
Scenarios are continually being proposed to explain the origin of life. A recent example is that of Musgrave, who calculates that the random assemblage of amino acids into “life-supporting” systems is feasible (7). Until a process for the random generation of early life forms is successfully demonstrated, abiogenesis will be an unproven and controversial theory.
Since the publication of Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, evolutionists have struggled with the problem of irreducibly complex systems. As mentioned above, much of the effort has been directed toward discrediting the concept of irreducible complexity. There are some arguments that seek to identify pathways for the evolutionary development of irreducible complexity. Dembski summarizes several of these and offers counter arguments that indicate these pathways are unlikely (No Free Lunch 252-71).
The first argument that tries to show that an irreducibly complex system could be produced by gradual increments apart from design is known as scaffolding. According to the scaffolding argument, some non-irreducibly complex system first arises by mutation and selection incrementally adding components. Then at some point a subsystem arises that is able to function on its own. Since the subsystem can function on its own, the other components are excess and begin to drop away. Once all the now excess components have dropped away, an irreducibly complex system is left. The scaffolding name comes from an analogy with constructing a Roman arch. Building an arch requires a scaffold; as long as a scaffold in place, components of the arch can be added or removed at will. Once the arch is complete, the scaffold is removed and each of the pieces of the arch becomes indispensable, making the arch an irreducibly complex system.
One problem for the scaffolding argument is that during the time when the scaffold is in place and is assisting in the construction of the irreducibly complex system, it requires resources that do not show any benefit to system function and would not be favored under natural selection. In addition, there are no detailed models in the biological literature that employ scaffolding to generate irreducibly complex systems. If such a mechanism were indeed an important process in the development of irreducibly complex systems, one would expect to see these processes being analyzed in the relevant literature (Dembski, No Free Lunch 252-54).
A second process or procedure proposed to explain how irreducibly complex systems could be produced by gradual increments is known as co-optation. There are actually two scenarios which fall under this category. One is that the components of an irreducibly complex system are parts of other systems and are pulled out of those systems to form a completely new system. An analogy would be building a passenger plane from parts of a bus, a car, and a fighter jet. While co-optation is a major theme in evolutionary biology, the probability that a number of components of an irreducibly complex system could be co-opted concurrently to form a viable system would seem to be low (Dembski, No Free Lunch 254-56).
The second co-optation scenario argues that an irreducibly complex system develops incrementally from simpler non-irreducible systems that performed a different function. Evidence cited for this scenario is the similarity of proteins in molecular systems that have different functions. Wein argues:
There is no reason why a system’s basic function should be its original one. The concepts of basic function and original function may not even be well defined. If a system performs two vital functions, which function is the basic one? The concept of an original function assumes there is an identifiable time at which the system came into existence. But the system may have a long history in which parts have come and gone, and functions have changed, making it impossible to trace back the origin of the system to one particular time. (19)
While such a scenario is theoretically possible, Dembski argues that the scientific literature is devoid of concrete, causally detailed proposals for how this might happen, a claim that is disputed by Miller (10-11) and other evolutionists. Orr agrees that such a scenario is not likely to provide a solution to irreducible complexity:
Second, we might think that some of the parts of an irreducibly complex system evolved step by step for some other purpose and then were recruited wholesale to a new function. But this seems unlikely. You may as well hope that half your car’s transmission will suddenly help in the airbag department. Such things might happen very, very rarely, but they surely do not offer a general solution to irreducible complexity. (qtd. in Dembski, No Free Lunch 255-56)
A third proposed solution to evolution’s irreducible complexity problem is labeled as incremental indispensability by Dembski. Under this scenario some relatively simple system performs a function. Later, a part is added, which improves the performance of the system. Other parts are added, further incrementally improving the performance of the system. Later, some of the parts are changed in such a way as to make the system irreducibly complex. Again, Dembski argues that while such a scenario is perhaps possible, there is no evidence to suggest that any real system has actually evolved in this manner (No Free Lunch 256-61).
The general characteristics of proposed evolutionary scenarios for the development of irreducibly complex systems are apparent. They add an additional level of complexity to the evolutionary process and at this point are speculative scenarios none of which have been observed. There may at some point be some observed evidence for one or more of these scenarios, but until then Shapiro’s comment is still valid:
There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental or biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject—evolution—with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity. (qtd. in Dembski, No Free Lunch 271)
What Does the Future Hold for the Evolution/Intelligent Design Controversy?
The major scientific effect of the intelligent design movement is to focus attention on the difficulties involved in adopting neo-Darwinism to explain the origin and development of the diversity of life. Fifty years of research on abiogenesis has not produced a viable scenario for the development of a self-replicating organism from the chemical constituents of the early Earth environment. In fact, many suggest the fifty years of research has decreased the estimated probability of such a scenario. But scientists are persistent and will continue to propose new ideas and mechanisms for the formation of original life forms.
Similarly, additional work will be done to identify and verify one or more valid scenarios for the evolutionary development of irreducibly complex biological systems. Further understanding of DNA, the magnitude of DNA mutation required to effect significant changes in organism characteristics, and the level of differences in the DNA of related organisms and biological systems will in all likelihood lead to further understanding of proposed evolutionary processes. Perhaps the current consensus that neo-Darwinism can explain the origin and development of observed life forms will be solidified. Certainly, it is the nature of scientists and the scientific method to continue the pursuit of a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Apart from a definitive revelation by a supernatural creator, Shapiro’s loyalty to science will prevail:
Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin for life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or process leading to life, elsewhere. In such a case, some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder. (130)
Scientists simply are not prepared to accept a non-scientific explanation for the origin of life.
From the viewpoint of Christianity, a resolution of the controversy seems equally unlikely. If one adopts the Christian concept of an omnipotent, all-knowing God, one must believe he could reveal his existence in an unequivocal way, should he so choose. The Christian God seems more intent on developing relationships based on faith, faith being described by Paul in the Bible, Hebrews 11:1, as the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV). Christianity emphasizes development of a spiritual relationship with God, so it seems unlikely that such a God would allow scientists the privilege of definitively proving his existence in a way that would be inaccessible to so many others.
So it is unlikely that any developments short of the actual creation of a living organism and direct observation of evolutionary speciation will be sufficient to convince those who believe in a supernatural creator through faith that chance mutation and undirected natural processes are responsible for the development of all life forms. Similarly, it seems that nothing short of an unequivocal revelation by a supernatural creator will convince neo-Darwinists that chance mutation and undirected natural processes cannot account for the development of all life forms. It appears that the controversy will persist.
Implications for Integration of Faith and Learning
While the majority of the scientific community has met the claims of intelligent design with strong resistance, there is a natural constituency for the idea that the complexity and diversity of biological systems are the result of design. Proponents of intelligent design profess to be theological minimalists, preferring to focus on design detection rather than designer identification. There is, however, no denying that the Christian community has a traditional, well-documented belief in a super-natural Creator, a belief that is entirely consistent with the tenets of intelligent design. Intelligent design proposes to detect design, which is intelligent causation, with no concern about the source of that intelligent causation or the process employed in its implementation. The Christian community would seem to be a natural ally, identifying the designer as God, and the process as the biblical account of creation.
As reported by McMurtrie, it is indeed religious institutions, particularly evangelical Christian colleges, where intelligent design has made its greatest strides. Baylor University established a Center for Complexity Information and Design to study intelligent design, which was later incorporated into their Institute for Faith and Learning. Institutions like Wheaton College and Oklahoma Baptist University have developed courses on intelligent design, or have included intelligent design concepts in traditional science courses (2-3). While the faculties at these institutions hold diverse opinions about intelligent design, they are more willing to concede that the questions raised by intelligent design are valid and are a viable component of the discussion of life’s origins.
It is the institutions that have traditionally been the strongest advocates of the integration of faith and learning that will be most receptive to intelligent design, and it is likely that these institutions will be the ones that will be at the forefront in the development of intelligent design. The traditional scientific community sees intelligent design only as a more sophisticated reincarnation of traditional anti-evolution arguments, making it unlikely that the mainstream scientific community will have much interest in advancing the development of intelligent design. It seems most likely that institutions where the concepts of faith and learning have a tradition of coexistence and mutual interaction will be those most willing to examine the validity of intelligent design.
This is an opportunity for institutions that value the integration of faith and learning, where good science is combined with an acknowledgement of the important role that faith plays in the human existence, to demonstrate the two are beneficially interactive. It is not that these institutions will uncritically embrace intelligent design, but that they will be willing to critically examine the concept. Coupling good science with an awareness of the importance of faith in all aspects of human endeavor will allow these institutions to play a critical role in determining the validity of intelligent design.
Summary
The intelligent design movement is founded upon the following ideas: (1) Intelligent causes can do things that unintelligent causes cannot. (2) The effects of intelligent design are then detectable, apart from the designer or the process involved in effecting the design, through scientific examination of the object or system. (3) Biological systems exhibit characteristics of intelligent design. (4) As a result, the neo-Darwinist theory that the complexity and diversity of life as we know it is the result of chance mutation and undirected natural selection, not design, is false. (5) Irreducibly complex systems, those which require several integrated individual parts all of which must be present in order to accomplish their function, can only be the product of design and could not be the result of a large number of small modifications of simpler, less complex systems.
The scientific community has responded to intelligent design with the same disdain applied to earlier arguments against evolution. In contrast to previous anti-evolution arguments, intelligent design focuses on two areas where evolutionary theory has made little progress: the development of the first self-replicating protoorganisms and the development of irreducibly complex systems from simpler systems. Fifty years of research on the origin of life has not demonstrated a viable process for the natural development of self-replicating protoorganisms, and the development of irreducibly complex systems by a series of numerous successive slight modifications seems illogical.
While it seems unlikely that the controversy between intelligent design and neo-Darwinism can be resolved to the satisfaction of either side apart from direct observation of speciation or incontrovertible revelation by an intelligent designer, the ideas of intelligent design and its consequences should be a part of the scientific discussion. Institutions having a tradition of integration of faith and learning could well have a critical role to play in the exploration of intelligent design since they can do good science and are at least willing to consider the possibility of a supernatural design agent.
Works Cited
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Dembski, William. “The Intelligent Design Movement.” The Discovery Institute, Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. 7 Feb. 2002. <http://www.discovery.org/ viewDB/index.php3?program=CRSC&command=view&id=121>.
_______. No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence. Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2002.
DiSivestro, Robert. “Rebuttals to Common Criticisms of the Book Darwin's Black Box." 4 Feb. 2002. <http://www.leadersu.com/science/disilvestro-dbb.html>.
Forrest, Barbara. “The Newest Evolution of Creationism.” In “Intelligent Design, a Special Report Reprinted from Natural History Magazine.” 25 Feb. 2003. <http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html>.
The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).
_______. New International Version (NIV).
Isaak, Mark. “Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution.” The Talk Origins Archive, Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy. 29 Sept. 2003. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html>.
McMurtrie, Beth. “Darwinism Under Attack.” 2 Feb. 2002. <http://www.arn.org/ docs2/news/darwinismunderattack012502.htm>.
Miller, Kenneth. “The Flagellum Unspun, the Collapse of ‘Irreducible Complexity.’” 2 Oct. 2003. <http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html>.
Moran, Laurence. “What is Evolution?” The Talk Origins Archive, Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy. 29 Sept. 2003. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ evolution-definition.html>.
Musgrave, Ian. “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations.” The Talk Origins Archive, Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy. 29 Sept. 2003. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html>.
Shapiro, Robert. Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. New York: Summit, 1986.
Wein, Richard. “Not a Free Lunch but a Box of Chocolates, a Critique of William Dembski’s Book No Free Lunch.” The Talk Origins Archive, Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy. 4 Aug. 2003. <http://www.talkorigins.org/design/ faqs/nf1/>.
Winstead, Ray. “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.” 2 Oct. 2003. <http://nsm1.nsm.iup.edu/rwinstea/darwin.shtm>.
JERRY E. DEESE <deese@mobap.edu> is Acting Chairman of the Natural Sciences Division and Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Missouri Baptist University. He holds a B. S. in aerospace engineering and an M. S. and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. Before coming to MBU, Dr. Deese spent eighteen years at McDonnell Douglas Corporation, primarily at the McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories, where he developed numerical methods for the solution of the partial differential equations governing fluid flow, the Navier-Stokes equations. He has published or presented more than thirty articles in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
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