Intelligent design
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The objection also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, which itself does not state a creator. It merely states what happens after some form of life is extant. | The objection also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, which itself does not state a creator. It merely states what happens after some form of life is extant. | ||
| − | == | + | ==Legal issues in education== |
:''For the main article on this important issue, please see [[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District]].'' | :''For the main article on this important issue, please see [[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District]].'' | ||
No appellate precedent exists by which to judge the legality of teaching intelligent design in public schools. However, in the landmark district federal court case, ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'', Judge John E. Jones III ruled that given that the policy of teaching intelligent design was supported by religious rhetoric, it amounted to a teaching of religion by the state, in violation of the [[First Amendment]] of the [[United States Constitution]]. | No appellate precedent exists by which to judge the legality of teaching intelligent design in public schools. However, in the landmark district federal court case, ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'', Judge John E. Jones III ruled that given that the policy of teaching intelligent design was supported by religious rhetoric, it amounted to a teaching of religion by the state, in violation of the [[First Amendment]] of the [[United States Constitution]]. | ||
Revision as of 20:32, 14 January 2009
This topic is a pseudoscience, and is not accepted by the scientific community as a valid discipline.
Although it may use scientific terminology, it does not use scientific methodology.
Remember: just because it sounds right doesn't mean it's actually right.
The Intelligent Design Theory, sometimes called Intelligent Design (or simply "design", or ID), maintains that certain aspects of the physical world, and more specifically life, show signs of having been designed, and hence were designed, by an intelligent being (usually, but not always, the God of the Christian religion).
Contents |
Origins
The concept of the world and its creatures and people having been intelligently designed is a very old one, central to creationism and common to many of the world's religions. It is one of the oldest themes of philosophy, having been explored by Plato and Aristotle. In Christianity the concept of intelligent design by the creator was perpetuated by the biblical account of the creation.
The concept that the world and its creatures are themselves evidence of intelligent design, known as the teleological argument or argument from design, has been used more frequently in modern times than previously. One early example was William Paley's "watchmaker analogy", first used in 1802, which posits that the complexity of natural life must be the product of an intelligent creator in the same way that a watch must be the product of a watchmaker.
The term "intelligent design" emerged much more recently. It had been used occasionally during the twentieth century, but was popularised after the 1987 legal case of Edwards v. Aguillard, in which "creation science" was ruled to be a religious concept and therefore unfit to be taught in public schools under American law. Subsequently, many creation science concepts were rebranded as "intelligent design", ostensibly a non-religious concept since its adherents claim that the intelligent design argument leaves open the question of who the designer might be.
The Discovery Institute has taken the lead in propagating intelligent design, and urging for it to be incorporated into public education. The Discovery Institute's Wedge Document specifically states that the intelligent designer is the Christian God, thus undercutting the claims that the intelligent design movement is not strictly religious. In the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case (2005), the court found that intelligent design was primarily religious and fostered unnecessary entanglement of church and state. The court further found that intelligent design is not science.
Designed by whom?
Almost all proponents of intelligent design have been theists, arguing that the creator must be God. ID is advanced by many Young Earth Creationists, who use it to rebut the theory of evolution, and, by extension, the facts that support it. Their position is generally that evolution through natural selection and physical forces and principles alone is not solely responsible for the current diversity of life on earth. However, some believers in Old Earth Creationism believe intelligent design to be the guiding mechanism behind Theistic evolution.[1]
However, the intelligent design argument is not incompatible with atheism, since, even if we accept that the complexity of nature proves an intelligent designer, this does not logically prove that the "designer" has the characteristics of a god or is worthy of worship. Some, largely obscure, intelligent design theories conjecture that life on earth could have been cultivated by intelligent extraterrestrial beings. Francis Crick is sometimes cited as an example of an atheist ID proponent, since his concept of directed panspermia arguably shared some concepts with ID. Crick later partially retracted his claim based on an what he called an overly pessimistic model for abiogenesis.[2]
Some ID proponents honestly acknowledge that their critique is informed by a rejection of the methodological naturalism by which physical science examines the world and consequently cannot be science. Others are a bit more evasive, but the overwhelming majority of scientists dismiss intelligent design as being pseudoscience.
Argument from fine tuning
Cosmology without God still begins with something, minimally a vacuum state plus a blueprint for transformation. Since we are alive we can confidently say that the blueprint permits life to exist. But a change of only a few percent in any one of the 80 values called out on that blueprint (such as the delicate ratio between nuclear and electromagnetic force) spells disaster. "Dis Aster" in Latin is literally "Bad Star." Change the blueprint of transformation and the sun fails.
We also know there is not enough mass in the universe to cause the expansion to slow down, stop and reverse to cycle all over again. Indeed the expansion seems to be accelerating, not slowing down, due to a repulsive counterforce to gravity called dark energy that is much weaker than gravity but which falls off with distance much slower, thus making itself felt at very long range. So we've got a one-shot universe, a once-in-an-eternity reality which just coincidentally happens to have a blueprint for transformation which permit suns and planets and life to exist.
The nearest exact twin of the sun is Delta Pavonis, which is 18.6 light-years away from us. To get there, you go east 3.8 light-years, south 6.4 light-years, and down 17.0 light years. Will you find another Earth?
1. It requires a candidate world roughly at the same distance Earth is from our sun, that is also large enough to retain an atmosphere.
2. It requires a gas-giant planet at about 5 times the candidate world's distance from Delta Pavonis to vacuum up deadly inbound comets.
3. It requires a giant moon around the candidate world to stabilize the 60 to 80 degree wobble introduced by the comet-sweeping world's gravity, or climate shifts will be too violent.
4. It requires a day shorter than 30 hours, so it doesn't get too hot in daytime and cold at nighttime, but longer than 20 hours so Coriolis forces don't make your hurricanes unmanageable.
5. It requires a global thermostat to somehow be in place to maintain life as the star Delta Pavonis heats up and reaches its plateau temperature of middle age.
6. It requires enough liquid water to form a medium for the birth of life.
7. It requires an active geology to build land against erosion, otherwise your highest life-forms will be swamp things.
This can be numerically presented in the Drake Equation.
However, the fine-tuning argument can also be explained through the sheer size of the universe; with one hundred billion stars in the galaxy, and as many galaxies in the universe, even a minuscule chance of life arising makes it extremely likely that it will occur somewhere. Moreover, no matter how unlikely an event is, once it occurs, its probability for that case is 1.
Fine-tuning arguments based on the physical constants are even easier to explain; the delicate balance of, for example, the tri-alpha fusion which created all the carbon in our bodies relies on the temperature and pressure of stars being exactly right for this form of fusion; however, the pressure and temperature of the interior of a star changes depending on whether or not fusion is occurring. Similar links between other physical constants are likely and can explain their apparently delicate balance.
Wedge Strategy and the "Trojan horse" of creationism
Intelligent design has been strongly pushed by the Discovery Institute as part of the wedge strategy as outlined in the wedge document in their attempt to create a scientific sounding version of creationism. It has been roundly rejected by most scientists on the grounds that it has no peer-reviewed publications of any standards, and has produced no positive evidence for its claims. The wedge strategy itself is to create a public furor over the concept of "teaching the controversy". In the real scientific world, of course, there is no such controversy over the facts and theories underlying modern concepts of evolution.
To date, intelligent design has been officially introduced into exactly one school district - and there, it tore apart the community, cost the school board millions of dollars, and was eventually thrown out after the Kitzmiller trial. Although intelligent design is always a "Trojan Horse" for creationism - that is to say, creationism with a new name and a few obfuscating principles - there is a sliding scale of how egregious and visible the disguise is. Some people actually believe it to be real science (albeit erroneously), while others use it as a clear pretext for teaching creationism.
In the Kitzmiller case, the disguise was patently obvious. "Intelligent design proponents," there, sought to have the book Of Pandas and People, a creationist screed, taught as part of a new "intelligent design" curriculum at the local Dover public high school. ID supporters hoped to prove at trial that the book was legitimate science, and not creationism. However, there was one slight problem - the book was a book about creationism, with the words "creator," "creationism," etc., merely replaced with "designer," "intelligent design," etc., by a basic word-processor "find/replace" function, a ruse made obvious by spelling errors (like "Cdesign proponentsists") which made the hatchet-job glaringly obvious.[3]
Scope and definition
The theory of evolution by natural selection deals only with the question of how organisms develop and form new species. Logically it can have nothing to say about the origin of the universe or the origin of life.
It appears that some of the more, shall we way, scientifically minded believers in ID attempt to constrain themselves similarly and claim no more than God somebody is controlling evolution.
Others however go further and claim that ID explains not only the origin of life but even the origin of the universe. This expansion in the claimed scope of the theory is probably caused by to two things:
- If you see ID as a code word for "God" then the temptation to ascribe all of existence to "ID" is very strong.
- There is a common misconception among fundamentalists about what evolution actually is. For many, any scientific theory is an example of evolution and, to compete, ID must be capable of including anything which they erroneously believe evolution includes.
There is also a difference of opinion about what is actually involved biologically in ID. Again, for the more scientifically-minded it is simply evolution which is guided by God and common descent is fully accepted. For the more fundamentalist believers it is equivalent to progressive creationism in which complete new species are periodically created by God someone.
It is patently absurd for something which is presented as a scientific theory to be so lacking in any clear definition of scope and definition. (A reader who takes a close look the pro-ID description of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed will notice a number of these contradictions.)
The contradictions exist as a consequence of the fact that ID attempts to include so many creationist ideas under the guise of science.
Scientific evaluation
Method
An outstanding issue of intelligent design is what mechanism the hypothesized "designer"[4] uses to initiate design diversity. According to the theory of evolution, this mechanism is genetic mutation resulting from environmental stresses and point mutations caused by the cellular chemical environment. As of this time intelligent design supporters have yet to offer a plausible mechanism to which diversity can be attributed that differentiates from the mechanisms listed by the theory of evolution. As such the intelligent design proponents have yet to offer any empirical evidence to support the claim of a designer.
Evidence
Proponents of the intelligent design hypothesis such as Michael Behe promote theories such as "irreducible complexity" as evidence for their ideas. Irreducible complexity posits that there are certain organs and structures found in nature that have no convincing gradual evolutionary pathway, and are too complex to have come about in whole by chance. These ideas are hotly disputed (or dismissed as non-science) by scientists, but regardless of their truth value they do not constitute evidence for an intelligent designer. Proponents of intelligent design make an assumption unwarranted by the evidence in that their logic goes along the lines of "The origins and diversity of the species cannot be accounted for by evolution and natural selection alone, therefore there must have been a designer involved."
The very lack of positive scientific evidence suggesting that there is a designer involved in creating life begs the question of how the design hypothesis came about. Opponents of the design hypothesis would suggest that proponents are religiously motivated, and that their ideas are not about understanding how life came to exist but rather about promoting a particular religious world view as espoused in the Wedge Document.
Periodicity
There has also been no attempt to specify the periodicity of the miraculous interventions by the hypothesized "intelligent designer". In other words, the hypothesis does not state if the miraculous interventions take place annually, monthly, daily, or only when the designer feels that miraculous intervention is necessary.
Falsifiability
ID proponents have yet to demonstrate that their idea is even remotely scientific by identifying what they believe could falsify it.
In fact, we await with interest any submission from supporters of this concept which would elevate it to the realms of science. Our article Disproving Intelligent Design remains embarrassingly void of valid arguments.
Abiogenesis
Slightly better educated supporters of ID sometimes complain that that Theory of Evolution lacks any mention of, or generally accepted hypothesis about, abiogenesis. It is of interest however that versions of ID which pretend to be science also lack any such mechanism - though the unstated assumption is that it was god what dun it.
The objection also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, which itself does not state a creator. It merely states what happens after some form of life is extant.
Legal issues in education
- For the main article on this important issue, please see Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
No appellate precedent exists by which to judge the legality of teaching intelligent design in public schools. However, in the landmark district federal court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that given that the policy of teaching intelligent design was supported by religious rhetoric, it amounted to a teaching of religion by the state, in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Intelligent design was "religion" because, in the legal language applied, a reasonable person (based on the events surrounding the policy's adoption) could have concluded that it had the purpose or effect of establishing a particular religion. In short, when a school board tries to teach intelligent design, the level of religious rhetoric is directly related to the likelihood of its unconstitutionality under the Lemon v. Kurtzmann test.
This precedent, and the correlation it establishes between religious rhetoric and the likelihood of any intelligent design policy being found unconstitutional, will be vitally important in heading off future school boards which attempt to teach intelligent design as "science." Intelligent design's "wedge" appeal rests on its attempt to characterize itself as non-religious, after all. Fortunately, the idea that intelligent design is non-religious is being rebutted on a practically daily basis... by its own proponents.
Consider a Kentucky schoolteacher who sought to teach intelligent design to her seventh grade biology class. The teacher curiously taught the "scientific theory" as something practically indistinguishable from creationism, complete with flood geology and young earth chronology.[5] After being made aware of the same by the ACLU, and the likely legal troubles the school board would face, it terminated its tacit approval of intelligent design.
Additionally, leading light of intelligent design, Michael Behe, is only able to publish his pro-intelligent design theories in one scientific journal - Philisophia Christi - the proceedings of the Evangelical Philosophy Society.[6]
And finally, the "movie" Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed, which bills itself as describing how intelligent design is systematically excluded from academia for no other reason than bias, describes intelligent design in its own advertisements as "creationism."[7]
See also
- Argument from design
- Biologic Institute
- Common descent
- Council of Europe 2007 resolution on the teaching of creationism
- Disproving Intelligent Design
- Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
- Expelled:Leader's Guide
- God of the gaps
- Intelligent design and academic freedom
- Intelligent falling
- Irreducible complexity
- Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
- List of mistakes made by God
- Lists of pseudosciences
- Melvin Mulder (ID author)
- Pseudoscience
- Russell's Teapot
- Shakespeare authorship
- The Bible
- Theistic evolution
- Unintelligent design
And finally, this, which neatly sums up the Intelligent Design movement:
Footnotes
- ↑ Link
- ↑ Orgel LE, Crick FH (January 1993). "Anticipating an RNA world. Some past speculations on the origin of life: where are they today?" (PDF reprint). FASEB J. 7 (1): 238–9. PMID 7678564.
- ↑ PBS, "NOVA: Judgment Day, Intelligent Design on Trial."
- ↑ Should we capitalize "designer", since we all know who they think He is?
- ↑ Link
- ↑ Michael J. Behe, The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Breaking Rules, Philosophia Christi, Series 2, Volume 3, Number 1, p. 165 (2001). PDF on file with RationalWiki user AmesG.
- ↑ See our article on the "Expelled:Leader's Guide Leader's Guide to the movie.
