Bronze-level articleDisproving Intelligent Design

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Goddidit!

Creationism

Icon creationism.svg
Key claims
Science
Random articles

Truth fish transparent.png

The configuration of the retina is in three layers, with the light-sensitive rods and cones at the bottom, facing away from the light, and underneath a layer of bipolar, horizonal, and amacrine cells, themselves underneath a layer of ganglion cells that help carry the signal from the eye to the brain. And this entire structure sits beneath a layer of blood vessels. For optimal vision why would an intelligent designer have built an eye backwards and upside down? Because an intelligent designer did not build the eye from scratch. Natural selection built the eye from simple to complex using whatever materials were available, and in the particular configuration of the ancestral organism.
—Michael Shermer[1]

Scientists claim that Intelligent Design cannot be falsified and consequently is not science. This article includes all the arguments put forward by creationists showing how Intelligent Design could theoretically be disproved.

Contents

[edit] Evolution is wrong, therefore ID is right

No seriously, that's what they say. Of course, any reasonable scientist with half an education could tell you that disproving one thing does not prove another. Even if the two items are considered opposites, this idea doesn't float (ever heard of a false dichotomy?)!

But, since we're feeling good — maybe we had a few too many after the research conference with the real scientists — let's give ID the benefit of the doubt and assume that evolution and ID are the only possible theories. So, where does that leave us? Does evolution fail to explain anything? How does this claim stand up to scrutiny?

Result: EPIC FAIL

Try as they may, IDers have utterly failed to disprove evolution. Oh, they've come up with some fancy ideas, written some nice books, and used semantics like no other. But they have yet to present any real scientific evidence against evolution by natural selection. Now, an ID proponent would leave their argument there, but we claim the scientific high ground, and here's why: we're going to explain everything, point by point.

(WARNING: the following should not be read by anyone who values their sanity)

[edit] Irreducible Complexity

Let's face it, 100 years ago, the cell was held up to supporters of the theory of evolution as an example of "irreducible complexity" (sorry, Michael Behe, you're not the first). The newfound and stunning detail of the cellular construction could never be explained by natural selection, held evolution opponents. Yet lo and behold, evolution more than stepped up to the plate, and we can trace the origin of life back a good four and a half billion years, to the very first replicators and their first "cells"[2]. We've explained the cell, we explained the flagellum[3], we've explained the eye and the wing, we'll explain the next big challenge. That's what you call a robust theory.

But irreducible complexity isn't the only thing evolution has "going against it".

[edit] Law of conservation of information

William Dembski likes to tout the "law of the conservation of information" as evidence against evolution. As the law goes (no mutation may occur which creates more than 500 somethings of information), evolution cannot give rise to complex structures. Problem is, no one accepts the law of the conservation of information, probably because Dembski came up with it on his own. No new fourth law of thermodynamics here...

Actually, there IS a law of conservation of information in physics, but it does not rule out the creation of new information, it merely stipulates that information cannot be destroyed completely, only moved. Therefore the amount of information in the Universe always increases, in perfect agreement with evolution. Stephen Hawking was long claiming that information could be destroyed, and criticized by other physicists for it, until he actually admitted that information cannot be destroyed.[4][5]

[edit] Evolution cannot give rise to new structures

Yes and no. Yes it can and does give rise to new structures, and yes, it is easier to destroy a structure than to create a new one. The same goes for design. "No" in that evolution cannot come up with a structure unless it fits within the framework of preexisting structures. Any structures are a hold-over of evolutionary events which occurred billions of years ago; if the vertebrate eye were suddenly to change into the invertebrate one, particularly the octopus' much more logically 'designed' eye, which has no blind spot due to the optic nerve fitting over the edges of the retina rather than being plugged into it, then evolution would be in trouble.

The problem here isn't one of the theory, it's understanding the theory. But, as this article is about ID, readers should probably just save time and start reading about the way things actually work.

Here's the standing challenge to ID: disprove evolution. Go ahead, we'll wait.

(150 years and counting)

[edit] Diseases should not counter certain new antibiotics

If you've actually read ID literature (our sympathies, but do try to fight the resultant violent episodes of intellectual rage, and or nausea), you may come across some rare predictions. Here's one: if ID is the answer to how things came to be, then no bacterial infection should be able to counter an antibiotic that requires more than two mutations[6].

So how does this stand up?

Result: FAIL

Diseases continually counter new antibiotics, regardless of their complexity and novelty, and they do so even faster as we produce more antibiotics. ID says that this can't happen by natural selection, only by design. So either:

  • The designer sadistically favors pathogens over humans (and domesticated animals and agricultural crops)
  • or ID fails again

Moving on...

[edit] Evidence of design implies a designer

This is faulty because there is no suggestion that there is any design at all. The "evidence" that they cite is merely an assertion brought on by their own opinion that complexity implies "design" simply because they want it to be that way. There is, of course, no evidence of design beyond what some people perceive there to be. In addition, given that we have evolved with an innate ability to recognize patterns, it is expected that we will find design all around us, but nothing suggests that anything about it was designed in any way. The "appearance of design implies a designer" is an argument from incredulity. The person making the claim, that something looks designed and so can not have come about from evolution, is relying on their own lack of imagination and understanding of evolutionary process, rather than it being an inherent fault in the theory. In addition, ID proponents have never proposed just exactly how one can recognize design. They say that things have the "appearance of design," but can never explain how that is so beyond asserting that it just looks that way. Naturally, given that they are already looking for design since they believe in a designed world, they will find design everywhere.

But how can someone who is not looking for design recognize this same design? That is to say, How can we know something was designed or not, without relying on personal opinions or vague assertions? The answer is that we can't. Recognizing design apparently depends on whether or not you want it to be designed. ID proponents want the world to be designed, and so, therefore, they will see design everywhere. Evolutionists, however, are unimpressed by this argument, since naturalistic evolution explains how things can appear to be intelligently designed as well as explaining all the reasons why their designs aren't so intelligent at all.

Despite this, if this argument could hold water, ID would not only have to produce evidence of design, but also explain any (and there are many) examples of bad design. Because if you look at it, there may be some examples of good design but there are also many examples of terrible, contingent, barely-working design[7] Examples of design you might expect from *gasp* AN UNINTELLIGENT DESIGNER!!!!!!

Result: FAIL

[edit] Predictions which hold water

Whoops...

Tumbleweed.gif


[edit] References

  1. Why People Believe Weird Things - Shermer (1997), page XXI of the Introduction to the Paperback version
  2. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene...read it
  3. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex.html
  4. See Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War
  5. See also black hole information paradox[wp]. But it does NOT disprove evolution at all.
  6. Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution...don't read it unless you have to.
  7. Top 10 useless limbs. (and other vestigial organs)
Evonav-left.jpg   Evolution Articles on RationalWiki   Evonav-right.jpg
Acceptance  -  Behe interview  -  Cladistics  -  Common descent: the incontrovertible evidence  -  Darwinism  -  De-evolution  -  Dinosaur  -  Disproving Evolution  -  Eugenics  -  EvoWiki  -  Evobabble  -  Evolution  -  Evolutionist  -  Fossil record  -  Human  -  Macroevolution  -  Microevolution  -  Natural selection  -  Niche  -  Phylogenetics  -  Phylogeny  -  Signal detection theory  -  Social Darwinism  -  Stephen Jay Gould  -  Theory of Evolution  -  Wedge Document  -
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support