By Tom Gilson

Adapted from his article at www.ThinkingChristian.net:  http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2010/04/whats-wrong-and-whats-right-with-intelligent-design-re-posted/

I had a very powerful "Aha!” moment one night last week, in which I believe I felt--I actually felt--the revulsion many ID opponents have toward the theory. I was reading Thomas Woodward's Darwin Strikes Back. (He's certainly not to blame for any bad feelings I felt; his book is a helpful overview of the ongoing debate over Darwin/Design since the mid-1990's.) I think it was instead a kind of gifting moment, through which I was able to take on the other side's perspective and gain new insight. 

I was reading this passage on the Cambrian Explosion, which was a period during which (according to the fossil record) many thousands of new species suddenly appeared in a short period of geological time, about 530 million years ago. Woodward writes,

"The name 'explosion' is used widely in the literature of professional paleontology in describing this dramatic fossil debut.... where we find not just gaps between slightly different forms but fossil chasms between different phyla that abruptly appear in the rocks.... The Cambrian gaps are persisting [in spite of new fossil finds]; with a defiance and stubbornness that is now legendary. What's worse, those chasms are not just enduring; they are steadily increasing in number through discoveries of new bizarre creatures... in recent decades."

ID theorists point to the Cambrian explosion as evidence that gradualistic evolution does not explain the fossil record. Now, this was not new information to me, but it somehow struck me this time just how this must appear to some people. Here we have countless thousands of species among the fossils, many of which arrived suddenly 530 million years ago and are now gone. ID (usually) says that each one of them, or at least each group or "kind," required a special intervention to appear as a new species. What kind of intelligence would do that? Why would this intelligence build up to these new species with a series of simpler forms, most of which are also gone now? Why would this intelligence create a dinosaur world that's now been wiped away? I believe I have a sense now (though I still don't agree, as I'll explain later) of what some people say when they consider this intelligence as some kind of fictional bumbler mucking about in the world, creating in fits and starts, not getting it right for the longest time. It's so much more pleasing--especially to our Western consciousness--to think of things coming and going through time in a natural way.

So let’s state the key question again: What kind of intelligence would do that?

 

Intelligent Design theorists say they are making an inference to the best explanation: that we can draw a valid analogy from our everyday experience, which shows us that information and design always originate from intelligence, to some kind of intelligence behind the natural order. But why stop there? I wonder if it's really possible to do as ID theorists do, which is to start from the natural evidence, and reason from there to bare intelligence. I don't think it's entirely wrong--in fact, it's correct in a very powerful way. I'll come back to that in a moment. For now, though, I'm suggesting that we shouldn't stop there. Why just reason to intelligence? Ought we not at least also reason to mystery? For if there is something analogous to human intelligence there, there is also something about it that is very hard to understand. It's a theory of MysteriousIntelligence.

Then, as we continue to puzzle over why this intelligence would develop all those thousands of creatures, there seems to be another important analogy we could safely draw. When we see new people building things being built for no apparent purpose, it's usually the result of some creative impulse. Art doesn't have to have a purpose, other than to delight the beholder. In the case of natural history, if the creative impulse is part of the explanation, it seems playful and wasteful at the same time, or profligate. This mysterious, creative intelligence has resources to spare, and no compunction about using them! It seems to be leading us to a richer theory than simple ID; it's a theory of Mysterious, Profligately Creative Intelligence.

But not just that. This intelligence seems likely not to be part of the natural world, yet it intervenes here. The world of the Cambrian explosion was stepped into frequently from outside. This early bio-world (or biosphere as it is sometimes called) is haunted by this other-worldly intelligence. Otherwise, how would these 200,000 or so new species have arisen across geological time? So we seem to be moving toward a theory of Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligence.

Finally, we might as well recognize that just about every ID theorist speaks of purpose, and great power is assumed; so we're talking about a Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligence

This is anathema to modern man. A Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Intelligent Outsider does not belong in our mindset. No wonder ID draws so much fire! We're all naturalists to some extent. Even we who believe in God are so highly influenced by the scientific mindset, it's hard to shake free of it for even a moment! African or Pacific Island tribes they may see spirits in every tree and rock--we see atoms and molecules and energy, and we know how they interact. We know what's really going on, and it's not spooks!

This is the problem with Intelligent Design. The opponents of ID keep pushing ID proponents to name the intelligence we're talking about. We're shy to do that from the scientific perspective, but this Mysterious Creative Outsider haunts every mention of ID. If you've been watching carefully, of course, you've noticed that if there's an objection to this kind of Intelligence, it's mostly emotional or aesthetic: we dare not countenance such a possibility because it just doesn't fit the way we have thought the world is and we don't like it. There are rational arguments along those lines too, but they're nothing new, nothing that ID hasn't already dealt with from the philosophical side of its efforts. But this exposes more clearly what ID is about. It's not about bare intelligence: it's about Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved OutsiderIntelligence. From my perspective as a Christian, it's about God.

At this point I must change the subject slightly for a moment, for an aside that makes things better in some ways and worse in others. Phillip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History at Penn State. He says that the most under-reported, possibly the most significant social movement in the entire world in the 20th Century was the global rise of Christianity, especially south of the Equator, in Asia, and in Muslim countries. J.P. Moreland quotes credible research showing that in the last 30 years of the century, serious Christians increased by a factor of 10; and the number of Muslims coming to faith in Christ in the last few decades is greater than in all previous history combined. Much of this explosion is fueled by miracles: dreams, vision, healings and the like. These things are credibly reported in sources like the Washington Post

It seems that the world is not so immune to intervention by an intelligent outsider as we have thought. Maybe we Westerners are wrong about some things. (And maybe, as Moreland says at the end of that talk, it's happening more in our part of the world than we've recognized.)

But the scientist says, "If God is doing this all the time, how can there be any such thing as science? If God is always intervening--interfering--how can we count on any regularity anywhere? Yet, clearly we can! So this does not add up." That question is actually not so hard. Part of God's intention in doing these things is to communicate himself to people. If he were always interfering, such that there was no such thing as a reliable natural order, there could be no communication in it. It's a signal-to-noise ratio thing. God's communication has to be different from the regularities of the world if it's to be actual communication; thus there must be regularities. Those regularities define the way we usually experience the world, and God's interventions to change that order are rare exceptions.

Aspects of God's character enter in here that I don't know how to derive as an inference from nature. Biblical believers know him as good, trustworthy, and faithful. To the extent that ID is intimating a Powerful Outsider whose goodness and faithfulness unknown, I can see how that would be just opening a conceptual door to chaos.

That, as I said, was somewhat of an aside, for I started out talking about ID from an empirical perspective, and then I looked at divine intervention from a theological perspective. The two views unite in this: the whole idea is an affront to the mindset of an absolutely predictable, controllable, regular, universal, natural reality. It's a terrible assault on philosophical naturalism (PN, the idea that there is no reality except matter and energy and space-time and law and chance). That's the emotional impact. The emotional effect of this does not mean it's not true.

Lurking behind ID is PPMPCHIOID: Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligent Design. Opponents accuse ID of being disingenuous when it says it makes no claims, other than intelligence, regarding the identity of the designer it seeks. But don't we all have PPMPCHIOID--or God--in mind? Isn't ID being dishonest when it denies this?

I don't think so. In fact, this apparent weakness of ID is also its strength. It offers so little about the Designer it seeks; but it does not try to offer more than its tools allow. To look for Design, signifying purposeful intelligence, is something we can do from within the empirical sciences. To look for the rest of it is beyond the reach of science.

You see, we have conceptual tools for identifying purposeful design in nature. Yes, I know this is the very point that's most in controversy. There seems to be at least one such tool that is to be universally accepted, though: Michael Behe's irreducible complexity (IC). Many scientists have taken Behe to task over this, but in very specific ways. They have said that his examples of IC are not really irreducible, or they have doubted that instances of IC in nature can really be proven. (Often, they have not bothered to read, let alone reply to, Behe’s published cogent responses to criticism. In this regard, see his blog at Amazon.com where he responds to criticisms of The Edge of Evolution and note the “Epilogue: As I Was Saying...” in the 10^th anniversary edition of Darwin’s Black Box.) and the Orange County Register.

 

Most importantly, Behe’s opponents have not (to my knowledge) ever credibly denied that IC--if reliably identified--signals the action of intelligence. So we have at least that one conceptual tool, going back all the way to Darwin himself. I believe William Dembski's complex specified information (CSI) is also a strong indicator of intelligence.

We don't have empirically-based tools in biology* for identifying and discriminating other features of the designer, like Profligate Creativity, or even having Outsider Status in relation to the natural order. At least, we can't identify those things directly. If intelligence is identified, the philosophers can go to work and discuss whether what I have written here is true, that other characteristics inexorably accompany a finding of great intelligence. So when an empirical research program says it's only trying to identify intelligence, it is being both careful and honest. (It is not thereby trying to sneak God into the public schools.) It is trying to do just what it can conceivably do through its tools.

What's both wrong and right about ID, then, is its bare minimalist claim of looking for purposeful intelligence in a designer of life. It is right in looking only for what it has the conceptual tools to potentially find. That there may be a PPMPCHIOID--an active creator God--lurking there raises all kinds of emotional reactions, which I think I understand better now. It's hard to like ID if you don't like the idea of a God being involved in the natural order.

And it's really hard to like ID if you see it as a way to sneak God back into American public education. That's the other rampant conspiracy theory surrounding ID. Plain statements of facts from ID leaders don't seem to have lessened fears of this. To repeat those plain statements: as a scientific research program, ID is a minimalist theory, seeking only to identify instances of purposeful design in nature. Its educational agenda is even more minimalist: ID leaders aren't trying to get ID taught in the public schools. (It's been said a thousand times, and the actions of ID scholars and spokespersons back that up.) ID’s position on education is clear: “We're only asking for a more complete accounting of evolutionary orthodoxy to be presented, including empirical challenges facing it. That's all.” How evil is that?

Well, for those who are guided by an emotional response guiding them, it's also convenient. Opponents routinely distort ID into something other than what it is; saying it's a religious and political campaign. It's a rhetorical hurdle that ID has to repeatedly clear on its path to doing actual science. But rather than focusing there, I want to give proper credence to the emotional and aesthetic challenge ID presents to people of a naturalistic mindset. As I said, I've had a taste of that feeling, and it's powerful. It doesn't determine the truth of ID, but we have to recognize it as a significant and real part of this controversy's landscape, and treat it with respect.

*William Lane Craig and others argue to other personal characteristics of the Creator in their versions of the cosmological argument for God. I think they are right to do so. That situation is entirely different, however, from the biological one, and the same arguments do not necessarily transfer over into biology. 

Posted: Mon - April 9, 2007  

 

A Teeny P.S. from Tom Gilson on His Position on Intelligent Design...

 

To summarize it in the fewest words: 

a) ID is a young science but a significant one. It is genuinely a science.

b) It is seriously misrepresented by its detractors, who almost never engage its actual arguments.

c) Peer-reviewed ID-related publications are few, not because the work isn't being done, but because the environment is so overwhelmingly hostile toward ID.

d) From my perspective as a non-specialist, the future of ID remains to be discovered as the controversy plays out, in conferences and in journals. This will take anywhere from 5 to 15 more years.

e) My strong, non-specialist hunch is that ID's research program will generally prevail when the current generation of anti-ID scientists retires or passes away.

f) My own contribution, however, is not to defend the science. My contribution is to support the ID program, and to defend it from misrepresentations, distortions, and other attacks.

By Thomas E. Woodward

 

 When British novelist Charles Dickens penned those now-famous words in 1859 as the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, he had no idea he was making literary history. These famous words capture the paradox of France on the eve of the French Revolution. The aristocracy flaunted their hyper-luxurious living (the best of times) in the face of those who slid ever deeper into desperate poverty (the worst of times).

I see the “best of times – worst of times” as the perfect description of another powerful paradox which faces us this year. At the very moment of the ultimate celebration of the theory of evolution – the Charles Darwin Bicentennial Year of 2009 – Darwin’s aging theory seems to be unraveling with increasing speed in the face of hostile scientific evidence. In short, Darwinian evolution is now tottering on the brink of a dramatic, humiliating collapse. In terms of the earthquakes that mark the crazy history of modern science, this would be the “big one.”  

 The Best of Times

For exuberant fans of Charles Darwin, 2009 is the “best of times” since their hero turns 200.   By an odd quirk of history, Darwin shares the exact same birth date with Abraham Lincoln: February 12, 1809. Darwin promoters are making much of this connection between these two titans of history. 

One American, Robert Stephens, has gloated that Darwin is the greater of the two arguing, “Lincoln emancipated the slaves, while Darwin emancipated the mind.” He added that Darwin freed science from the grip of its old superstition of a Creator who was responsible for life and humanity. For example, former Oxford professor Richard Dawkins confessed that evolutionary theory freed him from the anxiety that nature might contain the telltale pointers to God. Said Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” 

For such enthusiasts, the Darwin-party doesn’t die away in February. Rather, the “best of times” rolls on at full blast until November 24, when his famous book On the Origin of Species, which launched the modern theory of evolution, reaches a major milestone: its 150^th anniversary. 

The Year 2009 is shaping up as the ultimate Darwin-gala; universities, museums and TV networks around the world have scheduled hundreds of celebrations.   Darwin’s genius will be highlighted, along with the “triumph” of his all-encompassing theory of evolution. Evolutionists, who love to repeat that their favored theory is “overwhelmingly proven by scientific facts” are also eager to seize the opportunity to bash and trash their most feared threat: the competitor theory of intelligent design (ID). 

Darwinists have used dozens of books, and hundreds of articles and media appearances to retell and, often to badly distort, the story of their clash with intelligent design. This debate is shaping up increasingly as a momentous clash between Goliath (neo-Darwinism) and the upstart David (ID theory).

This raises the question: How healthy is Darwin’s theory as it celebrates its sesquicentennial? Darwin’s theory is built on the power of natural selection – the survival of the fittest – but is it fit to survive? Is ID theory making inroads?

One part of the theory seems solid. Darwinian processes (natural selection acting on genetic variations and mutations) seem to work at the level of microevolution. By that, we mean that God built into nature a weeding-out process, which leads to the fine-tuning or minor tweaking of bodies and systems of animals and plants. This part of evolutionary theory isn’t controversial; even the strongest biblical literalists would see some validity here. The real issue is macroevolution: the development of all living things from simple one-celled ancestors; driven by purely unintelligent processes in nature.

 

            It is right at this point, that we see increasingly ominous signs as to whether Darwinian theory will survive much longer. Let me cite five quick reasons.

First, even leading scientists who are not affiliated with ID theory are admitting that Darwin’s theory may explain the “survival of the fittest” but not the “arrival of the fittest.”   A group that I describe as the OOF scientists in Darwin Strikes Back (OOF comes from the MIT Press book they published, Origination of Organismal Form) are making even greater waves now. Sixteen of these rebel scientists, known as the Altenberg 16, came together to look for a new theory that adequately explains from where new body form comes from. These are evolutionists in the broad sense, but they have made no secret that Darwin’s mechanism has struck out after 150 years of testing. 

Second, Darwinists are showing a bizarre dogmatism nowadays, and have rejected the very vigorous commitment to free speech which Darwin advocated in the Origin. In his introduction he said, "I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question, and this cannot possibly be done here." Here is a delicious modern irony: On the year of the Bicentennial, Darwin’s disciples have become ferociously anti-Darwinian. They oppose the open presentation of “facts …leading to conclusions opposite” to Darwin’s conclusions.

Third, Darwin’s favourite picture of “common ancestry” – the single tree of life which unites all life into one grand family tree – is coming under heavy assault from scholars within the Darwinian tent. Some have admitted that the tree must be “quietly laid to rest” as new strange complexities appear from the study of DNA patterns. 

Fourth, scientists who plumb the depths of cellular complexity are shaking their heads increasingly at the reality they’re finding. This new world of nano-technology defies any plausible “step-by-tiny-step” scenario of evolution. A new book by biochemist Fazale Rana, The Cell’s Design, makes these discoveries accessible to the lay reader. Rana concludes, “When I contemplate these amazing systems inside the cell, I can’t help but wonder if Darwin would have advanced his theory of evolution if he knew then what we know now about biochemistry.”

Fifth, over a dozen laboratory research projects are under way around the U.S. and several foreign countries; amazing results which validate design theory are already pouring in. I told the story of the experiments by Dr. Ralph Seelke, tweaking the DNA of billions of E. coli bacteria in his lab at the University of Wisconsin. I told of Dr. Seelke’s work in Darwin Strikes Back and shared his discovery of how wimpy evolutionary processes are proving to be, once they are put to the test.

For Darwin’s theory and his legacy, the Year 2009 is truly a tale of not one theory but of two competing theories. For Darwin, this is the best of times (in terms of exuberant celebration) and it is the worst of times (in the steady unravelling of his macroevolutionary theory). How shall Christians respond? I suggest individuals and churches carve out time in their 2009 schedule to study this issue diligently and to present (from a biblical perspective) the fascinating story of Charles Darwin and his theory. Strive to balance both his good points and his theory’s massive problems. (See our special webpage at www.trinitycollege.edu for this balanced tally.) Use this occasion to present the case for intelligent design through Illustra Media’s two fantastic DVDs: Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet.

Here is a window of opportunity too big and rich to pass up. Share the “tale of two theories” and buy up this opportunity to share the good news of a Creator who made us for a marvellous, infinite purpose – to know Him in an intimate relationship; truly the best of times that go on forever.

 

Thomas E. Woodward is a Research Professor and Chair of Bible/Theology Division at Trinity College of Florida. He is the Executive Director of the C.S. Lewis Society and has authored two award-wining books, Doubts about Darwin and Darwin Strikes Back.  

 

This article appeared in the March 2009 issue of Connections, Trinity College's magazine.