CrimePsych

The debate surrounding the development of the universe, specifically life and even more specifically (and contentiously) human life, has of late entered another phase. Intelligent Design Theory, or IDT, is increasing in popularity and has become almost a household term. The “monkey” debates of the last century where the teaching of evolution in public schools was controversial are now being mirrored in the current debate over the teaching of IDT in schools as a valid scientific alternative to standard Darwinian evolution.

This debate will likely remain contentious for some time, thanks in large part to the political and religious climate, more so in America than Australia, where Christian fundamentalist movements grow in size and influence. Scientifically and philosophically speaking, however, the debate is quite unbalanced: the evidence makes IDT difficult to support, and Darwinian evolutionary theory difficult to refute. When the two are examined side by side, it becomes clear that IDT has a lot of work to do before it can stand as a viable alternative to Darwin’s ideas.

IDT claims that the complexity of the world as we see it could not have arisen through random events. This is the “irreducible complexity” premise, which undergirds all IDT musings. This premise has been the core of many proof-of-God arguments since before the time even of Christ, finding excellent articulation in Aquinas’s Suma Theologica. More relevantly, William Paley has laid out an analogy now famous in philosophical and theological circles:

“Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.”

This is essentially the argument from design: we see such well-organized and interdependent systems existing in nature that, surely, these must have had some intelligent designer.

The argument from design is taken a step further by Michael Behe in his book supporting IDT entitled Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. Here, in this foremost of IDT texts, Behe claims that evolution and natural selection are insufficient to explain complex biochemical structures which we can observe in nature and in ourselves. Essentially, evolution is supposed to work through random mutations between generations of living organisms. Most of these random mutations (or genetic “copying errors” if you will) result in almost imperceptible changes in the offspring, and so produce no significant changes in the species in the short term. The process is gradual and moored firmly in the environmental niche the organism inhabits. A very slight mutation can, in the right environment, confer a modicum of reproductive advantage to a given organism. Even if the reproductive difference between the mutant(s) and the rest of the population is tiny, over time these mutant genes are more and more likely to be selected for, thus creating a significant change in the population, and eventually speciation.

Behe suggests that this gradual accumulative process simply doesn’t apply at the biochemical level, thus making the whole theory of evolution suspect. Using the example of a mousetrap, he explains that all of the parts working together create a powerful tool, whereas each part by itself is useless, at least in the context of the mousetrap. All of the pieces need to be constructed before the trap will work. However, in evolutionary theory unlike in human trap-building, no guiding mind can shape the pieces to be used for some future purpose; they must each confer some advantage in the short term. Behe argues that at the biochemical level, advanced cell structures that perform intricate and coordinated functions could not have developed gradually, because each of the chemical/molecular components by itself confers no advantage in the absence of the system in which it adheres. Thus, evolution falls short as an explanation because the leap between the constituent components and the finished product is too large to be explicable in terms of random mutations and conferred advantage. There must have been some foresight.

This poses an interesting problem for evolutionary theorists, but it is far from a damning disproof of their beliefs, or a ringing endorsement for IDT. First, for many complex systems, such as the human eye, theorists and researchers have found that although the end product is fantastically complex in terms of cellular specialization and coordination, a gradual development is nonetheless possible. The move from photosensitive cells through better coordination between such cells to the specialization of given cells on a particular organism to coordinate the reactions of the entire organism is a gradual evolutionary process that is quite plausible. It must be remembered in all cases, even the case of the smallest biochemical “machines,” that evolution works with the parts it has at hand, regardless of how they were designed originally, or what they were designed for. A system that appears “irreducibly complex” may merely be a system that developed its parts from others in a scavenging operation that worked well. An accidental yet fruitful interaction between two molecules can produce an advantageous partnership, though neither was designed for the new arrangement. This is not evidence for design.

Further and perhaps equally importantly, IDT seems to hold that anything evolutionary theory cannot explain is somehow proof for intelligent design, with no other options on the horizon. So, if I find it difficult to explain precisely how the eye could have evolved, at both the grossest and finest levels, reaching back even into the molecular level, evolution becomes insufficient and “the designer” is the default option. This is a curious way forward. In God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Niall Shanks takes such thinking to task, and in a cutting but apt phrase explains that “Of God, the Devil, and Darwin, we have really good scientific evidence for the existence of only Darwin”.

The problem this witticism illustrates is the total scientific and philosophical baselessness for IDT. First, both science and philosophy are based in reasoning from available resources, and the evaluation of things in as far as we can know them. Both fields have developed wild speculations about future events and the current state of the world, but even the most far-fetched of theories attempts to contain itself within the world, and be bound by its constraints as we know them. We have evidence that we share, for example, many common genetic characteristics with chimps, as well as other primates, less with other mammals, even less with fish, and still less with plants. However, all of these aforementioned forms of life still share some common characteristics.

Now, one can reason about this in several ways. Perhaps an intelligent designer made all of these things from the same materials, and so they share some characteristics. Or, perhaps all of these organisms, from most closely to most distantly related, somehow evolved independently, with no common ancestry. Or, perhaps all developed from a single source and later branched into distinctly different things over time.

Hypothesis one is IDT, and really introduces an element into the system which is not contained within it: magic. This may sound glib, but I can think of no better way to characterize this position. To state that some unexplained force made these things the way they are is an evasion of an explanation. It defies the principles of reason, science, and philosophy, and thus shirks all rigour. It is a simple but empty way of describing an interesting problem. Hypothesis two is more scientifically plausible, but still seems highly unlikely based on what we know about how life works. Hypothesis three is basic evolutionary theory, and is the only sound option of the three. By looking at what now exists, and how it stands in relation to each other living thing, it is possible to reconstruct a history of the development of life. There will of course be gaps in our understanding, and perhaps even complete errors in some aspects of it. However, the failures of evolutionary theory are not the victories of IDT. I believe that many scientists would be delighted to see many current theories explaining the evolution of specific species and systems turned on their heads. Stephen J. Gould, for example, introduced the idea of punctuated equilibrium which caused an enormous stir in the scientific community, which had believed that evolution was a gradual, even process. However, this did not invalidate the basic principles of evolution: on the contrary, it reinforced them.

Organisms change in response to their environments. If there is no significant environmental change, it is likely that a species will remain pretty-much as is, so long as it is reproducing well. When a change occurs in the environment (the greater the change the truer this is), a greater opportunity for mutation to confer an advantage exists, and so change occurs more rapidly. Thus Gould’s claims served to strengthen our knowledge of, not convince us of the falsity of, evolutionary theory. I am certain there are more Gouldian shifts which we will encounter in the coming years, but until another at least equally plausible alternative comes along, we will continue to work in the current evolutionary paradigm.

One prominent challenge to evolutionary theory is the explanation of origins. If we take the question of “what made this?” back to the beginning of life, scientists have suggested a number of theories which involve the interaction of amino acids and proteins which, under the conditions present on early earth, joined most fruitfully. However, questions about where these came from, the origin of the earth itself and the universe as a whole still remain. Here is where our current world view seems to stumble, where IDT seems to rise and shine. Sure, we can speculate that there was a big bang and collapse, or look to the Greeks who believed in an “always present” universe with no creator, or a steady-state, but our grounds for these are far less stable than for other earthly speculation. IDT suggests that at the beginning of all effects was the first cause, the selfcaused causer, which solves the infinite regression or looping of other theories.

Sadly, however, this ties up a loose end with magic, and so does not help either philosophically or scientifically. It may be possible, and perhaps I will be rueing having ever written this when the intelligent designer makes themselves known unmistakably tomorrow afternoon, but observation and experience rule out magic as a valid explanation for any natural phenomenon! Unless there can be found some plausible scientific evidence for assuming the first premise of IDT (that there is an intelligent designer, or designing force), IDT will only be useful as a way to make evolutionary theorists come up with and do research to discover better explanations, in short, to build better mousetraps rather than switching to angelic spacecraft.