I recently had a conversation with a friend who brought up Intelligent Design (ID), and it reminded me of something I’ve mentioned several years ago. Given how much time has passed, I thought it was worth reiterating it now. And that is the strange fact that both atheists and Christians, especially Young Earth Creationists (YEC), both fall into the same error in thinking that ID requires the existence of God. Atheists use this claim to argue that ID should not be taught in schools. Christians tend to use ID as an apologetic to defend Creationism against Darwinism.
The problem is that when we see what ID claims, it’s nowhere near requiring a deity. Put simply, ID states that the evidence we have for evolution does not make any sense if we hold to random processes causing it all. Rather, the evidence that we see indicates that the way that organisms exist now makes sense only if they were designed to be specific ways. That is, evolution only makes sense if it is teleological, not random. (Teleological just means that it has an end or a goal in mind, something which Darwin specifically rejected.)
Now the temptation is that the intelligent designer of ID must be God, but that’s not actually what ID is saying. ID is only saying that the evidence of what we see indicates that life on Earth has been designed by some form of intelligence. Given that ID does not require a YEC view of time, this means that it is perfectly consistent with ID to limit the claims of ID strictly to something along the lines of, “The evolution of life on Earth over the past 4.5 billion years came about from an intelligent designer intending a specific outcome.”
Such a designer need not be any more intelligent than human beings already are. In theory, if we wanted to do so, we could set up labs on Mars and grow some microscopic organisms, guiding their evolution in the lab by selecting certain breeds of organisms over others (the same as people already do for dogs and other animals), genetically modifying those that don’t have the required genetic sequences already in place to form new organisms, and we could release those organisms into the Martian wilderness. We wouldn’t even really need a few billion years to tinker around with the life forms we’ve introduced there. If we were to build up a sufficiently advanced life form that was able to be self-aware, and it surveyed its historical settings, looking at fossils left behind and so forth, our intelligent design of those life forms would look indistinguishable from how life forms came about on Earth, in this scenario.
Really, the only thing that is keeping humans from doing this right now is the fact that it takes a lot of time and money to get to Mars, and this isn’t something that very many people would want to spend those resources on. But it’s easy to imagine an alien race very similar to human beings who might wish to tinker around on some planet. They discover Earth and set up their labs on Earth, terraforming the planet and guiding the evolution of life until one day humans are on the planet. Those aliens do not need to have any divine characteristics at all. In fact, they could even by slightly stupider (on average) than human beings are, and still have a statistical chance of having enough smart aliens to pull off such a scenario.
And since ID is limited solely to the evolution of life on Earth, the fact that the evolution of life on Earth makes more sense from a teleological perspective than from a random perspective does not even imply the existence of God for the rest of the universe, because the aliens who created us may have come about from completely different methods. Our evolution appears guided. Perhaps if we saw the evidence of this hypothetical race’s origins, a completely different theory might be proposed that would not require God.
That is why ID is neither proof of the existence of God, nor should it be disbarred from being taught in schools. It is also why Christian theists need to have better arguments against atheism (and the good news is, we do!). Sure, ID can disprove Darwinism, but that doesn’t prove God when someone even slightly less intelligent than we are could replicate the results we see on Earth. So while ID isn’t bad by any means, especially since it does help show how ludicrous Darwinism is, Christians need to be very wary about relying on ID as an apologetic silver bullet against materialistic Darwinists.
Interesting thoughts.
ReplyDeleteOnly thing I’d wonder: if ID does not necessitate an eternal designer (outside of the designed space-time box), we still are left with a regression of designers without a start point. If intelligence begets intelligence via ID, what is the origin of intelligence itself? Can intelligence (in whatever form you conceive...deity, aliens, global consciousness brains in vats) arise from non intelligence? I think this would be the main reason ID requires/implies an ultimate Designer. Either intelligence is divine or it isn’t really “intelligence” but only appears so and thus allows for the undesigned worldview. The problem with the undesigned view doesn’t allow for explanation of the where the raw materials come from.
If you’re trying to say ID on EARTH in particular doesn’t require deity, because we as ID’d organisms can replicate ID, ok. But regress enough and you need God eventually, no?
Hello Eyezayah,
DeleteYes, I agree with the points your raise. They are the similar kind of points I would raise as well, because I would point out on scientific grounds that we have no reason to believe intelligence can ever arise out of non-intelligent sources (every single thing that we look at that has intelligence arises from other intelligent beings; even if one were to consider artificial intelligence as being equivalent with genuine intelligence, artificial intelligence is designed by human beings).
But ID is not making that claim themselves. They are making the claim that evolution on Earth is best explained by intelligent design, and it remains agnostic as to what may have caused that intelligence to come about. This gives atheists an "out" to where they could acknowledge the strength of ID, while still asserting something like, say, panspermia or similar types of theories.
As to your final paragraph, the claim an atheist can still make is that since we don't KNOW how intelligence may have arisen for the aliens who designed us, it may have happened without God. Which of course is an argument from silence and is really nothing more than wishful thinking. But to combat that view, you need more than ID--you need to engage in philosophy.
Just to piggyback on Peter's fine post (I'm not adding anything new that Peter hasn't pointed out, I'm just fleshing out some things):
Delete1. I know Peter knows this, but for the sake of those who might not, there are non-biological ID arguments as well (e.g. finely tuned constants, conditions, and/or laws pointing to an intelligent designer). However, I think Peter is focusing on the biological arguments (e.g. irreducible complexity, functional coherence) because that's usually what most people have in mind when ID is brought up.
2. The formal structure of ID could be an argument that is from analogy or analogous, deductive, inductive, abductive (inference to the best explanation), or perceptive (Reid, Ratzsch, Plantinga). It could involve likelihoods or it could involve antecedent probabilities (Bayes). Each has their strengths and weaknesses. Some are better than others as ID arguments.
3. I think ID works as an argument against naturalistic evolution including for the reasons Peter points out, viz. naturalistic evolution is an unguided, undirected, blind, random, purposeless, or non-teleological process, which would be hugely problematic.
4. I think ID is more challenging to make as an argument for Christian theism, though ID is consistent with Christian theism. At best, ID could be said to support Christian theism, but the jury's still out on how much support there really is.
5. As Peter notes, the intelligent designer could be anyone or anything intelligent enough to design life. Just to give some examples, the intelligent designer could be the Christian God, Allah, the Platonic Demiurge, the First Cause, a pantheistic god, a deistic god of one stripe or another, Hindu polytheistic gods, Olympian gods and goddesses, Prometheus, a demigod, a fallen or unfallen angel, extraterrestial aliens, time travelers, human beings from a parallel universe, the Force from Star Wars, Harry Potter using magic to conjure creatures ex nihilo, etc.
6. That said, an argument could fall short of proving Christian theism, but still be useful as a step in an overall argument for Christian theism. At the very least, it's useful to eliminate worldview contenders like atheism or naturalism since it would leave theistic candidates on the table.
7. Speaking of extra steps in an overall argument, I agree with both Peter and Eyezayah that ID typically moves from some empirical feature in nature to an intelligent designer but stops there. However, one could add a second step to move from an intelligent designer to the God of the Bible. This "second step" could involve an argument about how intelligence cannot arise from non-intelligence (as Peter points out), the personal from the impersonal, arguments from consciousness, etc.
8. In fairness, the argument from ID isn't the only argument that's similarly better against other positions (e.g. naturalism) but more difficult to deploy for Christian theism. This isn't necessarily a deficiency of these kinds of arguments. We have different arguments for different purposes. There's offensive and defensive apologetics, but not all arguments are strong offensively and defensively at the same time. And few arguments can prove an entire worldview in one fell swoop anyway (e.g. perhaps transcendental arguments?). Besides, Christians have a quiver full of arguments for Christian theism as well as against competing worldviews.
It's important to say that, from an actual constitutional perspective (as opposed to the faux constitutional claims made on the basis of bad precedents), there would be absolutely nothing impermissible at all about teaching the ID arguments as creationist arguments for God in the public schools, in science class. The whole idea that the constitution forbids teaching anything that supports religion in the public schools because that would be an "establishment of religion" is baloney from an originalist constitutional perspective. Religion itself was taught in local schools that would be regarded as "public" until far into the 20th century, and this was never regarded as unconstitutional. So it really doesn't matter whether or not a teacher draws the conclusion that an ID argument supports the existence of an omnipotent creator.
ReplyDeleteI myself am actually more optimistic about the force of the ID arguments for the existence of at least a very powerful being or beings, far more powerful and intelligent than we are ourselves, and for most entities, plausibly God. I now unabashedly discuss ID arguments as theistic arguments, and in a sense I've been "forced" into doing so, because so many of the objections brought both by non-Christians and (sadly) by Christians are directly theological in nature! God "wouldn't" do it this way. God "would" only create by indetectable evolutionary processes. This design is poor design, so God wouldn't make it, etc. It would be overly restrictive on any serious discussion of these issues in an academic classroom, whether at the K-12 level or at the college level, to require the teacher not to address those objections or even discuss them as though God is "in the running" as a candidate for the designer. And I think that the insistence that "we're not saying who the designer is" has often hampered the ID advocates' discussion of these issues and has been taken to mean that they are being disingenuous. The claim of disingenuousness, ironically, I think is strengthened in people's minds by a tacit recognition that this really *could* be used as a theistic argument and also that (especially when it comes to the origins of man) ID counterarguments to the common evolutionary claims have major theological implications. It's entirely scientifically possible that man really was specially created. So it becomes artificial to try to teach a class without any frank, open discussion of these issues.
In any event, from a sheer perspective of academic fairness, if we are going to discuss the origins of life and of man in science classes at all, then it is poor academic practice to treat one hypothesis as worthy of being advocated in those classes but another hypothesis that has a legitimate evidential claim as unworthy. If that spins off quite naturally into theological matters and evidence for the existence of God and creation of man, I would tell the secularists to "blame" the evidence, not the teacher, and stop trying to "cancel" the ID arguments on fake constitutional grounds. It's good sometimes just to take this strong forward position.
I agree with what you say regarding what should be taught in schools for sure. And of course you nail it on the head by pointing out that it's baloney to say one couldn't teach ID even if it was used to promote creationism, given the originalist constitutional perspective. I guess the point of my post is more just to caution Creationists that proving ID isn't going to be sufficient against a savvy atheist opponent. But you could definitely use their arguments to bolster Creationism claims too.
DeleteGreat points, Lydia.
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