Giving up Darwin

This is from a generally sympathetic review of Meyer's book. The reviewer, a Yale computer science prof., seems to agree that the theory of naturalistic evolution, as currently formulated, can't deliver the goods, but he remains unpersuaded by intelligent design as a satisfactory alternative:

If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural. But then we still haven’t explained the Cambrian explosion. An intelligent designer who interferes repeatedly, on the other hand, poses an even harder problem of explaining why he chose to act when he did. Such a cause would necessarily have some sense of the big picture of life on earth. What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose? And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on? An intelligent designer makes perfect sense in the abstract. The real challenge is how to fit this designer into life as we know it. Intelligent design might well be the ultimate answer. But as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go.

https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/

That raises a number of general issues, as well as issues specific to intelligent design theory:

i) The reviewer erects a false dichotomy between deistic providence and continuous divine intervention. But it's not as though there can't be something reasonable in-between those two extremes. There's a sense in which the degree of divine intervention is arbitrary inasmuch as God could intervene one more time or one less time. There's no absolute logical cutoff for exactly the right number of times God should intervene. 

ii) Moreover, divine intervention involves tradeoffs. It can be a good thing, but it also has a disruptive impact on the future. As such, there can be too much divine intervention as well as too little. Human existence needs a fair measure of stability and predictability. 

iii) If we view evolution as the process by which life originates and/or diversifies, then evolution is an inefficient process for achieving a long-range goal. Of course, that takes the truth of evolution for granted, which is the very question at issue. 

On this view, some organisms are the means by which other organisms come into existence. So their purpose, if they have a purpose, is instrumental. And if we cast that in terms of theistic evolution, the process is very convoluted and "wasteful", as a way of reaching the final outcome. If, on the other hand, we're talking about naturalistic evolution, then that's not a goal-oriented process to begin with. Species are the incidental byproduct of a blind process. 

iv) If, however, we reject an evolutionary narrative, then life on earth is not primarily a process for deriving newer species from prior species. Prior species don't exist as a bridge to more advanced species. On that view, doomed organisms aren't evolutionary dead-ends, since it never was the primary way of producing new species. 

To take a comparison, sometimes a family line dies out. There are no more descendants. But it doesn't follow that that linage was a waste of time. There's value in individual human lives even if the linage terminates at some point. That's not a blind alley–as if the value of the linage was instrumental, in producing decedents for the sake of descendants. 

v) Suppose we consider old-earth creationism as an alternative to naturalistic evolution or theistic evolution. On that view, species may become extinct, species may be phased in and phrased out, not because God lacks foresight and repeatedly backs himself into a corner (although that is a realistic scenario in open theism), but because not all species can coexist. For one thing, there's not room enough for all species to coexist. 

In addition, some species require a different biosphere. A different atmosphere. Different ratio of oxygen to nitrogen or carbon dioxide. Fauna that require a different kind of flora (e.g. tropical swamps). In that event, creation will be diachronically staged, in part to make room for new species, and in part because the conditions for the life of certain species are variable. 

vi) As for disease prone or heartbreak prone, in Christian theology that's not a design flaw or artifact of creation but a consequence of the Fall. And the Fall has a purpose, too. 

vii) It would still be the case that intelligent design theory is guilty of postulating ad hoc divine interventions to resolve unexplained problems in the fossil record. I'm not commenting directly on that.