Equal Time for Intelligent Design?  An Intimate Debate Case

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Con: Science Curricula That Include Evolution Should Not Include ID

How organisms originated on earth is one of the most fundamental questions people have asked for centuries. This question rightfully deserves a place within a science curriculum, however only scientifically grounded theories should be entertained as answers. For centuries people explained natural events in terms of miracles and gods. Now scientific answers replace many of these ideas. Certain religious sects, especially the evangelical Christians in the United States, believe that theories such as Evolution undermine their religious beliefs. Some believe that an Intelligent Designer created the Universe together with the organisms on earth just as we find them today while others believe that the Designer only entered at certain specific times (e.g., in the early stages of life). They argue that the ID principle should be represented in the science classroom if evolution is taught. This is not acceptable for the following reasons.

1. Bad designs: Organisms are not intelligently designed. No intelligent designer would have designed the human eye so poorly with a reversed retina and a blind spot in the middle. Most people in the United States either wear corrective lenses or have corrective surgery on their eyes. This is not intelligent design. Older people in the world have trouble with back pain, prostate trouble and other aliments that are due to poor design features. The esophagus and the trachea cross each other in the human throat, and because of this imperfect design many people end up choking on food that goes down the wrong way. This design would be corrected simply by having the two tubes completely separate one from another. Not only are these designs imperfect, it is also critical to note that we are able to explain “the imperfections” by looking at the evolutionary history of the organisms. That is, we can see how the crossover system of the esophagus and the trachea is a legacy of evolutionary history which began in fish.

2. Vestigial organs: Vestigial organs exist in all organisms. These are organs that have no apparent function or reduced function. For example, in humans we have the appendix, the muscles that wiggle the ears, the coccyx or tail bone, and goose bumps. There are many species of animals that live in caves (e.g., fish, salamanders) with degenerate eyes that cannot see. Snakes have one functionless lung and birds have one functionless ovary. There are flightless birds (e.g., kiwis, ostriches) with wings that are too puny to be useful. There are whales with tiny back legs having all of the normal bones (but miniaturized) that are embedded in their tissues. DNA has many known pseudogenes that are never turned on. Intelligent designers will argue that these structures really aren’t functionless; they do have functions, it’s just that scientists haven’t identified them yet.

   Again, the critical point is that not only are the structures functionless, but that biologists are able to explain how this happened by using the evolutionary approach: the ancestors of the organisms once had functioning structures, but when they occupied new habitats (such as caves) or adopted new patterns of behavior, these organs began to regress since they were no longer under selective pressure and advantageous to their owners.

3. Extinction: Paleontologists have determined that perhaps 500 million species that once existed on this planet have become extinct. These are clearly failed designs. This cannot be the work of an Intelligent Designer, yet it is easily explained by competition and natural selection among species vying for limited resources.

4. Embryological argument: There are many structures that are made by an embryo that are reabsorbed or drastically modified before birth. For example, whale embryos develop hair and then discard it by the time of birth. The whale embryo first makes a normal nostril at the end of its snout and then it shifts to the top of the head to form a blowhole. Why wouldn’t an intelligent designer wishing a hairless whale and one with a blowhole simply design it that way to start with? In mammalian embryos, gill supports and blood vessels to supply them are first made and then reabsorbed. All such developments are incomprehensible to a person arguing in favor of the creation model except to say that we cannot understand the mind of the creator. On the other hand, all of these are perfectly understandable if we accept the fact that ancestral genes are still present.

5. God of the gaps: There are many things that scientists do not yet understand. There are gaps in our knowledge. Years ago we did not understand why the planets move the way they do, or what lightening is, or how heredity is transmitted. Now we do. People originally ascribed these unknown events to gods and miracles. As science advances these gaps in our knowledge decrease. Some Intelligent Design proponents such as Michael Behe say that we shall never come up with an explanation for how certain biochemical processes evolve because they are “irreducibly complex” and can only have been intelligently designed. The ID proponents simply give up and declare these to be miracles. This is the antithesis of a scientist’s approach. They are arguing from the position of “personal incredulity,” i.e. that just because they cannot personally imagine how such things can happen, they believe that they cannot happen (R. Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, New York: Bantam Press). Philosopher David Hume pointed out in the eighteenth century that just because we cannot provide a natural explanation for a phenomenon does not allow us to conclude that a miracle was involved.

   All of the systems that Behe claims to be irreducibly complex have been well studied and have been shown not to be so. For example, the blood clotting cascade works perfectly well in whales that are missing a part of the cascade, and blood still clots in puffer fish despite their missing three parts. Thus, it is easy to see how these systems could be built up slowly over millennia one piece at a time.

   Theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer are particularly distressed with the gaps argument because as science fills in the gaps there is a slow erosion of God’s Powers: “… God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide” (Dawkins, 2006).

6. Politics and law: The Intelligent Design argument was not successful in the infamous legal case argued in Dover, Pennsylvania, where equal time was demanded for alternative teaching of biology. The conservative judge correctly identified that the defendants and witnesses who were arguing for Intelligent Design believed that the “Designer” was God. Thus, the school policy was in violation of the US Constitution and the separation of church and state clause.

   U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Jones decried the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.

   A six-week trial over the issue yielded “overwhelming evidence” establishing that intelligent design “is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/

7. Fairness: Scientists and teachers have an obligation to present to the public their best understanding of the physical nature of the universe. For 150 years the prevailing paradigm has been that organisms change over time—i.e., they evolve. The evidence is present in the fossil record, as well as in the anatomy, embryology and genetics of organisms. Anyone that is going to challenge the established facts and theory must present a credible alternative with overwhelming evidence. “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” The advocates of Intelligent Design provide little or no evidence except to proclaim that our present understanding of evolution cannot explain everything; but that is the state of all science—that is why scientists continue to work.

   Scientists do not have the obligation to present to students every crackpot idea that comes along. Not every theory has equal merit and it would not be fair to pretend that they do. Scientists do have the obligation to present the evidence as they understand it. Religion and miracles do not belong in the science classroom.

8. Equal time for whom? ID proponents argue that their views should have equal time with evolution to explain the natural world. Eugenie Scott has identified eight different positions one might take on the creation-evolution debate http://www.natcenscied.org/). Moreover, there are hundreds of creation stories from other cultures including a “No Creation Story” from India where the world has always existed as it is now. If these stories were granted equal time when would science ever be taught? (M. Shermer, 2006, Why Darwin Matters, New York: Times Books.)

9. Testability and convergence: There is no obvious way that we can test the concept of an Intelligent Designer, especially one with supernatural powers. By definition, they can perform miracles. How does one test miracles? In contrast, the tenets of evolution can be and have been repeatedly tested by scientists. There is a convergence of evidence from all branches of science all pointing to the same conclusion that organisms including humans evolved from organisms very different than themselves.

10. Non-intelligence: Intelligent Design proponents say that organisms look designed because they are. We agree. They are designed, but the “designer” is natural selection working on the chance variations and mutations that are present in the population. Natural selection is not intelligent—it is a non-intelligent (rather than unintelligent) process whereby those members of a population who survive and reproduce most successfully will be the most successful in passing genes with their characteristics to the next generation. The question of intelligence is irrelevant and simply not the issue.

11. False dichotomy: ID proponents spend virtually all of their time criticizing the supposed inadequacies of modern biology and evolution—arguing that if evolution has flaws then Intelligent Design must be accepted as the only other game in town. Obviously, just because evolution is flawed does not mean that ID is correct. There may be other possibilities. The ID argument must advance its own case using evidence and not just criticism—this they have failed to do.

12. The Anthropic Principle: Physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler in their 1988 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York: Oxford University Press) state:

    “It is not only man that is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or other. Man could never have come into being in such a universe.”

    In fact, ID creationists argue the universe could not have existed at all—unless it was designed for life and us!

    There are several replies to this:

    • The universe is not finely tuned to life. Most of it is empty space and the matter that we know about is inhospitable to life. In fact, for most of its history life did not exist on Earth either. Further, it may be that the so-called “constants” of nature have varied over time, making the universe only finely tuned now!

    • Our universe is not finely tuned to us; we are finely tuned to it. There may be other life forms that could be based on other physics.

    • There may be other universes. String theory predicts 10⁵⁰⁰ possible worlds with different self-consistent laws and physics. We may live in a multiverse, in which our universe is one of many bubble universes all with different laws. Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking imagines that baby universes may lead to the spontaneous creation of tiny universes out of nothing. (Shermer, 2006).

13. Designer design: If we accept the ID argument, we are still left with the question “Who designed the Designer?” (Dawkins, 2006).

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