Equal Time for Intelligent Design?  An Intimate Debate Case

---

Pro: Science Curricula That Include Evolution Should Also Include ID

How organisms originated on earth is one of the most fundamental questions people have asked for centuries. This question rightfully should be taught in the science classroom. For many years teachers have explained the presence of organisms saying the random process of evolution is the process that has brought this about. Recently, an alternative process has been proposed that is consistent with the prima facie evidence. Organisms look designed because they are. An Intelligent Design agent produced the origin and diversity of life on earth. This view is consistent with the views of the majority of Americans and we argue that both these views deserve equal time in the classrooms of the public schools.

1. Fairness: Intellectual honesty and fairness demand that ID be taught whenever Evolution is taught as they are both legitimate alternative explanations about the world and its organisms. Students should hear the arguments and decide for themselves as to which makes most sense.

2. Paley’s watch: As William Paley (1802) suggested, the world and its inhabitants look designed. Organisms are beautifully adapted for their ways of life. The beaks of birds are all specially adapted for their life style: the hooked beak of the eagle for tearing meat, the fish catching beak of the pelican, the sharp pointed beak of the woodpecker for piercing grubs in the wood, the water straining beak of the duck—each perfectly suited for the kind of life their owners lead. These structures and complex arrangements of structures such as the human eye cannot be the result of random events.

   We do not know who or what the designer is (it could be a super intelligence, a time-traveling cell biologist, or extraterrestrials) but a design requires a designer. Indeed, the Nobel Prize winning biochemist Francis Crick and a colleague published a well known paper arguing that the first life on Earth was seeded here by aliens (“Directed Panspermia”), so the notion of an extraterrestrial super intelligence is not mere science fiction.

3. Irreducible complexity: Many biological structures such as the immune system and the flagellum of a bacterium are irreducibly complex; that is, the removing of one part destroys the system’s function. Thus, they must have been produced together, and this implies a designer that put the system together all at once. Most cellular systems including photosynthesis, the blood clotting mechanisms, and a host of other metabolic pathways have not been explained by any biochemist interested in evolution. Some investigators have speculated about the evolution of these systems suggesting ways that parts of them could have come together, but they cannot explain where those parts come from in the first place. It seems self-evident that the first cells are self-contained units assembled concurrently. (M. Behe, 1996, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: Touchstone-Simon & Shuster.)

4. Simulations: Computer programs that purport to simulate evolution and natural selection must be designed themselves. This is strong evidence that evolution works exactly the same way; a designer is needed.

5. Homologies: Evolutionists say that similarities among organisms (homologies) that occur in the anatomy and DNA sequences are evidence of evolution, but in fact they simply indicate that the organisms have the same designer.

6. The Anthropic Principle: The cosmos is fined tuned to permit human life, according to the Anthropic Principle. If any one of the fundamental constants were even slightly different, life would have been impossible. Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, has identified these six cosmic numbers:

   • omega = 1, the amount of matter in the universe, such that if omega were greater the universe would have collapsed and if it were smaller no galaxies would have formed;
   • epsilon = 0.007, how firmly the atomic nuclei bind together, such that if epsilon were 0.006 or 0.008, matter could not exist as it does;
   • D = 3, the number of dimensions that we live in, such that if D were 2 or 4, life could not exist;
   • N = 10³⁶ , the ratio of the strength of gravity to that of electromagnetism, such that if it had a few less zeros, the universe would be too young and too small for life to evolve;
   • Q = 1/100,000, the fabric of the universe, such that if Q were smaller the universe would be dominated by giant black holes; and
   • lambda = 0.7, the cosmological constant or “antigravity force,” that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate, such that if the value were larger it would have prevented stars and galaxies from forming.

   “Change these relationships and stars, planets, and life could not exist. Thus, this is not just the best of all possible worlds, it is the only possible world—and a world crafted with remarkable math skills, to boot” (M. Shermer, 2006, Why Darwin Matters, New York: Times Books). This is clear evidence of design.

7. Multiple motives: Critics of the Intelligent Design model state that organisms are not designed perfectly. Behe (1996) answers this by saying, “Clearly, designers who have the ability to make better designs do not necessarily do so. For example, in manufacturing, ‘built-in obsolescence’ is not uncommon—a product is intentionally made so it will not last as long as it might, for reasons that supersede the simple goal of engineering excellence …. I do not give my children the best fanciest toys because I don’t want to spoil them, and because I want them to learn the value of a dollar. The argument from imperfection overlooks the possibility that the designer might have multiple motives, with engineering oftentimes relegated to a secondary goal …. The reasons that a designer would or would not do anything are virtually impossible to know.”

8. Vestigial organs: Evolutionists claim that an intelligent designer would never have produced functionless structures such as the appendix, and cave fish without eyes that can see. They argue that much of the DNA is “junk” without any use. Behe (1996) says there are three simple answers to this criticism:

   • We may not have discovered the function of these “vestigial structures” yet. The tonsils were once thought to be useless and now we know they are an integral part of the immune system. Moreover, physicians know that the appendix is not functionless; it contains cells that are part of the immune system. We have now discovered that some of the DNA that we thought was “junk” indeed serves important structural roles.
   • Even if you accept the fact that structures or chemicals like pseudogenes occur (i.e. genes that look “ancestral” but are “turned off”), you still have to account for them. Even to make a psuedogene requires a dozen sophisticated proteins.
   • A designer clearly might have designed an apparently useless structure that will have use at some future time in the history of the organism.

9. Randomness and probability: Evolutionists continually speak of the random effects of evolution; Stephen Jay Gould, noted evolutionary writer, has written about the contingency effects of evolution. That is, if you played the tape of evolution over again then the results would be different each time. To that we reply: the world hardly looks random. Indeed, even Aristotle pointed out there is a Scala Naturae or the ladder of life where inanimate objects are on the bottom, plants are on the next rung, then simple animals like worms, next and higher up, vertebrates and mammals, with humans occupying the highest rung. Ecosystems with hundreds and thousands of organisms are not random collections of species but a highly integrated network. The noted Nobel Prize winning astronomer, Fred Hoyle, has reportedly said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrap yard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. We can make the same statement about the random effects that are supposedly involved in the evolution of any complex organism, be it man or beast. The world is not random and random events could not have produced it.

10. Consciousness and higher faculties: Evolutionists claim that they can essentially ascribe all characteristics of organisms to processes such as random variation and natural selection. Yet, it is clear that these processes cannot explain consciousness, language and musical abilities, morality, religion and the soul. In fact, Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution with Charles Darwin, adamantly insisted that “natural selection cannot account for mathematical, artistic, or musical genius, as well as metaphysical musings, and wit and humor; and that something in ‘the unseen universe of Spirit’ had interceded at least three times in history: 1. The creation of life from inorganic matter. 2. The introduction of consciousness in the higher animals. 3. The generation of the above-mentioned faculties in mankind. He also believed that the raison d’être of the universe was the development of the human spirit.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace and A.R. Wallace, 1889, Darwinism; An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection With Some of Its Applications, London: Macmillan & Co.)

11. Politics and law: The recent legal case brought by the ACLU against the Dover Area School District was not a church vs. state issue, it was about a free speech issue. Here is the statement from the Discovery Institute.

    In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the ACLU is suing the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania for adopting a policy that requires students to be informed about the theory of intelligent design. The ACLU claims that the Dover policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by promoting a religious doctrine. While Discovery Institute does not support efforts to require the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it also strongly opposes the ACLU’s attempt to censor classroom discussion of intelligent design. Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, has released the following statement explaining the Institute’s position:

    “Eighty years ago the ACLU went to court in Tennessee to defend the right of John Scopes to teach his students about evolution. Today, the ACLU is betraying the principle of academic freedom by seeking a government-imposed gag-order on teachers and students that would prevent even voluntary discussions of intelligent design in the science classroom. All Americans who cherish free speech should reject the ACLU’s effort to decide the debate over evolution through court orders rather than the free marketplace of ideas.

    “Apparently the ACLU has come to believe that some ideas are just too dangerous for students and teachers to discuss. On the one hand, it insists that the First Amendment protects a teacher’s right to teach evidence supporting Darwin’s theory. On the other hand, it claims that the same First Amendment forbids teachers from discussing dissenting scientific theories. It looks like the ACLU believes that free speech only applies to one side of the evolution debate. This is a blatant double-standard.

    “Discovery Institute strongly opposes the ACLU’s effort to make discussions of intelligent design illegal. At the same time, we disagree with efforts to get the government to require the teaching of intelligent design. Misguided policies like the one adopted by the Dover School District are likely to be politically divisive and hinder a fair and open discussion of the merits of intelligent design among scholars and within the scientific community, points we have made repeatedly since we first learned about the Dover policy in 2004. Furthermore, most teachers currently do not know enough about intelligent design or have sufficient curriculum materials to teach about it accurately and objectively.

    “Rather than require students to learn about intelligent design, what we recommend is that teachers and students study more about Darwinian evolution, not only the evidence that supports the theory, but also scientific criticisms of the theory.” http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=284

Copyright © 1999–2010 by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science.  Please see our usage guidelines, which outline our policy concerning permissible reproduction of this work.