Intelligent design

Intelligent Design (ID) is the contention that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Intelligent Design is also the name of a movement associated with promoting the concept of Intelligent Design.

Proponents of Intelligent Design claim that it is scientific, however this claim has been challenged by the scientific community.. In 2005 a case was brought against a United States school board for requiring the reading of a disclaimer in Biology classes which mentioned Intelligent Design as an alternative to the Theory of Evolution. The judge ruled that Intelligent Design is not science, and essentially religious in nature.

This article is devoted to an overview of the Intelligent Design hypothesis and the intellectual merits of the arguments made on either side of the scientific debate, including perspectives from the philosophy of science. For information on the cultural controversy related to Intelligent Design and the agenda of the associated movement, see Wedge Strategy.

Overview

The classic teleological argument for the existence of an intelligent creator was famously formulated in the "watchmaker analogy" by William Paley. Essentially, the argument runs as follows: Imagine walking on a pebbled beach, where the pebbles may be wonderfully shaped, beautiful in different ways, interesting and varied one from another. However interesting and beautiful you find them, you will not doubt that they are the products of purely natural causes. However, if amongst the pebbles you find a watch, even if you have never seen a watch before, you will immediately recognise the watch as qualitatively different from the pebbles. Inspecting it, from the intricacy of its design, and the clear purpose of that design, you will inevitably and correctly conclude that the watch is not a 'natural' object but an artifact, something designed by a powerful and intelligent agent.

Casual obersvtion might lead to the conclusion that even the simplest living form is incredibly complex, giving it the appearance of being designed for a purpose. The scientific view is that this appearance of design is the result of evolution by natural selection, over the four billion years of the history of life on Earth. Proponents of Intelligent Design however argue that this is not an adequate explanation; they argue that essential features of even the simplest living things are "irreducibly complex" in that such features arise only in highly complex systems and do not appear in even a rudimentary form in simple systems.

It is at present true that we cannot reconstruct the evolutionary sequence that gave rise to the simplest form of life; there is too much that we do not know. Accordingly, Intelligent Design theory argues that it is just as appropriate to postulate an intelligent agent to explain the mysteries of life as it is to postulate an intelligent watchmaker to explain the watch found on a beach. The scientific view is that the postulate of an intelligent designer is not an explanation for life at all, but an evasion of attempted explanation. By this view, Intelligent Design has no content, and makes no predictions by which it can be tested. Proponents argue that the scientific alternative to Intelligent Design theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection, is also not really a testable scientific theory. For example, there is a detailed and coherent argument that accepts that "Darwinism" is scientifically invaluable, but also asserts that it is untestable, and should be regarded as a metaphysical platform for a research programme rather than a theory. A scientific view accepts that our understanding of life and its origins is imperfect, but holds that, as a research programme, "evolution by natural selection" is a powerful framework for studying and understanding life, which enables us to rationally and systematically address the questions that remain unanswered.

Distinct from creationism

Undoubtedly, a majority of the proponents of the Intelligent Design hypothesis are also creationists. The hypothesis, however, is not the same as creationism, which is a belief that the account of the creation of the universe and of life as given by the Bible is literally true. ID theory does not try to identify the designer as supernatural, nor does it try to establish the veracity of a particular narrative, although some leading proponents of ID theory have stated that they believe the designer to be the Christian God.

Many of the most visible advocates of Intelligent Design are fellows and advisors of the Centre for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank established in 1991. The senior fellows at the CSC include a number of Roman Catholics, a secular (non-religious) Jew, a member of Sun Myung-Moon's Unification Church and numerous protestant Christians.

As Intelligent Design as a scientific programme does not seek to identify the designer, its focus is different to that of arguments in Natural Theology, such as the teleological argument. Intelligent design asks whether design can be detected in nature from purely scientific and mathematical considerations. It then attempts to answer that question in the affirmative.

Many prominent proponents are qualified, practising scientists, but very few ID research papers and monographs have passed peer review and made it to publication. To date, no positive evidence, as opposed to eliminative inference, for the design hypothesis has appeared in the peer reviewed literature. This is a weakness of the theory, leading some to charge that the intelligent design movement has a religious (creationist) agenda.

Criticisms of Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design is publicly controversial, largely because the theory is often used as a religious apologetic, i.e. as though it provides scientific evidence for the existence of God. Accordingly, a debate has ensued over whether Intelligent Design should be taught in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution by natural selection. This has been viewed as a justification for introducing religion into science education.

Several leading proponents of Intelligent Design have stated that Intelligent Design should not be taught in the science curriculum, and the official position of the Discovery Institute is that it should not be taught in schools. Instead the Discovery Institute's Centre for Science and Culture have called for students to learn about the difficulties with the theory of evolution by natural selection as published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Opponents of Intelligent Design who are scientists consider that all of the evidence of complexity in biological systems is open to alternative explanation based on conventional biological theory. There are also very many opponents of Intelligent Design who are religious, and who believe that the role of science is to seek natural, physical explanations of the world. Although they believe that there is a God who created the world and life in it, for them this is a matter of faith not of science. Opponents of Intelligent Design doubt the intellectual honesty of Intelligent Design theory, in the sense that they do not consider it to be a serious viable alternative to the theory of evolution by natural selection, and hence consider that the only reason for promoting it is for the religious message that it is said to contain, not for the intrinsic intellectual merits of the arguments.

Is Intelligent Design science?

In 2005, when the Kansas Board of Education proposed new science standards that would include alternatives to evolution as explanations for the origin of species, 38 Nobel laureates (including winners of the prize in Physics, Chemistry, Economics, Peace and Medicine) wrote to the Board saying "[...] intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.".

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), a United States federal court ruled that a public school district requirement for science classes to teach that Intelligent Design is an alternative to evolution violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that Intelligent Design is not science, and is essentially religious in nature. His decision was based on the "Daubert Standard" [3], which governs which evidence can be considered scientific in United States federal courts and most state courts. The four Daubert criteria are:

• Evidence should be based on a testable theory or technique.
• The theory or technique should have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
• In the case of a technique there should be a known error rate and standards controlling the application of the technique.
• The underlying science should be generally accepted.