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.

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

A classical teleological argument for the existence of an intelligent creator is the "watchmaker analogy", most famously expressed 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.

Even the simplest living form is incredibly complex, giving it the appearance of being designed for a purpose. The conventional scientific view is that this appearance of design is simply 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 conventional 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. It can be argued that the conventional 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 conventional 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

While most of the proponents of the Intelligent Design hypothesis are also creationists, the hypothesis 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, and by extension that science can be used to support that point of view. 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, however 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 creationist agenda.

Controversy

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.

A number of the leading proponents of Intelligent design have publicly stated that Intelligent design should not be taught in the science curriculum, the official position of the Discovery Institute being 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 as published in peer reviewed scientific journals.

Opponents of intelligent design who are atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, 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 not atheists, but who nevertheless believe that the role of science is to seek natural, physical explanations of the world. Although they might 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. Both atheist and theist 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 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 was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. United States District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.