The core of the argument that ID has merit as a scientific theory is the assertion that it is essentially similar to scientific fields such as archeology, cryptography, forensic science and so on, which use logic to infer evidence of human design. Archeologists, for instance, must be able to distinguish flint tools shaped by human hands from unimportant fragments of rock; forensic scientists must be able to distinguish between accidental death and murder.
Proponents of ID claim, by analogy with these fields, that ID is an equally legitimate scientific approach—that just as an archeologist can, by a careful study of the physical evidence, differentiate between tools and mere rocks, so too can the so-called ID scientist infer design in natural, non-man-made systems.
But the claimed analogy to these legitimate areas of science is completely unjustified. Unlike ID, these sciences do not construct an artificial separation between the “designed” and the “designer.”
Proponents insist that ID is entirely agnostic about the “intelligent designer”; that it “is not focused on studying the actual intelligent cause responsible for life,” but studies only “the effects of intelligent causes.” The study of the “designer,” they claim, is a subject for a different field and is separate from the study of the “designed objects” themselves.
This is a bizarre and artificial compartmentalization. Human knowledge is not a set of separate domains that have nothing to do with each other. It is an integrated whole. A crucial aspect of the scientific method is the integration of knowledge. No such compartmentalization or agnosticism exists within the scientific fields that ID proponents claim a kinship with.
For one thing, in these fields there is no mystery about the identity of the “designer.” Archeologists, forensic scientists, and so on, study the artifacts of human activity, not the effects of some vague, unidentifiable “intelligent cause.” Everything we know about “intelligent agents” comes from our knowledge of man, because human beings are the only “intelligence agents” of which we have any evidence or knowledge.
Consider the fact that in Michael Behe’s first argument (“Detecting Design is a Matter of Physical Evidence and Logic,” below), every single example he gives of objects from which we can “detect design” are examples of human design: a flower garden, Mount Rushmore, the Sphinx, Easter Island, a Tinkertoy arrangement, an arrangement of sticks in the woods. What does any of this prove beyond the unexceptional fact that human beings are intelligent and human beings design things that can later be studied by others?
From this type of evidence, there is no basis whatsoever for the leap from human intelligence to “intelligence” construed more broadly. To suggest otherwise is to completely drop the context from which all of our knowledge of intelligent beings arises.
More important, scientists in such fields as archeology do not categorically refuse to entertain any discussion about the nature or identity of the “designers” they study. They don’t build an unbreachable wall between the study of the “designed artifacts” and the study of the human beings who designed them. Indeed, even to reach the conclusion that an artifact is or is not designed requires consideration of, and some knowledge of, the possible designers. Imagine that someone were to discover a piece of rock that resembled a Paleolithic tool, but that it was found in an undisturbed geological layer that is dated at 200 million years old. The geological context and scientists’ knowledge of man’s past—in particular, the fact that humans beings were not around 200 million years ago—are key facts that go into making the very judgment about whether the object is or is not “designed.” There is no process of determining whether something is “designed” or “not designed” that is completely separate from, and independent of, facts about the possible designers.
Moreover, the whole point of studying human artifacts—and determining whether they are in fact artifacts—is to learn about the people who made them. It is part of the study of the “designers,” not some separate field of study. No archeologist has, as his sole scientific purpose, the goal of deciding between “designed” or “not designed.” The whole point of trying to make a judgment about whether an object is or is not designed is to try to answer questions about the person who made it. For instance: what does the greater sophistication of Neolithic tools compared to Paleolithic tools tell us about the evolution of human intelligence?
The real reason for ID’s artificial compartmentalization of “design” from “designer” and its feigned agnosticism about the nature of its “designer” is to avoid the religious issues that these necessarily raise. The DI’s writer says that ID “limits its claims to what can be learned from the empirical data, meaning that it does not try to address religious questions about the identity or nature of the designer.” But why are questions about the “identity or nature” of something religious questions? Why would consideration of the “designer” necessarily introduce “religious discussions about theological questions”? Clearly, it is because ID’s concept of the “designer” is an inherently religious one—which was exactly what I was arguing.
The insistence, by proponents of ID that they have “principled reasons” for refusing to consider the “designer” is nothing more than an evasive strategy designed to avoid questions about the “designer” that they’d rather not discuss for fear of revealing the inherently religious character of their viewpoint.
Expert Verified
