Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?

If my rebuttals to The Ayn Rand Institute sort-of say the same thing, that’s because their opening statements all kinda say the same thing. Their writer appears extremely worried about the identity of the designer being supernatural: its four opening statements do little more than argue that intelligent design (ID) can’t be science because the designer must be supernatural.? As I discussed in my response to their second opening statement, their argument makes the mistake of requiring an investigation of “Who Designed the Designer?,” a question which is unnecessary and superfluous to design detection.? Meanwhile, The Ayn Rand Institute has failed to rebut the empirical methods for how ID detects design in nature (for further details, see my first opening statement).

In its third opening statement, The Ayn Rand Institute continues to argue that the designer must be supernatural because it asserts that a natural designer ”would not answer the basic question [ID] advocates raise: it would not explain biological complexity as such.”

But why not?

As I explained in my fourth opening statement, design can be inferred regardless of whether the designer is natural or supernatural. An underlying assumption of ID is that intelligence is a property which we can generally understand through our observations of intelligent agents in the natural world. An intelligent agent could have at least some predictable modes of designing because it has the property of intelligence, regardless of whether or not the agent was "natural" or "supernatural." In biology, the biological complexity that ID seeks to explain is the high level of complex and specified information in the cell. But both natural and supernatural designers would produce high levels of complex and specified information, allowing us to detect design in biology regardless of whether that intelligence is acting in the natural world, or from some other “supernatural” realm.

The Ayn Rand Institute’s quotes William Dembski discussing a supernatural designer where the discussion necessarily involved cosmic design. But in biology, why must the designer necessarily be supernatural? Human intelligent agents, after all, have learned how to manipulate and genetically engineer biological systems. Obviously humans aren’t supernatural.

Having refuted their fallacious “Who designed the designer?” objection in my rebuttal to their second opening statement, The Ayn Rand Institute hasn’t given us any good reasons why we must accept the argument that natural designers cannot produce biological designs. The Ayn Rand Institute’s rule against natural designers seems arbitrary and unjustified.

Preposterous Outcomes Under The Ayn Rand Institute’s Arbitrary “No-Natural-Designers” Rule

If The Ayn Rand Institute were to have its way, scientists, engineers, environmental scientists, and other investigators could never infer intelligent causes if those intelligent causes are natural. The following hypothetical examples expose the deficiencies in The Ayn Rand Institute’s arbitrary “no-natural-designers” rule:

• Imagine that a researcher with SETI discovers a radio signal of prime numbers—the sort of signal SETI researchers think might indicate an intelligent source. Embedded within that signal are plans to build a machine. The machine is built and seems to have a function.(1) Most scientists want to infer that an alien intelligence sent the signal to communicate something to us. But according to The Ayn Rand Institute’s arbitrary rule, it must reply, “Nope, sorry. Scientists who detect intelligent agency can never postulate a natural intelligent cause.”
  
• Imagine that scuba-diving archaeologists in the South Pacific discover a submerged atoll in shallow water that shows thousands of rock carvings of human beings, fish, dolphins, dogs, and goats. They want to infer that the carvings have an intelligent source that came from an entire human civilization that was lost when some ancient island sank beneath the sea. But according to The Ayn Rand Institute’s arbitrary rule, it must reply, “Nope, sorry. Scientists who detect intelligent agency can never postulate a natural intelligent cause.”
  
• Imagine that in 1943, codebreaker with U.S. military intelligence finds an intelligently embedded code in a radio signal being sent from Germany to Japan. She wants to infer that the code has an intelligent source that tells us about secret war plans of the Axis powers. But according to The Ayn Rand Institute’s arbitrary rule, it must reply, “Nope, sorry. Scientists who detect intelligent agency can never postulate a natural intelligent cause.”

Finally, Here’s a more real-world example:

• In the latter half of the 20th century, scientists observe that atmospheric CO2 is rising at a dramatic rate. It is well known that atmospheri CO2 correlates with Earth’s temperature, and that massive amounts of CO2 are released into the atmosphere by human industrial sources. Climatologists propose that human production of CO2 across the world in tens of thousands of factories is causing the increase in CO2 levels. But according to The Ayn Rand Institute’s arbitrary rule, it must reply, “Nope, sorry. Scientists who detect intelligent agency can never postulate a natural intelligent cause.”

In each instance, The Ayn Rand Institute rejected intelligent causes because it imposed an arbitrary and false rule that says that intelligent causes can never be natural. But as we have seen, from the hypothetical and real-world examples of SETI, archaeology, codebreaking, and environmental science, ID theorists can readily detect intelligent causes that are natural.

Principled Reasons why ID Does not Identify the Designer
The Ayn Rand Institute wants you to believe that ID’s non-identification of the designer is an attempt to evade the issue.  But in my fourth opening statement, I explained that the refusal of ID proponents to use ID to draw scientific conclusions about the nature or identity of the designer is principled rather than merely rhetorical.

ID's non-identification of the designer stems from a desire to take a scientific approach and respect the limits of scientific inquiry, and not inject religious discussions about theological questions into science. In short, ID does not identify the designer because under present knowledge and technology, there is no known scientific method for identifying the intelligent source responsible for design in biological complexity (i.e. specified complexity in DNA), regardless of whether the designer was natural or supernatural. Thus for the scientific theory of ID to try to identify the designer would be to inappropriately conflate science with religion.

Thomas Woodward explains the principled reasons why the current biological evidence for ID is insufficient to allow us to identify the designer:

“There is no ‘Made by Yahweh’ engraved on the side of the bacterial rotary motor--the flagellum. In order to find out what or who its designer is, one must go outside the narrow discipline of biology. Cross-disciplinary dialogue must begin with the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, and theology. Design itself, however, is a direct scientific inference; it does not depend on a single religious premise for its conclusions.”(2)

In other words, the empirical data, such as the information-rich, integrated complexity of the flagellar machine, may indicate that the flagellum arose by intelligent design. But that same empirical data does not inform us whether the intelligence that designed the flagellum is Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Yoda, or some other type of intelligent agency. There is no known way to use such empirical data from biological complexity to determine the nature or identity of the designer, and since ID is based solely upon empirical data, the scientific theory of ID must remain silent on such questions.

At this point, The Ayn Rand Institute would likely allege that ID proponents are “coy” about the identity of the designer, which they really believe is God. For example, their writer alleges that William Dembski “euphemistically refers” to the designer as “the big G,” insinuating that Dembski is not clear about his views about the identity of the designer. Yet ID proponents (including Dembski) have been explicitly open about their views about the identity of the designer—they have just made it clear that these are their own personal beliefs and not conclusions of intelligent design theory proper.

For example, in an article titled “Intelligent Design Coming Clean,” Dembski clearly states that, “As a Christian, I am a theist and believe that God created the world" and at the same time says that “We infer design regularly and reliably without knowing characteristics of the designer.”(3) Likewise, in his book Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, Dembski makes it extremely clear that he is a Christian,(4) but yet writes that “intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature … design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the remit of science.”(5)

Similarly, Michael Behe explains that his views about the identity of the designer are distinct from the scientific theory of intelligent design:

“most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God--based in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made--I did not claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that, from a scientific point of view, the question remains open. ... The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not show who the designer was”(6)

Thus, when ID proponents state that ID does not identify the designer, they are, in Behe's words, "not being coy, but only limiting ... claims to what ... the evidence will support."(7) During the Kitzmiller trial, Behe gave a clear, direct, and unambiguous testimony explaining that his personal beliefs the identity of the designer is God are not derived from the scientific theory of intelligent design:

"Q. So is it accurate for people to claim or to represent that intelligent design holds that the designer was God?
Behe: No, that is completely inaccurate.
Q. Well, people have asked you your opinion as to who you believe the designer is, is that correct?
Behe: That is right.
Q. Has science answered that question?
Behe: No, science has not done so.
Q. And I believe you have answered on occasion that you believe the designer is God, is that correct?
Behe: Yes, that's correct.
Q. Are you making a scientific claim with that answer?
Behe: No, I conclude that based on theological and philosophical and historical factors."(8)

Likewise, Phillip Johnson writes that “my personal view is that I identify the designer of life with the God of the Bible, although intelligent design theory as such does not entail that."(9) In fact, I too believe the designer is the God of the Bible, but this is not a conclusion of ID; it is my personal religious view that stems from factors outside of intelligent design. Any fair analysis must come to the following conclusions about ID and questions about the identity or nature of the designer:

• ID does not address religious questions about the identity or nature of the designer, and in fact ID proponents have diverse views about the identity of the designer;
• ID proponents give principled reasons why ID does not identify the designer, stemming from ID’s intent to respect the limits of science and not attempt to address religious questions that go beyond what can be scientifically inferred from the empirical data;
• Whether traditional theists or not, ID proponents are entirely open about their views on the identity of the designer;
• ID proponents make it clear that their views about the identity of the designer are their personal religious views, and not conclusions of ID.