In its second opening statement, The Ayn Rand Institute argues that intelligent design (ID) is “Religiously Based” because “Any natural being capable of ‘designing’ the complex features of earthly life would, on their premises, require its own ‘designer’," implying that a supernatural designer must be at the bottom of some hypothetical chain of designers. In other words, The Ayn Rand Institute is making a variant of the classic “Who designed the designer?” red-herring objection to ID. In doing so, The Ayn Rand Institute’s writer shows that he has grave misunderstandings about?the scientific theory of intelligent design.
More importantly, The Ayn Rand Institute has not addressed or refuted any of my arguments in my first opening statement which show that intelligent design entirely is based upon an empirical methodology. As I wrote, “Intelligent design has scientific merit because it is an empirically based argument that uses well-accepted scientific methods of historical sciences in order to detect in nature the types of complexity which we understand, from present-day observations, are derived from intelligent causes.” The Ayn Rand Institute not addressed my argument and has not accomplished what is necessary in order to claim that ID is “in Fact Religiously Based.”
Mistake #1: “Who Designed the Designer?” is Outside the Scope of ID’s Scientific Investigation
ID doesn't try to address theological questions about the identity, nature, or origin of the designer. The question "Who Designed the Designer?" is outside the scope of the scientific theory of ID, and is thus a philosophical or theological question that can only be addressed via philosophy or theology.
In fact, we can detect design without any knowledge of the designer’s identity or origin.
For example, suppose that you are researcher with the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, and you detect a radio signal from a distant star 5 billion light years away that repeats the message: “Attention Earth: We are your designers.” The day after you discover the signal, it suddenly shuts off—permanently. A thousand years later, humans discover warp travel and visit the distant star, only to find that any trace of the civilization that produced the signal was destroyed when its neighboring star went supernova billions of years ago. In fact, we have no traces of that solar system whatsoever. In this scenario, we were able to detect design, but we have no way to know who that designer was, how they got there, how the alien civilization originated, or who designed them (if anyone). But we know they were there, and we know that they designed the radio signal we received.
As regards the science of detecting design, the question of "Who designed the designer?" is irrelevant because it investigates questions that are both unnecessary to the science design detection.
Mistake #2: Postulating a Designer Doesn’t Violate Occam’s Razor
Occam’s Razor is a principle which holds that simpler explanations tend to be correct. A major part of The Ayn Rand Institute’s argument is that ID is not a proper explanation because any designer requires another designer, and since designers are complex, ID does not postulate a sufficiently simple cause to explain the origin of biological complexity. As they assert:
“Any natural being capable of ‘designing’ the complex features of earthly life would, on their premises, require its own ‘designer'. If ‘design’ can be inferred merely from observed complexity, then our purported Martian ‘designer’ would be just another complex being in nature that supposedly cannot be explained without positing another ‘designer.’ One does not explain complexity by dreaming up a new complexity as its cause.”
Their argument is severely flawed and destroys various presently-accepted scientific explanations.
Historical sciences like neo-Darwinian evolution or intelligent design must provide causes that are sufficient to explain the observed data. Sufficient causal explanations within historical sciences may, at times, turn out to be highly complex. Since I hold a background in geology, one of the original historical sciences, I’ll provide a brief example from that field.
For many years, geologists recognized that the shape of many continents had a “fit” that seemed like they could be pieced together almost like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This jigsaw-puzzle-like “fit” represented a form of complexity that was relatively simple. The implication of this simple complexity, however, had enormous implications: namely, it implied that there was some underlying mechanism that could move entire continents. Yet despite the clear complexity where the continents “fit” together, geologists opposed ideas about continental drift because they could not imagine the existence of any mechanism strong enough to move continents. In other words, for many decades geologists just found it too incredible to believe that the continents could move, as one textbook writes:
“Geologists who were impressed by the match across ocean basins still tended to reject Wegener’s idea [of continental drift] because no known mechanism was capable of forcing continents to move like rafts through the strong rocks that make up the ocean floor.”(1)
Today, we know that continents do move, and we know that the mechanisms underlying continental movement are very complex. The mechanisms which allow plate movement involve complex phase transitions between various types of rocks at various depths. In fact, it’s quite safe to say that we still don’t entirely understand all the mechanisms that cause plate movement.(2) But we know that these mechanisms are there, and we know they are very complex.
New scientific discoveries often begin with simple observations that don’t fit the current paradigm. In the case of ID, scientists have discovered that there is a language-based code underlying all of life that is rich in complex and specified information. This simple observation requires an explanation. Blind natural processes are not sufficient to produce the sequence ordering of the genetic code. What mechanism is? Intelligence. As Stephen C. Meyer explains:
“Analysis of the problem of the origin of biological information, therefore, exposes a deficiency in the causal powers of natural selection that corresponds precisely to powers that agents are uniquely known to possess. Intelligent agents have foresight. Such agents can select functional goals before they exist. They can devise or select material means to accomplish those ends from among an array of possibilities and then actualize those goals in accord with a preconceived design plan or set of functional requirements. Rational agents can constrain combinatorial space with distant outcomes in mind. The causal powers that natural selection lacks--almost by definition--are associated with the attributes of consciousness and rationality--with purposive intelligence. Thus, by invoking design to explain the origin of new biological information, contemporary design theorists are not positing an arbitrary explanatory element unmotivated by a consideration of the evidence. Instead, they are positing an entity possessing precisely the attributes and causal powers that the phenomenon in question requires as a condition of its production and explanation.”(3)
ID's critics may feign surprise that an intelligent agent should be the necessary explanation for life’s complexity, but should we believe their ruse? In our experience, language and ordered codes have one, and only one source: intelligent causation. The Ayn Rand Institute’s rule for rejecting ID asserts that explanations must be simpler than the observations they explain. Why should we accept their false and arbitrary rule?
Mistake #3: Preposterous Outcomes under The Ayn Rand Institute’s Rule
If The Ayn Rand Institute were to have its way, scientists, engineers, environmental scientists, and other investigators could never infer natural intelligent causes, even when when intelligent causes are clearly the appropriate explanation. The following hypothetical examples expose the fallacy in The Ayn Rand Institute’s thinking:
- Imagine that a researcher with the SETI finds a radio signal of prime numbers—the type that SETI researchers suspect would indicate an intelligent source. Embedded within that signal are blueprints and schematics for building a giant machine. Scientists take those schematics and build the machine, which seems to perform some function.(4) Most people want to infer that an alien intelligence sent the radio signal to communicate something to us. The Ayn Rand Institute would simply reply, “Nope, sorry. All you found was an intelligently ordered radio signal. Postulating an intelligent cause communicating some alien machine requires a source of complexity far greater than the mere radio signal you’ve found. Besides, if you propose an intelligent alien cause, where did they come from? This can’t be the right answer.”
- 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. The Ayn Rand Institute would say, “All you’ve found are a bunch of rock chunks with interesting shapes. Postulating an entire human civilization requires a source of complexity far greater than the mere rock carvings you’ve found. Besides, if you propose a human civilization, where did it come from? This can’t be the right answer.”
- During the peak of World War II, a codebreaker 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. The Ayn Rand Institute would reply, “Nope, sorry. All you’ve found is an ordered radio signal. Postulating an intelligent cause communicating about complex war schemes requires a source of complexity far greater than the mere radio signal you’ve found. Besides, if you propose a human cause, who designed those humans? This can’t be the right answer.”
- Here’s a more real-world example: In the latter half of the 20th century, scientists observe that CO 2 levels in the atmosphere are rising at a dramatic rate. It is well known that atmospheric CO 2 concentration correlates with Earth’s surface temperature, and that massive amounts of CO 2 are produced by human industrial sources. Climatologists propose that human production of CO 2 across the world in tens of thousands of factories is causing the increase in CO 2 levels, which is raising the Earth's temperature. The Ayn Rand Institute would reply, “Nope, sorry. All you’ve found is rising CO 2 levels. Postulating thousands and thousands intelligently designed industrial sources releasing all this CO 2 requires a source of complexity far greater than the mere atmospheric CO 2 measurements you have made. Besides, if you propose human causes, where did the humans who built the factories come from? This can’t be the right answer.”
As can be seen, in each instance, The Ayn Rand Institute would reject intelligent causes as a sufficient and appropriate causal explanation because it lives by an arbitrary and false rule that a proposed cause can never be more complex than the observed evidence. But as we have seen, from the hypothetical and real-world examples of continental drift, SETI, archaeology, codebreaking, and environmental science, sometimes simple explanations require complex causes. Their rule that complexity can never require a cause which is more complex than the observed data appears to be both false and arbitrary, and have preposterous implications.
By rejecting ID as an explanation, The Ayn Rand Institute has failed to satisfy Occam’s Razor because it has not postulated any cause that is sufficient to explain the observed complexity.
Mistake #4: Larger Implications Do not Disqualify ID from Being Science.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that The Ayn Rand Institute is correct to imply that ID necessarily faces a logical regress where the ultimate designer must have been supernatural. In such a scenario, The Ayn Rand Institute did not arrive at their conclusion through religion or faith or divine revelation, but through a rational, logical, philosophical argument. Thus, at best their argument represents a discussion of the larger philosophical implications of ID.
Because ID as a science is focused on studying natural objects to detect design, this argument is outside the scope of the scientific theory of ID. This argument deals with philosophical implications of design, not the empirical detection of design in nature. Regardless, if we assume for the sake argument that their logic is correct, why should ID thus be considered a religious viewpoint? After all, The Ayn Rand Institute’s conclusion was arrived at using a logical philosophical argument, not a religious argument.
This point illustrates the fact that someone drawing larger philosophical implications from ID does not disqualify it from being scientific. In fact, many Darwinists have argued that neo-Darwinism has larger anti-religious philosophical implications, but that does not make neo-Darwinism unscientific.
For example, America’s great champion of evolution, the late Stephen Jay Gould, similarly announced that “[b]efore Darwin, we thought that a benevolent God had created us,”(5) but because of Darwin’s ideas, “biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God.”(6) Gould repeatedly discussed the "radical philosophical content of Darwin's message" and its denial of purpose in the universe:
"First, Darwin argues that evolution has no purpose. . . . Second, Darwin maintained that evolution has no direction. . . . Third, Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature. Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity."(7)
Richard Dawkins is Oxford University’s Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science—probably the most famous evolutionist in the world—and he stated that "Darwin made it possible to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”(8) A 2007 editorial by the editors of the world's top scientific journal, Nature, stated that "the idea that human minds are the product of evolution" is an "unassailable fact," and thus concluded, "the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside.”(9) A very popular college evolutionary biology textbook (which I used for one of my upper division evolutionary biology courses during my undergraduate studies) declares that "[b]y coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous."(10)
Similarly, in the prestigious scientific journal, Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala celebrates that "Darwin’s greatest accomplishment” was to show that the origin of life’s complexity “can be explained as the result of a natural process--natural selection--without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent."(11) Just to make sure that his readers don’t try to invoke some kind of “God-guided” evolution, Ayala writes, "In evolution, there is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations.”(12)
Cornell University evolutionary biologist William Provine has similarly stated that "belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people" and that "[o]ne can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism."(13) Provine states that there are severe philosophical implications of Darwinian biology:
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”(14)
Even the widely-touted theistic evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller has claimed in five editions of his popular high school biology textbooks that the implication of evolution is that it works “without either plan or purpose” and is “random and undirected.”(15) Two other versions of Miller’s high school biology textbooks contain a striking discussion of some of the potential philosophical implications of evolution:
“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its byproducts. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless . . . . Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”(16)
The fact that The Ayn Rand Institute draws larger philosophical implications from ID that speak to questions about the supernatural realm does not disqualify it from being science—unless it wants the anti-religious implications that many leading neo-Darwinists have drawn from neo-Darwinism to disqualify their theory from being scientific.
The entire discussion about “who designed the designer?” deals with a larger philosophical issue that is distinct from the scientific theory of intelligent design (a science which investigates how we can experimentally detect design in natural objects). Similarly, Ken Miller’s claim that Darwinism “required believing in philosophical materialism” also deals with larger philosophical implications that many draw from neo-Darwinism. Neither the larger philosophical implications of ID nor neo-Darwinism prevent these theories from being scientific.
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