Faithful readers will note that while the topic of Intelligent Design has come up from time to time here, it hasn’t exactly been flagellated from a scientific or philosophical perspective. Truth be told, while it’s fun to crack jokes about flavoring religion with pasta and Hollywood icons, it’s easy to label ID as just another right-wing conspiracy to push the agenda and sneak religion into schools. Not so fast, Lefty. Let’s first justify our standpoint by defining and picking apart the three main talking points behind ID – irreducible complexity, specified complexity, and the anthropic principle:
1) Irreducible complexity
a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. 39)
The human digestive system is often given as an example of such a system. One thing you will notice, though, is that the exact “parts” of the “system” are never labeled. Do we go by the accepted definition of “digestive system” or some other definition? Most people will agree that salivation and chewing are part of the digestive system, but if you lost your salivary glands or teeth you could still swallow liquids and even some solid foods. The rest of your digestive system would still work properly. Likewise, if you fall into a coma, you can be kept alive for years with a feeding tube – as we all know.
We might say, for instance, that the function of a leg is to walk, and call legs walking systems. But what are the parts? If we divide a leg into three major parts, removal of any part results in loss of the function. Thus legs are IC. On the other hand, if we count each bone as a part then several parts, even a whole toe, may be removed and we still have a walking system.
ID proponents often give other examples of flagellate tails and such that are equally arbitrary in their definitions. But who could seriously suggest that the “human digestive system” didn’t have more “parts” than it does now? What if the current version has been reduced from something more complex? This possibility goes completely unaccounted for.
A true example of an irreducibly complex system has never been found, because the term itself is defined using faulty assumptions.
2) Specified complexity
since specified complex patterns can be found in organisms, [then] some form of guidance must have accounted for their origination. The specified complexity argument states that it is impossible for complex patterns to be developed through random processes. (source)
The same fallacious “it’s just impossible because we said so” argument. There’s a whole mess of mathematics by the main purveyor of this point, William Dembski, that essentially says “I’ve decided that these meaningless statistics apply here, so I scientifically conclude a designer must be responsible” and etc. It invents the idea that nothing in nature can become complex on its own, therefore God The Designer did it:
Let’s say you are walking in a field and find a TV set. You don’t necessarily know anything about who or what designed that TV set, but you can tell it is designed because, at some fundamental level, it exhibits specified complexity. But scientifically speaking, that’s all you can infer–that it was designed! (source) (emphasis added)
“It just has to be!” Sounds too much like a creationist argument. That’s because it is. Also, just because one uses “scientifically speaking” as a qualifier, doesn’t make it so. I have a better analogy:
Let’s say you are sitting in your cozy government office and find a hurricane approaching the Gulf Coast. You don’t necessarily know anything about who or what designed that hurricane, but you can tell they got it from Nordstrom’s because, at some fundamental level, it exhibits specified complexity. But scientifically speaking, that’s all you can infer–that it was designed by the fashion gods! You can quit now! You can go home!
Couldn’t resist.
3) Anthropic principle
An amazing discovery of scientists, in recent decades, is that many properties of the universe are “just right” for life. Most scientists are convinced that the fine-tuning constraints on a life-allowing universe are very tight, that small changes would make the existence of intelligent life impossible, and that the probability of a universe having these properties (fine tuned to be “just right for life”) is extremely low. (source)
Ah. Now it’s obvious who the Designer is.
It’s painfully clear that the Earth has properties that allow humans to exist, therefore humans exist. Anthropic principle is simply a backwards argument, going from effect to cause instead of vice versa: humans exist, therefore the Earth has properties that allow humans to exist. Wrong direction.
With all the geological processes and biotic respiration going on, the Designer apparently needs to “tune-up” the planet every once in a while. (Infer: Global Warming) That explains all the evidence in ice core samples of the atmosphere changing throughout history. Did all life just cease to exist during the periods when it was “out of tune”?
In all three points you might note the theme of “low probability of evolution” being used as a basis for Intelligent Design, employing fallacious arguments as “proof” in place of logical conclusions based on sound hypotheses. The probability of intelligent life coming about randomly really is small, but that was never under dispute. Even if it’s only a one in a million chance, there’s nothing to say we can’t be that one success or that we are the only one.
I leave you with the words of ID proponents attempting to describe their religion science fashion sense:
Intelligent design originates in a mind. The ‘intelligence’ in Intelligent Design is an awareness, or consciousness, that is purposeful, that conceives of
something it wants to see actualized and directs whatever activities are necessary to achieve that end. It doesn’t have to be smart. (source) (emphasis added)
On deck: ID and the “liberalizing” of education.