September 14, 2005
Being Intelligent About Intelligent Design Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:05 PM EST The conflict between evolution and other explanations of the living world we see all around us is heating up once again. At least since 1925, with the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, eighty years ago, some Americans have been trying to prevent Darwinism from being taught in school, or at least require that it be presented along with other theories more congenial to their taste. The problem, of course, is that there aren’t any other theories, at least as the word ”theory” is understood by scientists. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Biblical story of creation is religion, not science, and cannot be presented as an alternative to evolution in public schools. So some have developed “intelligent design,” as an alternative. Intelligent design postulates that there are some things that evolution doesn’t, and can’t, explain, and some biological mechanisms so complex that they couldn’t be the result of an undirected process such as natural selection. Instead they are the result of an “intelligent designer,” which is otherwise undefined so as not to run afoul of the First Amendment. Many, including President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, have come out in support of teaching this idea in schools, as a plausible alternative, alongside Darwinism. The reaction among biologists and the intelligentsia generally has been little more than spluttering outrage. They point out, quite correctly, that intelligent design lacks all the attributes of a scientific theory, for it explains nothing, predicts nothing, and has no testable hypotheses. Instead, it merely says, in effect, if evolution cannot explain something, intelligent design is the answer. In other words, “a miracle happened here.” But the people have not been paying attention. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=254) reveals that only 26 percent of Americans believe that evolution by natural selection is the explanation, while fully 42 percent think that life has existed unchanged since the beginning of time. The intellectual elite should try a different tack if they want to defeat intelligent design. Let’s look at a little history. In 1950 Macmillan brought out Worlds in Collision, by Immanuel Velikovsky, which turned into a huge bestseller. It explained the various Old Testament miracles (the sun standing still for Joshua, manna from heaven, the parting of the Red Sea, etc.) by postulating assorted solar system collisions and near collisions. It was astronomical and physical nonsense, of course, and the scientific establishment went, well, nuts. Macmillan had a large textbook division, and many in academia threatened to boycott the publisher’s textbooks. So Macmillan sold the book to Doubleday, which, not coincidentally, had no textbook division. The controversy, naturally, did nothing but greatly increase sales. In the 1970s the late Carl Sagan wrote a great essay, “Venus and Velikovsky” (available in a collection of his essays called Broca’s Brain. In it Sagan explained what the scientists in 1950 should have done instead of merely denouncing Velikovsky as a charlatan: subjected his book to the scientific method and tested its hypotheses. And Sagan proceeded to do just that, in everyday, often highly amusing language, and showed how preposterous the whole idea was. If Velikovsky is right, then all we know of modern physics and much that we know of biology is wrong. Rereading the essay, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that Sagan had huge fun writing it, the literary equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. If the Darwinists, for purposes of argumentation, would treat “Intelligent Design” as a serious scientific proposal, instead of simply anathematizing it, they could quickly blow it out of the water. And, like Carl Sagan, have a lot of fun in the process. In logic this is called assuming the premise, and it can be a deadly intellectual weapon. If eyes require an intelligent designer, as the theory’s proponent claim, then why did the intelligent designer come up with no fewer than seven different types of eyes? An intelligent designer, or at least an efficient one, would presumably have chosen the best design and spread it across creation. Evolution, of course, explains the different forms of eyes easily: they evolved separately. Why do different creatures that are totally unrelated but occupy the same ecological niche (such as hummingbirds and hawk moths) resemble each other so closely? Why not just use the same beast in each niche and be done with it? Why does the vertebrate eye have the nerve net of its retina in front of the retina instead of behind it? That’s not very intelligent design (it’s why we have a blind spot), but such things are inevitable in evolution. Any knowledgeable student of natural history could come up with hundreds of such questions that intelligent design can’t answer but evolution can. One who has done so at book length is Sir Richard Dawkins, of Oxford University, one of the most distinguished evolutionary theorists in the world, and, by orders of magnitude, the best writer for the non-specialist on the subject. His book The Selfish Gene, is one of the scientific classics of the 20th century. His book The Blind Watchmaker goes at fascinating length into exactly why no intelligent designer is required to explain the living world. The Darwinists could do themselves (not to mention millions of students) a big favor by asking advocates of intelligent design to defend their hypothesis, as all scientists must, instead of just telling them to shut up. A Sagan-style essay, readable at a sitting, would be a big first step in getting the advocates of intelligent design to destroy their own argument—by taking it seriously.
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