Intelligent Design (book)

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Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
Intelligent Design (Dembski book).png
Cover
Author William Dembski
LanguageEnglish
Subject Intelligent design
Publisher InterVarsity Press
Publication date
October 1999; October 17, 2007
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages302
ISBN 0-8308-2314-X
OCLC 277247433
Preceded by The Design Inference  
Followed by The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design 

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology is a 1999 book by the mathematician William A. Dembski, in which the author presents an argument in support of the pseudoscience of intelligent design. Dembski defines the term "specified complexity", and argues that instances of it in nature cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution, but instead are consistent with the intelligent design. He also derives an instance of his self-declared law of conservation of information and uses it to argue against Darwinian evolution. The book is a summary treatment of the mathematical theory he presents in The Design Inference (1998), and is intended to be largely understandable by a nontechnical audience. Dembski also provides a Christian theological commentary, and analysis of, what he perceives to be the historical and cultural significance of the ideas.

Contents

Overview

Dembski begins by analyzing signs from God in the Bible, and notes that such signs have specificity and complexity, which enables them to be clearly discernible. He considers this to be a general insight regarding recognition of the "Divine Finger", and states, "My aim in this book is to take this premodern logic of signs and make it rigorous."

A review of naturalistic criticisms of miracles, particularly those by Benedict Spinoza and Friedrich Schleiermacher, follows. Dembski critiques the critiques, and derides the methodological naturalism that, he says, is part of their legacy.

He then focuses on the history of natural theology in Britain, recounting the teleological arguments of William Paley and Thomas Reid, and the primary reason for their demise, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. Upon introducing it, Dembski immediately criticizes it and commends the critique of Charles Hodge, who he says argued that Darwinism "was trying to subsume intelligent causation under physical causation."

Intelligent design, the central idea of the book, is then introduced. He distinguishes it from theistic evolution and, especially, purely naturalistic evolution. Explaining a motivation for it, he states, "Darwinism is the totalizing claim that [natural selection] accounts for all the diversity and complexity of life. The evidence simply does not support this claim.... [There] is always a temptation in science [to] think that one's theory encompasses a far bigger domain than it actually does." He lists numerous phenomena that he claims have proven to be "utterly intractable" for natural selection, including the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the Cambrian explosion.

Then comes the technical theory. He introduces his complexity-specification criterion, which states that in order to infer design, three criteria must be met simultaneously: contingency, complexity, and specification. According to Dembski, the first rules out necessity; the latter two rule out chance. Combined with his universal probability bound of 10−150, he claims that this criterion is completely accurate when applied to actual objects "with known underlying causal story."

Dembski derives what he purports to be an instance of what Peter Medawar (in 1984) identified as the law of conservation of information. However mathematician Jeffrey Shallit has rebutted this claim, stating that "Medawar’s 'law' is not the same as Dembski’s" in that Medawar "makes no mention of probabilities or the name Shannon", and that "Medawar’s law, by the way, can be made rigorous, but in the context of Kolmogorov information, not Shannon information or Dembski’s 'complex specified information'." [1]

Dembski then introduces the term "complex specified information" (CSI), and claims that CSI is indicative of design. He considers whether the only known natural mechanisms of physical law and chance, alone or in combination, can generate such information, and concludes that they cannot. He argues that this is so because laws can only shift around or lose information, but do not produce it, and chance can produce complex unspecified information, or unspecified complex information, but not CSI; he provides a mathematical analysis that he claims demonstrates that law and chance working together cannot generate CSI, either.

Moreover, Dembski claims that CSI is holistic (with the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, and that this decisively eliminates Darwinian evolution as a possible means of its creation. He then enumerates the possible sources of CSI in biological organisms: inheritance, selection, and infusion. He states that the first two sources are "unable to account for the CSI in biological systems (and specifically for the irreducible complexity of certain biochemical systems...)", and therefore concludes that CSI must come from infusion. He further argues that biotic infusion cannot ultimately account for CSI, and so abiotic infusion must be the source.

Dembski maintains that by process of elimination, CSI is best explained as being due to intelligence, and is therefore a reliable indicator of design. He implies that his theory can be useful in several fields, including forensic science, intellectual property law, archaeology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Dembski concludes the book with comments on what he sees as the theological implications of intelligent design. In an appendix, he offers answers to various objections to intelligent design.

Reception

The physicist Victor J. Stenger criticized the book as "stealth creationism," and presenting an "argument from design" that "donned yet another set of clothes." [2] Stenger further noted, "While he insists that this argument does not depend on any specific theological assumptions, his book unabashedly promotes his interpretation that the design inferred is the work of the Christian God." [2]

Some criticisms also focuses on the technical theory presented, namely, specified complexity and Dembski's statements regarding the law of conservation of information. [3] [4] It has been argued that together they constitute nothing more than a re-statement of the second law of thermodynamics, which is known to permit the development of local concentrations of increased order in the universe provided that there is a counterbalancing increase in disorder elsewhere. Regarding physics, "When Dembski says that information cannot be generated naturally, he seems to be voicing yet another muddled version of the common creationist assertion that the second law forbids the generation of order by natural processes. Like his predecessors, he ignores the caveat "closed system" in the formal statement of the second law." [2]

Dembski's reliance on such a controversial and unaccepted model [5] is also not accepted in academia." [6] Critics like Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematics professor, claim Intelligent Design contributes nothing to the discussion of evolution and intelligent design since Dembski's assertions ride on Behe's claim, and that claim is false. [4]

Related Research Articles

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

Irreducible complexity (IC) is the argument that certain biological systems with multiple interacting parts would not function if one of the parts were removed, so supposedly could not have evolved by successive small modifications from earlier less complex systems through natural selection, which would need all intermediate precursor systems to have been fully functional. This negative argument is then complemented by the claim that the only alternative explanation is a "purposeful arrangement of parts" inferring design by an intelligent agent. Irreducible complexity has become central to the creationist concept of intelligent design (ID), but the concept of irreducible complexity has been rejected by the scientific community, which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience. Irreducible complexity and specified complexity, are the two main arguments used by intelligent-design proponents to support their version of the theological argument from design.

The teleological argument also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument, is a rational argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world, which looks designed, is evidence of an intelligent creator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William A. Dembski</span> American mathematician and proponent of intelligent design

William Albert Dembski is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years". A February 2021 interview in the CSC's blog Evolution News announced "his return to the intelligent design arena".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Behe</span> American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Michael Joseph Behe is an American biochemist and an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pseudomathematics</span> Work of mathematical cranks

Pseudomathematics, or mathematical crankery, is a mathematics-like activity that does not adhere to the framework of rigor of formal mathematical practice. Common areas of pseudomathematics are solutions of problems proved to be unsolvable or recognized as extremely hard by experts, as well as attempts to apply mathematics to non-quantifiable areas. A person engaging in pseudomathematics is called a pseudomathematician or a pseudomath. Pseudomathematics has equivalents in other scientific fields, and may overlap with other topics characterized as pseudoscience.

Specified complexity is a creationist argument introduced by William Dembski, used by advocates to promote the pseudoscience of intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex, where in Dembski's terminology, a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. An example cited by Dembski is a poker hand, where for example the repeated appearance of a royal flush will raise suspicion of cheating. Proponents of intelligent design use specified complexity as one of their two main arguments, along with irreducible complexity.

<i>Darwins Black Box</i> 1996 book by Michael Behe

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution is a book by Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. In the book Behe presents his notion of irreducible complexity and argues that its presence in many biochemical systems therefore indicates that they must be the result of intelligent design rather than evolutionary processes. In 1993, Behe had written a chapter on blood clotting in Of Pandas and People, presenting essentially the same arguments but without the name "irreducible complexity," which he later presented in very similar terms in a chapter in Darwin's Black Box. Behe later agreed that he had written both and agreed to the similarities when he defended intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wedge strategy</span> Creationist political and social agenda

The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social agenda authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was presented in a Discovery Institute internal memorandum known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.

An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the pseudoscientific hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life. The term "intelligent cause" is also used, implying their teleological supposition of direction and purpose in features of the universe and of living things.

The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument, an argument for the existence of God. In broad terms, the watchmaker analogy states that just as it is readily observed that a watch did not come to be accidentally or on its own but rather through the intentional handiwork of a skilled watchmaker, it is also readily observed that nature did not come to be accidentally or on its own but through the intentional handiwork of an intelligent designer. The watchmaker analogy originated in natural theology and is often used to argue for the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design. The analogy states that a design implies a designer, by an intelligent designer, i.e. a creator deity. The watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. The original analogy played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism. Prior to Paley, however, Sir Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and others from the time of the Scientific Revolution had each believed "that the physical laws he [each] had uncovered revealed the mechanical perfection of the workings of the universe to be akin to a watch, wherein the watchmaker is God."

<i>The Design Inference</i> 1998 book by William A. Dembski

The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities is a 1998 book by American philosopher and mathematician William A. Dembski, a proponent of intelligent design, which sets out to establish approaches by which evidence of intelligent agency could be inferred in natural and social situations. In the book he distinguishes between three general modes of competing explanations in order of priority: regularity, chance, and design. The processes in which regularity, chance, and design are ruled out one by one until one remains as a reasonable and sufficient explanation for an event, are what he calls an "explanatory filter". It is a method that tries to eliminate competing explanations in a systematic fashion including when a highly improbable event conforms to a discernible pattern that is given independently of the event itself. This pattern is Dembski's concept of specified complexity. Throughout the book he uses diverse examples such as detectability of spontaneous generation and occurrence of natural phenomena and cases of deceit like ballot rigging, plagiarism, falsification of data, etc.

<i>Uncommon Dissent</i> 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski

Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing is a 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski in which fifteen intellectuals, eight of whom are leading intelligent design proponents associated with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), criticise "Darwinism" and make a case for intelligent design. It is published by the publishing wing of the paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The foreword is by John Wilson, editor of the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today. The title is a pun on the principle of biology known as common descent. The Discovery Institute is the engine behind the intelligent design movement.

The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, "Why there almost certainly is no God".

Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but eventually came to receive near-universal acceptance in the scientific community. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring has been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists since the 1940s.

The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of intelligent design</span>

This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.

<i>The Edge of Evolution</i> 2007 book by Michael Behe

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism is an intelligent design book by Discovery Institute fellow Michael Behe, published by the Free Press in 2007. Behe argues that while evolution can produce changes within species, there is a limit to the ability of evolution to generate diversity, and this limit is somewhere between species and orders. On this basis, he says that known evolutionary mechanisms cannot be responsible for all the observed diversification from the last universal ancestor and the intervention of an intelligent designer can adequately account for much of the diversity of life. It is Behe's second intelligent design book, his first being Darwin's Black Box.

The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled "Teach the Controversy", which claims that a controversy exists within the scientific community over evolution. The scientific community rejects intelligent design as a form of creationism, and the basic facts of evolution are not a matter of controversy in science.

References

  1. Shallit expert report, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
  2. 1 2 3 Stenger, Victor (December 2000). "The Emperor's New Designer Clothes". Skeptical Inquirer. Archived from the original on 2008-03-13. Retrieved 2008-07-17.
  3. How to Evolve Specified Complexity by Natural Means, Matt Young
  4. 1 2 The Design Detectives Archived 2007-02-25 at the Wayback Machine , Jason Rosenhouse. Assistant Professor, Mathematics, James Madison University
  5. Steven Schafersman, "Michael Behe and Intelligent Design". Archived from the original on October 12, 2007. Retrieved 2008-07-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) on National Public Radio "Talk of the Nation"
  6. ""Intelligent Design" Not Accepted by Most Scientists". National Center for Science Education. September 10, 2002. Retrieved 2009-11-12.

Some criticisms