Intelligent Design’s Science

So what exactly are the major claims put on the table by the proponents of Intelligent Design which they say demonstrates that ID is true science? Well, when last I looked they were Irreducible Complexity and Specified Complexity. So rather than simply dismiss ID as disguised Creationism, let's consider these two hypotheses.

Irreducible Complexity
Irreducible complexity's main proponent is Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Behe defines Irreducible Complexity as “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.”

In his book “Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challange to Evolution,” Behe claims that many biological systems, including the bacterial flagellum and the human blood clotting system are irreducibly complex.

The idea of Irreducible Complexity undermining Darwin is not new. Darwin himself pointed out that an example of irreducible complexity would prove his theory wrong.

However scientists have consistently refuted Behe’s claims by pointing out that if a smaller set of parts from a supposedly irreducibly complex system can be used, the system is not irreducibly complex and then demonstrating how systems identified by Behe as irreducibly complex, in fact have subparts that are either useful in themselves or have clearly evolved from other useful parts.

Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology at Brown University, in his essay "The Flaw in the Mousetrap," makes the following observation about Behe's general premise "Behe's contention that each and every piece of a machine, mechanical or biochemical, must be assembled in its final form before anything useful can emerge is just plain wrong. Evolution produces complex biochemical machines by copying, modifying, and combining proteins previously used for other functions."

Miller then addresses the specific systems suggested as irreducibly complex starting with the bacterial flagellum. "He [Behe] writes that in the absence of 'almost any' of its parts, the bacterial flagellum 'does not work.' But guess what? A small group of proteins from the flagellum does work without the rest of the machine -- it's used by many bacteria as a device for injecting poisons into other cells. Although the function performed by this small part when working alone is different, it nonetheless can be favored by natural selection."

Finally Miller addresses human blood clotting. "The key proteins that clot blood fit this pattern, too. They're actually modified versions of proteins used in the digestive system. The elegant work of Russell Doolittle has shown how evolution duplicated, retargeted, and modified these proteins to produce the vertebrate blood-clotting system."

The fact is that Behe's Irreducible Complexity is little more than a modernized version of William Paley's Divine Watchmaker which predates Darwin.

The problem is that people can continue to put forward systems as irreducibly complex. How does one prove the negative that "no systems are irreducibly complex?" Well, perhaps one doesn't have to. If creation were in fact the result of an intelligent designer, there would be thousands, if not millions, of obviously irreducibly complex systems. Where are they all?

Specified Complexity
The second argument for Intelligent Design is Specified Complexity. The major proponent of Specified Complexity is mathematician William Dembski of the Discovery Institute.

Dembski defines Specified Complexity as consisting of two components. The first is Complexity or Improbability. In order for something to meet this criterion its likelihood of occurring must be less than what Dembski calls the “Universal Probability Bound” which Dembski has set at a value of 1 chance in 10 raised to the 150th power.

The second component is specificity which is defined as conforming to an “independent detachable pattern.”

Dembski claims that nature has examples of patterns of information which meet both criteria and which he calls "complex specified information," or CSI.

For instance DNA has been used as an example of CSI as it is clearly very specific and admittedly complex. That CSI elements exist in nature is, according to ID proponents, evidence for design because intelligence is necessary to produce CSI.

Well maybe, and then again, maybe not. As a mathematician Dembski obviously understands the theory of large numbers; the most famous example of which is the idea that if enough monkeys beat on enough keyboards for a long enough period of time, it is almost certain they would produce Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.

But, 10 raised to the 150th power is a VERY BIG number. A billion monkeys hitting a billion keyboards for a billion years wouldn't make much of a dent in THAT number. Still consider this, 10 raised to the 150th power is equivalent to the odds of throwing a specific sequence on 150 dice with ten sides, yet some sequence will appear on every throw of the 150 dice.

Dembski argues that the appearance of less random sequences, with random roughly defined as the algorithmic complexity of the sequence, indicate design. For instance if my throw of the 150 dice resulted in all 7's or fifteen sequences of 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, this might be cause for rejecting the sequence as random because the number of sequences with such a recognizable pattern is tiny compared to the total number of sequences.

The problem with this approach is the assumption that all sequences, and all subsequences, are equally probable AND that one always has to reroll all 150 dice. Let's consider rolling 150 7's for a second. If you started trying to do that and rerolled all 150 dice, 7's and non-7's, every time, the universe would probably come to an end before you managed it. BUT, instead, save all the 7's and only reroll the non-7's and it wouldn't take all that long before you had 150 dice each showing a 7.

This is closer to how evolution works. Borrowing bits and pieces and tending to perpetuate "successful rolls" and successful sequences through natural selection. It doesn't go back to ground zero every time. It's a continuous process, often with multiple branches. Some of these branches succeed and others become evolutionary dead ends.

Also, by applying a Fisherian statistical significance analysis, Dembski is sort of trying to define design as the default solution simply by concluding that the random solution is unlikely. In other words, if you can't explain it through random or natural processes one must conclude that it was designed regardless of the fact that the existence of a designer MAY BE EVEN MORE IMPROBABLE. Dembski argues that he IS NOT putting forth an "argument from ignorance" but rather an "eliminative deduction" and like Sherlock Holmes, arrives at the improbable truth by eliminating all competing hypotheses. But he really doesn't eliminate any alternate hypothesis he simply tags one of them, a purely random solution, as improbable. As pointed out in the previous paragraph, no one ever said evolution is purely random.

Even the great Newton was stumped by the complex orbits of the planets and concluded that God must somehow guide their motions, a conclusion no longer necessary given modern astronomy. If we had followed the Intelligent Design approach, no one would have looked any further.

Another problem is that a corollary of the claim that since DNA is CSI and requires a designer, then no new gene conferring a new function can ever come into existence without that designer taking a hand.

As many people have pointed out that makes it difficult to explain the nylon eating bacteria discovered by the Japanese in 1975. Nylon is a synthetic fabric that didn’t exist prior to 1930, but now there are bacteria that can break down the fabric and digest it using an enzyme dubbed nylonase.

The enzyme appears to have developed from an existing enzyme as the result of what is known as a “frame shift” mutation. While most mutations of this sort are catastrophic, this one appears to have resulted in a new protein that, while only about 2% efficient, nevertheless provided a new function. Since this new function has resulted in a new food source, it has apparently been passed on to new generations.

Of course it’s also possible that the enzyme was always there and just happens to digest nylon or that the intelligent designer did some new creating, but scientists prefer the mutation option for a number of reasons. First, carrying around a nylonase gene before it could be used is at best inefficient and at worse harmful. Second, since the nylonase enzyme appears to be only about 2% efficient, if it was designed in by a Supreme Being, it wasn’t done terribly well.

So neither of the two major ID arguments has demonstrated much scientific merit nor is ID’s fundamental conclusion terribly profound. The idea that GOD DID IT has been around since the dawn of time.

ID provides NO PATH TO INTELLECTUAL GROWTH. It begins with perfection, a Supreme Being, and ends with the conclusion that there’s no reason to understand how the universe works because GOD DID IT. The so-called explanations provided by ID are in fact a declaration of surrender. The universe is so complicated that man can’t hope to determine how it all came about, so just chalk it up to God and stop trying.