The Case Against Intelligent Design

Jerry Coyne (a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago) wrote in The New Republic Online The Scopes trial of our day--Kitzmiller, et al v. Dover Area School District et al--began innocuously. In the spring of 2004, the district's textbook review committee recommended that a new commercial text replace the outdated biology book. At a school board meeting in June, William Buckingham, the chair of the board's curriculum committee, complained that the proposed replacement book was "laced with Darwinism." After challenging the audience to trace its roots back to a monkey, he suggested that a more suitable textbook would include biblical theories of creation. When asked whether this might offend those of other faiths, Buckingham replied, "This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such."

This is true, however Genesis is also a part of Torah, so teaching the account from Genesis is consistent with Jewish Beliefs as well, and if we look in the Koran (2:29 we see "It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge. "

Defending his views a week later, Buckingham reportedly pleaded: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" And he added: "Nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a separation of church and state."

I agree with both points

.... Why all the fuss about a seemingly inoffensive statement? Who could possibly object to students "keep[ing] an open mind" and examining a respectable-sounding alternative to evolution? Isn't science about testing theories against each other? The furor makes sense only in light of the tortuous history of creationism in America. Since it arose after World War I, Christianfundamentalist creationism has undergone its own evolution, taking on newer forms after absorbing repeated blows from the courts. "Intelligent design," as I will show, is merely the latest incarnation of the biblical creationism espoused by William Jennings Bryan in Dayton. Far from a respectable scientific alternative to evolution, it is a clever attempt to sneak religion, cloaked in the guise of science, into the public schools.

What is there about religion that causes you so much fear?

.... Intelligent design, or ID, is the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions. ID comes in two parts. The first is a simple critique of evolutionary theory, to the effect that Darwinism, as an explanation of the origin, the development, and the diversity of life, is fatally flawed. The second is the assertion that the major features of life are best understood as the result of creation by a supernatural intelligent designer.

Darwinism is flawed. There are no fossils or other scientific proof of any of the jumps from one species to another, and ID does provide for a possible explanation to that flaw.

.... Thus scientists speak of "atomic theory" and "gravitational theory" as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity.

Gravity certainly exists, just as we exist. The physists have proof for much of gravitational theory. Can the theory of evolution prove that we were created as Darwin says, and not as Genesis says, or not by an Intelligent Designer using evolution as one of His tools in creating us?

.... Our appendix is the vestigial remnant of an intestinal pouch used to ferment the hard-to-digest plant diets of our ancestors. (Orangutans and grazing animals have a large hollow appendix instead of the tiny, wormlike one that we possess.) An appendix is simply a bad thing to have. It is certainly not the product of intelligent design: how many humans died of appendicitis before surgery was invented?

Can you prove it was not created by an Intelligent Designer to serve some other useful purpose, but could it not have evolved into the tiny, wormlike one that we now possess? Is evolution always for the good?

.... IDers work at secular institutions rather than at Bible schools. IDers work, speak, and write like trained academics; they do not come off as barely repressed evangelists. Their ranks include Phillip Johnson, the most prominent spokesperson for ID, and a retired professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley; Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University; William Dembski, a mathematician-philosopher and the director of the Center for Theology and Science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Jonathan Wells, who has a doctorate in biology from Berkeley.

And yet you till disparage their findings.

.... Of Pandas and People is a textbook designed as an antidote to the evolution segment of high school biology classes. It was first published in 1989. By repackaging and updating a subset of traditional young-earth creationist arguments while avoiding taking a stand on any issues that might divide creationists (such as the age of the Earth), it marked the beginning of the modern intelligentdesign movement. By presenting the case for ID, it is supposedly designed to give students a "balanced perspective" on evolution. Although the second edition of Pandas is now twelve years old (a third edition, called Design of Life, is in the works), it accurately presents to students the major arguments for ID. Pandas carefully avoids mentioning God (except under aliases such as "intelligent designer," "master iantellect," and so on); but a little digging reveals the book's deep religious roots.

What is there to fear in deep religious roots. As you indicated, it carefully avoids mentioning God, for those that somehow fear using that word in school.

.... Pandas also makes much of the supposed absence of transitional forms: the "missing" links between major forms of life that, according to evolutionary theory, must have existed as common ancestors. Their absence, claim creationists, is a major embarrassment for evolutionary biology. Phillip Johnson's influential book Darwin on Trial, which appeared in 1993, particularly emphasizes these gaps, which, IDers believe, reflect the designer's creation of major forms ex nihilo. And there are indeed some animals, such as bats, that appear in the fossil record suddenly, without obvious ancestors. Yet in most cases these gaps are certainly due to the imperfection of the fossil record. (Most organisms do not get buried in aquatic sediments, which is a prerequisite for fossilization.) And species that are soft-bodied or have fragile bones, such as bats, degrade before they can fossilize. Paleontologists estimate that we have fossils representing only about one in a thousand of all the species that ever lived.

So if we take the total number of species, and divide it by one thousand, that still is a sizeable number which should mean we should have some examples of animals in transition from one species to another, and yet we have none. Perhaps the theory is faulty. In which case why should it be taught in school, to the exclusion of other theories, such as ID?

.... Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes?

Maybe that designer included that enzyme, but evolution caused it to be disabled?