Intelligent Design Fails Under Scrutiny
Chicago Sun-Times
Although proponents of intelligent design at the hearings in Dover, Pa., may pretend that theirs is a new theory proposed to explain the gaps in Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, the public should not be misled. Although this may be how Michael Behe presented it in his book, Darwin's Black Box (1996), he has things exactly backward.
The idea of intelligent design goes back at least to Plato's argument that the order we perceive in the world could only be the product of a mind. A few centuries later, the Roman physician Galen argued that the human body must have been divinely planned. Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in response to what he perceived as glaring weaknesses in this tradition, which was called natural religion or natural theology.
The problems with intelligent design or natural religion are both factual and philosophical. The factual problems are legion. If species were designed by a divine intelligence, why have so many of them gone extinct? Why do we find similarities in the bone structure of the human hand, the wing of the bat, the fin of the porpoise, and the leg of horse in spite of their considerable differences in purpose? Why are there rudimentary organs, such as the human appendix? Above all, intelligent design can at best try to explain the facts that scientists have already discovered. But it is unable to open up new areas of research that lead to new discoveries.
The philosophical problems with natural religion were pointed out a century before Darwin by the philosopher David Hume. Thinking back to Galen's use of the argument, we find that it supports polytheism just as easily as monotheism. Nature could have been designed by a committee of gods. Furthermore, how can we presume that the designer thinks the way humans do, so that what looks designed to us looks designed to a supernatural intelligence?
Even worse, even if the argument can establish the intelligence of a designer, it in no way can establish the designer's moral goodness. Why would the bee have been designed so that it causes its own death by stinging its enemies? Why did this intelligent designer plan for parasites that eat their hosts alive, or drones that are murdered by their sterile sisters after mating with the queen? Why is there so much pain, suffering and disease? If the designer was intelligent enough to foresee problems but did nothing to prevent them, then this being either was not powerful enough to prevent them or cared little for its creations, or worse. Evolutionary theory answers these problems precisely because we would not expect to find goodness in nature if species came about through natural processes.
No scientific theory solves all the problems that confront it, but leaves them open for further research. However, intelligent design has far more unsolved problems than does evolution. Perhaps it would be a good idea to let high school students compare evolution to an alternative theory. But why not expose them to a genuine alternative? Why not have them read the last chapter in Darwin's On the Origin of Species, where he summarizes the difficulties with the natural religion alternative? This could help them appreciate the point of so many of the facts they would otherwise simply memorize.
Warren Schmaus, professor of philosophy,
Illinois Institute of Technology
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