January 3, 2005

Unintelligent Theory: Intelligent Design

The latest, and most duplicitous form of creationism is Intelligent Design, championed by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, which claims not to be creationist and insists that it wants to see more evolution taught in schools, while reproducing articles like Darwinists Eager to Avoid Debate. They seem to espouse a god-of-the-gaps approach, which depends upon, yet claims to refute Darwinism:

The scientific theory of intelligent design holds 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. Intelligent design theory then is an alternative solution to answer problems with Darwinian evolution.

In another article reprinted on the CSC website, Standard Evolutionary Theory Has Shortcomings, Henry Schaefer attacks the theory of evolution by embracing Stephen Hawking's two requirements for a good theory, "A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements. And it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations."

Am I missing something? It sounds like he disqualifies Intelligent Design as a valid theory as well. You might be able to satisfy the first criteria in that Intelligent Design could be part of a grand, all-encompassing Theory of the Cause of Everything: "God made it like that." Unfortunately, ID leaves the second requirement of definite predictions completely unaddressed. Nothing is predictable, because God -- or the Intelligent Designer as you know him/her/it -- could have done anything he/she/it wanted.

Posted January 3, 2005 8:26 PM
Comments

My dad would be so proud. ID is pretty pathetic. It's like refuting gravity because no one has given a theory about the graviton. They prey on the popular misconception that a scientific theory is roughly 'finished', as if most theories didn't have a lot more gaps to be filled in (which they usually do rather remarkably given enough time). Sad really. I guess we can at least take some solice in the belief that no one has died (directly) from a misunderstanding of our origins. Although maybe it could be argued that we'd have a much healthier view of humanity if we had a proper concept of evolution.

Posted by: Jesse at January 5, 2005 4:56 PM

what's odd to me is that we're still holding on to ID as some kind of proof that God is somehow more responsible for the creation of the world--even when evolution pure and simple reveals a much more complex and nuanced God who refuses to micromanage his creation. we just can't bring ourselves to consider the ways that our denial of evolution forces us to make our God small, a tiny caricature of his/her/itself.

Posted by: Jen Lemen at January 5, 2005 9:53 PM