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February 12, 2012

Home > 2010 > MayChristianity Today, May, 2010
The Village Green
Intelligent Design: Find a Fertile Idea
Karl Giberson, Stephen C. Meyer, and Marcus Ross chart ways intelligent design can gain academic currency.




Karl Giberson, director of Gordon College's Forum on Faith and Science, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and Marcus Ross, a professor of geology at Liberty University suggest the best ways the intelligent design movement can gain academic credibility.

Leaders of the intelligent design (ID) movement—William Dembski, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells—write mainly for popular audiences and have a negligible presence—as ID theorists—in scientific literature.

To get credibility in the academy, these theorists need to engage the academy by publishing in its journals and attending its meetings. But first they need a fertile idea—one that generates new scientific knowledge.

ID's central thesis—that biological systems show scientific evidence of intelligent design—has not developed to the point where it can make specific predictions that lead to new knowledge. At the end of the 18th century, William Paley wrote about how the intricate mechanics of a watch provide evidence of a designer. Two centuries later, Behe is making the same argument about the flagellum of the bacterium.

If ID proponents want to update Paley's arguments for the 21st century, they need to show how their version is more fertile. Paley-era biologists—many of them Christians—did not abandon Paley because his design arguments were refuted; they weren't. They moved on because his ideas were sterile. Good scientific ideas, like atomic theory, gravity, quarks, and genetics, are rich. Such ideas are like bags of popcorn in the microwave, exploding with new insights into nature.

Two decades ago, Phillip Johnson launched the ID movement with Darwin on Trial. He galvanized the search for a study of biology without evolution. Ambitious agendas were developed. Promises were made in those early days that ID would produce new scientific knowledge.

It hasn't. ID's ideas are no better developed now than they were in the 1990s. And many of the ideas—like the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade and the bacterial flagellum—have grown measurably weaker as research has successfully "reduced" the complexity. Little progress has been made on even articulating a definition of design, and different ID theorists look for the definition of design in different places.

ID's own thinkers disagree about such basic questions as common ancestry and the age of the earth. A paradigm so vaguely articulated and inconsistently embraced by its own adherents will not win over a skeptical scientific community.

I would love to see ID redirect its energies to developing a genuinely fertile idea. Stop trying to prove that Darwin caused the Holocaust or that evolution is ruining Western civilization. Agree among yourselves that the earth is old, since science has proven that. Do not call world-class scientists "cranks," as Meyer implies in Signature in the Cell. Do not claim that evolution is collapsing, when everyone in the field knows it isn't. Stop claiming that you cannot get your work published in conventional journals when you aren't submitting papers to these journals.

Instead, roll up your sleeves and get to work on the big idea. Develop it to the point where it starts spinning off new insights into nature so that we know more because of your work. Then the academy will welcome you with open arms. Science loves rebels.





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Displaying 1–5 of 73 comments

Tom Smith

May 31, 2010  11:24am

CONT. . When there is found to be little “junk DNA” then the evolutionary explanation for development is in question. The ID prediction on “junk DNA” is scientifically valid contrary to your statement. Again, I should point out the fact that Darwinianists hijack design by attributing the designed robustness of life to mutation and selection. ID predicts that the many designs of life allowing robustness are pre-programmed into the genome. Beyond the design "evolution" ceases!

Tom Smith

May 31, 2010  11:12am

Scott, your claim is disingenuous. I am sure there have been claims of new discovered function in the genome by many mainline scientists. Just because some discoveries that showed some "junk DNA" to have function does not invalidate the ID prediction that "junk DNA" will be found to contain much function. I would go on to claim that there is little “junk DNA” and the supposed “junk DNA” is useful in the development of the individual life-form. When we look at the parts and complexity of the human body, there are no machines made by humans that compare to it. Another reason why your claim is disingenuous is because Dembski approaches the argument from an informational point of view. Darwinians believe that there needs to be junk DNA and that this Fisherian information (possibility of holding useful information) changes into algorithmic information over time with much function. ID proponents maintain that as science advances the junk DNA will be shown to contain function.

Scott Page

May 28, 2010  7:27am

I would only like to comment on the claim that ID allowed for the 'prediction' that junkDNA has function. I contacted the DI a few months ago and asked for an example of such a predciction. John West replied,and the earliest such prediction he could provide was given from Demski in 1998. A literature search, which took me all of about 5 minutes, revealed that 'evolutionists' had, in fact, not only been speculating and hypothesizing about function in noncoding DNA DECADES before Dembski's ID-based "prediction",there were many publications documenting discovered function - well before the 'prediction' was ever made. The earliest paper I found in my 5 minute search was from 1975 - 23 years before Dembski 'predicted' function in junkDNA (I should point out that the term 'junkDNA' did not come into use until after 1972 or so;there are many publications from before 1975 on junkDNA that do not use the term junkDNA). Bottom line - be very wary of claims of ID-based "predictions".

Tom Smith

May 27, 2010  1:07am

David thanks for your response. I responded in part because you gave a general response. I don't know how you can denigrate ID for the supposed promises made by some researchers and writers. In the world of the sciences, it goes where it goes. The researcher may think they know the direction of the field, but we typically don't knock them if they get it wrong. The basic theory of ID has not been shown to be wrong - though many in the sciences bring outlandish charges against ID which can be refuted. "ID can make no predictions," they say. "ID cannot be falsified," they say without even considering if evolution really is falsifiable. You must be kidding if you think ID has any serious level of funding compared to evolution. If you would dare to apply for a grant from the NSF in ID research, do you think you would get any funding? That place is so prehistoric that they even have head hunters running around their halls. I think you miss the real purpose of ID -establish ID.

david buchanan

May 26, 2010  11:42am

Tom - Since, as far as I can tell, I am the only David who has posted, I assume that you are referring to me in your recent posts. I reread my post and wonder why you thought that I was referring to you. I was not making any specific reference to you. I read all of the posts and saw that many of the writers chose to ignore the central premise of the article. My reading of the ID literature going back to Darwin on Trial and Mere Creation suggests that the implicit promises at the beginning of ID have not been fulfilled. It is not that ID lacks funding. They have enough funding to travel the country promoting the idea that we should teach the strengths and weaknesses of mutation and natural selection as forces to drive evolution. Maybe they should put some of that money toward actually doing science. If their original goal was to weaken the teaching of evolution, then they have succeeded. If their original goal was to develop a coherent theory of creation, then they have failed.

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