“Intelligent” Design

According to the Discovery Institute, 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.”

What do they mean by “intelligent cause,” exactly? That’s a sticky question. They vehemently deny that they mean “God” in the biblical sense, while simultaneously stating that they are attempting “to empirically detect whether the ‘apparent design’ in nature…is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations.” However, they do not present any evidence in support of their theory.

Their argument works something like this:
See this [biological structure]? Look how complicated that is. There’s no way a(n) [organism] could have evolved a fully-functioning [biological structure] through natural selection. Something so complex must have been designed for just that purpose, and therefore there must be a designer!

Sounds reasonable on the surface, doesn’t it? This argument is what ID propents call “irreducible complexity.” However, it is evident that they don’t really understand how evolution works. Scientists don’t argue that complex biological structures evolved fully formed for a specific function from nothing (or as the result of a random mutation). Instead, evolution has a wonderful way of repurposing (or recycling) what’s available. An example of this recycling can be seen in homologous structures in mammals. Homologous structures are those which are derived from a common ancestor, but serve different functions in different species. The forelimbs of cats, whales, bats and humans serve different functions. Cats walk on theirs, whales swim, and bats fly. I use my forelimbs to, among other things, add content to this site. But under the skin the forelimbs of all these species share the same bone structure, down to the number of digits (phalanges)¹.

Another example ID supporters use as “evidence” is taken directly from the testimony at the KBOE Science Standards Hearings. Dr. Harris states

since 1953 when DNA– the code was cracked by Watson and Crick, what they– Watson and Crick discovered was a code. They discovered a code. Every other code in the world that we know of came from a mind. To conclude that DNA at some level somewhere originally came from a mind is not an irresponsible deduction from the data.

Insidious, isn’t it? DNA is a code. All other codes we know of were created by an intelligence. Therefore, DNA must have been created by an intelligence. This argument is a logical fallacy known as questionable cause:

This fallacy has the following general form:
1. A and B are associated on a regular basis.
2. Therefore A is the cause of B.

The general idea behind this fallacy is that it is an error in reasoning to conclude that one thing causes another simply because the two are associated on a regular basis. More formally, this fallacy is committed when it is concluded that A is the cause of B simply because they are associated on a regular basis. The error being made is that a causal conclusion is being drawn from inadequate evidence. ²

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¹ Solomon, Biology 5^th edition, Figure 17.10, Saunders College Publishing
² http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ and � Copyright 1995 Michael C. Labossiere