Intelligent Design Questioned
by an Avowed Atheist
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Dr. Pitman:
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I came across your website while looking for material on attempts to resurrect extinct species for a political forum I post on. I felt compelled to read other parts of your site as I too am interested in the truth and wanted to hear the opposing perspective on evolution from somebody who seems intelligent. I have been an atheist all my life, even when I was a young child, but believe it would be nice to believe in a higher power. I just feel like I am incapable of faith, especially when it defies logic, but think of my own mortality often and am uncomfortable with nonexistence. I read an essay of yours entitled, "The Theory of Evolution: True Science or Dogma?" and I wanted to say why I did not find it convincing:
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Abiogenesis is not the same as evolution, and the theory of evolution is not dependent upon abiogenesis. Models for abiogenesis really are hypothetical, while the process of evolution, including macroevolutionary speciation, is well grounded in multiple lines of evidence. It is rather ridiculous to argue that because we do not or cannot understand it, there must be an intelligent, supernatural designer. It is a lot like the ancient Greeks explaining lightning with Zeus. They did not have the knowledge to fully understand weather, so they made up an explanation. How is intelligent design any different?
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The universe may or may not be fully decipherable by the human mind. I am not arrogant enough to assume that we are the pinnacles of sophistication. With or without a higher power, the beginning of the universe is a difficult concept to imagine, and the beginning of life is equally difficult to imagine. However, it would not be logical to conclude that there is an intelligent designer out there without physical evidence for its existence. The intelligent designer idea solves nothing, because we replace one logical problem with another. We can't explain the world, so something unexplainable must have created it? We cannot disprove the existence of deities as abstract as the Christian god, but the burden of proof lies with theists. Saying that the world is so amazing and complex that it must have been created by some kind of supernatural superhuman is wishful thinking.
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-Trevor Starnes
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Dr. Sean Pitman's Defends
Intelligent Design
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Hey Trevor,
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Thanks for your note and for expressing your struggle as you search for meaning in life. I do sympathize with your position very much. I had my own struggles in this area a while back and I remember it very well.
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In any case, let's look a bit more closely at a few of your counters. Now, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the term "evolution" can be applied to many different types of "changes" over time - to include organic as well as inorganic systems. In this sense, the origin of the universe and of life itself can be described in terms of "evolution". Of course, this form of evolution isn't Darwinian-style evolution since the Darwinian mechanism could not have been in play, but it is popularly thought of as a different form of "evolution" non-the-less.
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In the particular essay you read, I was indeed primarily dealing with the question of the origin of life and of certain anthropic features of the universe. Elsewhere on my website, in many other essays actually, I discuss the limitations of Darwinian-style evolution as an adequate explanation for the diversity of life and of high-level functional systems within living things.
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It seems though that your argument is basically this: Not knowing how something was created is not evidence of intelligent design. This is a common and apparently reasonable argument. I hear it all the time from very smart people. It makes sense - even to me. There is a problem with it however. We do know how certain types of phenomena could have been designed with deliberate intent while we have no idea how they could have been designed without deliberate intent. This concept is in fact the basis for all mainstream sciences that search for intelligent design - to include anthropology, forensics, and yes, even SETI science.
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Take SETI scientists for example. SETI scientists are looking for a particular type of radiosignal coming from outer space. If they find the type of signal they are looking for, they will actually announce that they have found evidence of non-human intelligent activity in this universe. How could they possibly say this based only on a radiosignal without having ever met their proposed designer? Hmmmmm? The basis for their argument is very interesting - - and very simple. They are looking for a type of radiosignal that they know humans could make but that is well beyond anything that any known non-deliberate process of nature could make. The type of signal they are looking for is actually quite simple - a signal with a narrow band spectrum.
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It is kind of like other simple objects that humans could make but nature cannot make - like a highly symmetrical polished granite cube measuring, say, 10 x 10 x 10 meters. Such a cube, even if found on an alien planet by one of our rovers, would be highly suggestive of deliberate intelligent design. Why is that? Because we know how to make such a granite cube while at the same time we have no idea how any non-directed non-deliberate force of nature could produce such a phenomenon this side of a practical eternity of time.
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In short then, that is the basis of detecting intelligent design without having to actually meet the designer. It isn't as hard as you make it out to be. This concept is also used in many sciences all the time. It isn't as illogical as you imagine. It makes a great deal of sense. Of course, one could always be wrong. Some as yet unknown nature phenomenon might be discovered after proposing the theory of intelligent design as an explanation which would falsify the ID prediction. This is always a possibility - - but that is the nature of science. No scientific theory is 100% perfect. All real scientific theories are open to potential falsification. If they aren't they aren't really scientific.
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One should in fact ask the question if the standard default to non-deliberate natural production is actually "scientific" since it is really not based on testability or potential falsification. It really has very little useful predictive value. It is really more of a philosophical position than a science in my opinion. Nature just replaces "God" as the all-powerful creative agent is all - but upon what basis? Sure, the various non-deliberate processes of nature can explain certain phenomena quite well, but all phenomena? - hardly. Why then when some mysterious phenomena is encountered is the most logical default explanation some as yet unknown non-deliberate process of nature? How do you know that is the most reasonable conclusion? How do you know that a non-deliberate process is a more likely explanation than a deliberate process? - especially if you know how such a phenomenon could be created deliberately even with human-level intelligence?
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Anyway, I've rambled on long enough for now. Keep up your search. It is a good path you are walking.
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Sean
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