Intelligent Design is scientific creationism in disguise

Robert Henderson

In the beginning was the argument from design. This claimed that God's
existence was made manifest by the intense intricacy, utility and
beauty of the world, a state of affairs its advocates said could never
have happened by blind chance but only through an intelligent creator.
Analogies with God and watchmaker were most popular.

The idea has a long history. In the ancient world it is found in
Cicero who used it in his De Natura Deorum and more than a millennium
later appears as the fifth of the Five Ways (proofs of God) of Thomas
Aquinas. Its most famous advocate in the English-speaking world was
the
Rev William Paley, who spent immense time and effort either side of
the year 1800 attempting to prove his case.

The argument from design crashed into the intellectual roadblock of
Darwinism and the growing scientific rationalism of the nineteenth
century. The religious responded by covering the argument with a
carapace of metaphysical explanation couched in scientific language
.
Their arguments took two forms. They either ran along the lines of "the
human eye cannot possibly have evolved because how do you get from no
eye to an eye through natural selection?" * or claimed that the world,
including apparent examples of evolution, could be perfectly well
explained by either God setting off a system which evolved to His plan.

However, some still hankered after immediate creationism. Some just
left
it at that and said faith proved it to be true. But a few decided to
justify the creationist argument using rational forms if not rational
means. So they began to say that it was a theory just like Darwinism.
They began to produce arguments couched in scientific language but
essentially non-scientific because what they claimed could never be
objectively tested. Often what they claimed required the Darwinists to
prove a negative, for example, to show that this or that feature could
not have arisen by means other than natural selection.

In short, scientific creationism bears the same relationship to science
as democratic socialism does to democracy, the answer in both cases
being none.

But the scientific creationists had a problem - they just could not
keep God out the picture. But the more intelligent amongst them
realised
that introducing the Christian God and Genesis into the argument made
them and rationality strangers in the eyes of most and so they
re-packaged the belief without Jehova and the Bible and called it
Intelligent Design (ID). It is scientific creationism in disguise,
Christianity without the Bible as it were.

Contrary to what the ID/creationists claim, there is ample evidence
that Darwinism is correct. Darwin based his theory on two facts:
that (1) organisms of the same species vary in quality and ability and
(2) species produce more young than their environment can possibly
support. From that one of two things must follow: either Darwin is
right or the survival or otherwise of any individual organism is
entirely random. The latter would require a belief that, for example,
that a lamb born without legs would be as likely to survive as one with
legs.

We also know from animal breeding that organisms are quickly malleable
and can be manipulated through selective breeding within a few
generations to enhance desired traits. Controlled experiments have also
demonstrated that agents such as radioactive materials and heat can
create mutations. In addition, geneticists have begun to identify the
genes which control biological development and behaviour, which
explains
how variation occurs. .

The claim that that fossil record is too sparse to prove evolution is
untrue. We have the fossil evidence of long runs of evolving organisms
such as the horse and pig - an ID advocate would have to believe either
that the intelligent designer created each individually or that the
intelligent designer set the world off on a course in which everything
would evolve to a pre-ordained pattern.

Rapidly developing genetic research has shown that all organisms are
genetically linked, in some cases surprisingly very closely - Man
shares
40% of his genes with a cucumber . This strongly suggests but does
not
prove evolution - it is conceivable but improbable that each organism
could be individually designed. .

Common observation tells anyone that the natural world has at the
least
not been directly designed, ie individually created, by an
intelligent
creator. We can tell this from the Heath Robinson nature of organisms.
These, far from being highly engineered examples of organic perfection,
contain within themselves just the type of development one would expect
from evolved organisms: structures which are clearly adapted from
structures with different functions. Look at a flatfish such as a
plaice. Its mouth and eyes etc have been twisted round through about
90
degrees to allow the fish to place its previously vertical body
sideways
in the water. The twisting is very obvious and the result crude and not
as one would expect from something deliberately designed.

It is of course possible, as I have mentioned above, that every
organism is individually created or that the whole of evolution has
been
the consequence of an event such as the working out of a computer
programme. However, there is no evidence whatsoever for this and in
principle there could never be because it would be impossible to
provide
objective evidence that it was the truth for the same reason one cannot
provide evidence of a God: there is no way of demonstrating that such
knowledge was more than a fantasy.

The God problem for ID/Creationists

Imagine that ID is the truth. The ID/Creationists have a bit of a
problem. They are, to the best of my knowledge, all Christians. Yet if
their God is responsible for creating the world he cannot be the God of
love, whose first priority is the wellbeing of Man.

When Darwin was an old man he said something along to the effect that
when he contemplated the natural world he shuddered at the thought of a
mind who could have created something so barbaric. What God of love
would create predators, many of which eat their prey alive? What God of
love would visit so much suffering by way of disease? What God of love
would make organisms grow old and defunct rather than letting them die
when vigorous? What God of love would create natural disasters such as
floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes?

If the ID/creationists are truly sincere in their belief in a creator
they must conclude that their god is, in human terms, psychopathic. RH

* The mechanism for the evolution of the eye by Darwinian means is
easily demonstrated. The starting point are a few light sensitive
cells
(some living animals have such things). . These prove useful and more
cells develop in succeeding generations. Then a protective cover
develops. This gradually develops into a lens and so on until the eye
as
we know it is formed.

--
Robert Henderson
Blair Scandal website:  http://www.geocities.com/blairscandal/
Personal website:  http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk