Is intelligent design a scientific theory?
At present it is not, though it may become one in future.
The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion.
The process involves feedback as well, when the hypotheses prove to be contrary to experiment.
Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).
I agree that intelligent agents can produce complex outcomes. That does not mean that non-intelligent agents cannot also produce complex outcomes - a snowflake is complex. As for Dembski’s Complex Specified Information I can see two problems with it; firstly there needs to be an objective definition of what does and what does not constitute a specification, and secondly there needs to be a way to distinguish newly generated information form information that is merely copied from one place to another.
Copying infomration is a big problen, because a non-intelligent process can copy information and in particular random mutation and natural selection can copy information from the environment into the genomes of organisms living in that environment. Without a way to distinguish between copied information and newly generated information in a genome the argument from CSI fails.
Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information.
These experimental tests have never been done to my knowledge. I would appreciate a reference to any published papers where such work has been done.
One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
I am afraid that ID has moved on from the initial definition of Irreducible Complexity. Behe’s oroginal formulation was:* Irreducible Complexity cannot evolve.
- Living organisms contain Irreducibly Complex subsystems.
- Living organisms cannot have evolved.
This initial argument from IC has been shown to be false. Behe’s idea triggered a lot of work and produced a number of papers covering the possible paths for various IC systems to evolve. Computer simulations have also given us the exact paths by which IC systems evolve (Lenski 2003). Even a possible path is fatal to the argument that IC
cannot evolve. Behe has since reformulated his argument, and correctly so in the light of the failure of his initial hypothesis:* Irreducible Complexity
is unlikely to evolve.
- Living organisms contain Irreducibly Complex subsystems.
- Living organisms are unlikely to have evolved.
Behe has done some work to determine exactly how unlikely IC systems are to evolve. His results were published in a paper:
Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues.
To quote from the abstract:We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 10[sup]8[/sup] generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 10[sup]9[/sup].
These figures mean that a simple IC system (“two or more amino acid residues”) can evolve in a population of a billion bacteria in about 20,000 years (“10[sup]8[/sup] generations”). To put that population size in perspective, each of us has about a trillion bacteria, a thousand times as many, in our gut and there are six billion humans on this planet.
Even on Behe’s own figures we can say that IC can evolve and that it does not take that long in evolutionary terms for it to happen.
It is also worth pointing out that the default position in science is “we don’t know”. Even if ID proponents were able to come up with something that could not have evolved, then science would revert to “we don’t know”; the ID proponents would have to produce some positive evidence to support their case. Evidence as to when the designer/s acted. Evidence as to how the designer/s moved DNA bases around to get them into the right order and so forth. Without such evidence then ID remains purely a hypothesis with no experimental support, and well short of being a scientific theory.
rossum
