Introduction to Intelligent Design

Joseph D. Renick

Grace ChurchAlbuquerque, NM

July 12, 2015

Intelligent Design and Worldview

Outline

Intelligent Design - concept

Recent History of the Intelligent Design movement

Summary

Historical vs Modern view of ID

“The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place mankind occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.”

Thomas Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature (1863)

The Question of Questions

What is the nature of our existence?

Is our existence the result of unguided material causes alone or is it the result of the work of a transcendent guiding

intelligence?

Where did we come from? How did we get here?

Is there purpose and meaning to our existence?

Is it by accident or design?

Worldview

Whatever answer we give to this question, it will have a profound affect on how we understand ourselves and our

place in the universe, the meaning and purpose of our existence, the way we live our lives and our view of

eternity.

What was the message of the Enlightenment?

Accident or Design?

The Enlightenment

What does the academics world tell us?

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.

Hume on Design

The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator.

Hume on Design

What a noble privilege is it of human reason to attain the knowledge of the supreme Being; and, from the visible works of nature, be enabled to infer so sublime a principle as its supreme Creator.

David HumeSection 15, GENERAL COROLLARY, of his Natural History

All nature cries aloud that there is a supreme intelligence.

Voltaire on Design

but of reason.This is no matter of faith

What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being.

Voltaire

Causes in Nature

Chance…?

Roll of the dice, Russian roulette, asteroid impact, genetic mutation…

Neccessity

Physical law (physics and chemistry)

Design

Intelligent agent acting purposefully

The result of natural forces... water and wind erosion?

Shaped according to a predetermined plan

by a designer?

What is the underlyingexplanatory principle

at work here?

How did this come to be?How did this come to be?

Remnant of an ancient mining

operation?

What is it that is distinctive about what we see here that is in need of explanation?

Does it reflect Purpose?

Underlying principle: natural laws, natural processes and chance

How did this come to be?How did this come to be?

The result of chance and

natural forces?

Design?

What is the underlyingexplanatory

principleat work here?

What is it that is distinctive about what we see here that is in need of explanation?

Pattern, symmetry, order, imperfections…

Does it reflect

Purpose?

Ice sculptor?

How did this come to be?How did this come to be?

The result of natural forces... Water and wind erosion?

Shaped according to a predetermined plan

by a designer?

What is the underlyingexplanatory principle

at work here?

What is it that is distinctive about what we see here that is in need of explanation?

Does it reflect Purpose?

What constitutes “evidence for design?”

The discovery of an object or pattern of events (a process) or a particular arrangement in the natural world that…

Has purpose and function or carries information (specified complexity)

Cannot reasonably be explained by the operation of natural laws and chance alone

Intelligent Design is the hypothesis that certain features observed in nature cannot be explained solely by the laws of

physics and chemistry, chance and time, and that these features exhibit properties commonly attributed to design

Intelligent Design

Important design indicators are the appearance of some combination of specification, information, low probability,

purpose and function in natural systems

A basis tenet of the Design Hypothesis is that design is empirically detectable in nature through the methods of

science

ID is the inference to design arising from direct observations of natural phenomena that give the appearance of being

designed for a purpose

What can be said scientifically about ID?

Unlike Neo-Darwinism, ID is not a comprehensive theory of biological origins. It produces no historical narrative that

makes grand sweeping claims about the causes of unobserved events and processes that took place in the remote past

ID makes very modest claims and never goes beyond what the evidence allows

The design inference arising from physical evidence may have religious implications but it does not depend on a religious

premise

How did this come to be?How did this come to be?

Form and function determined according to a

predetermined plan by a designer?

What is the underlyingexplanatory principle at work here?

What is it that is distinctive about what we see here that is in need of explanation?

The result of a tornado hitting a junk yard?

Does it reflect Purpose?

How did this come to be?How did this come to be?

Form and function determined according to a

predetermined plan by a designer?

What is the underlying explanatory principle at work here?

What is it that is distinctive about what we see here that is in need of explanation?

The result of natural processes and chance?

Does it reflect Purpose?

By what kind of reasoning do you conclude that this

was designed…

…but this wasn’t?

In 1987 in Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court ruled that the teaching of Creationism in public schools was

unconstitutional

A review of the actual history from 1950 to the present reveals a completely different…and far more interesting…

account of the origins of the modern intelligent design movement

In response to this action creationists invented Intelligent Design as a means for making an “end-run” around

Edwards v. Aguillard to sneak Creationism back into the classroom

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement(The Official Story)

Biology Creation Science19

50’s

1960

’s19

70’s

Intelligent Design

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement

Watson-Crick

Miller-Urey Expt

Darwinian Centennial “The Modern Synthesis”

Nirenberg – genetic code

Dean Kenyon – “Biological Predestination” (OoL)

Revolution in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (NSF)

Sir Julian Huxley: “..all aspects of reality are subject to evolution…in the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer need or room for the supernatural… The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion. The evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern…the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era.”

Sputnik, 1957

ND Trouble Brewing

Biology Creation Science19

50’s

1960

’s19

70’s

Intelligent Design

Watson-Crick

Miller-Urey Expt

Darwinian Centennial “The Modern Synthesis”

Nirenberg – genetic code

Dean Kenyon – “Biological Predestination” (OoL)

Revolution in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (NSF)

Thomas Kuhn“The Structure of Scientific Revolution”

“Genesis Flood” Whitcomb & Morris

Wistar Symposium

Schutzenberger: “There is a considerable gap in the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and we believe that this gap cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.”

Waddington: “Your argument is simply that life must have come about by special Creation.”

“NO!”

Alpbach Symposium

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement

Scientific dissent from

Neo-DarwinismNo mathematicians

allowed!It got ugly!

Sputnik, 1957

ND Trouble Brewing

Biology ND Trouble Brewing Creation Science19

50’s

1960

’s19

70’s

Intelligent Design

Watson-Crick

Miller-Urey Expt

Darwinian Centennial “The Modern Synthesis”

Nirenberg – genetic code

Dean Kenyon – “Biological Predestination” (OoL)

Revolution in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (NSF)

Thomas Kuhn“The Structure of Scientific Revolution”

“Genesis Flood” Whitcomb & Morris

Wistar Symposium

Alpbach Symposium

Institute for Creation Research

Denton’s initial doubts

Burgess Shale - Revision

Gould & Eldredge “Punctuated Equilibrium”

Kenyon – second thoughts

“Scientific Creationism”, Henry

Morris (1974)

Epperson v. Arkansas

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement

Doubts about Miller-Urey

Sputnik, 1957

Biology Creation Science19

50’s

1960

’s19

70’s

Intelligent Design

Watson-Crick

Miller-Urey Expt

Darwinian Centennial “The Modern Synthesis”

Nirenberg – genetic code

Dean Kenyon – “Biological Predestination” (OoL)

Revolution in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (NSF)

Thomas Kuhn“The Structure of Scientific Revolution”

“Genesis Flood” Whitcomb & Morris

Wistar Symposium

Alpbach Symposium

Institute for Creation Research

Denton’s initial doubts

Burgess Shale - Revision

Gould & Eldredge “Punctuated Equilibrium”

Kenyon – second thoughts

“Scientific Creationism”, Henry

Morris (1974)

Epperson v. Arkansas

Grasse’s Bombshell (1977)

Grasse: “It is possible that in this domain, biology— impotent—yields the floor to metaphysics.”

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement

Doubts about Miller-Urey

Sputnik, 1957

ND Trouble Brewing

Biology Creation Science19

80’s

1990

’s20

00’s

Intelligent Design

Edwards v Aguillard

Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Wells: Icons of Evolution

Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen: Mystery of Life’s Origins

Phillip Johnson:Darwin on Trial

Michael Behe:Darwin’s Black Box

Michael Denton:Nature’s Destiny

Ward, Brownlee: Rare Earth Gonzales, Richards: The Privileged Planet

Kitzmiller v Dover

Gould: Wonderful Life

Molecular and Cellular Biology

Systems Biology

The Human Genome Project Launched

The Human Genome Project draft

Johnson reads Denton

Denton begins to writeChicago/NY Meetings

Behe reads Denton

Origins of the Modern Intelligent Design Movement

Hoyle: Mathematics of Evolution

Gould: “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils…” (in The Panda’s Thumb”, 1985)

Gould’s bombshell

Hoyle, Patterson , Crick

Hoyle: (1985) “The theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a probability vastly higher than one part in 10 to the 40,000th power…The speculations of Darwin were wrong…It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out but leave William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century, still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner.”

Crick: (1981) “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

Discovery Institute

Patterson: (1981) “Can you tell me one thing about evolution that is true—any one thing at all?”

ND Trouble Brewing

Microevolution does not extrapolate to macroevolution

Summary

The modern Intelligent Design movement emerged out of a scientific dissent from Neo-Darwinism resulting from

scientific discoveries in molecular and cellular biology

Intelligent design is based on direct observations of design-like features in biology and cosmology

It appears that Darwin was wrong regarding both his theses

The fossil record does not support Darwin’s common ancestry descent model of the history of life

The inference to design has religious implications but does not depend on a religious premise