Intelligent Design as Apologetic Argument:
Advancing the Discussion Beyond Darwin’s Black Box
By Frank Chan, Ph.D., and Denny Lee, Ph.D.
Evangelicals who have been following the creation-evolution debate know that in
1987 the Supreme Court effectively put to death scientific creationism by declaring it a
religious doctrine and not a scientific theory (Edwards vs. Aguillard). Yet, at the time of
this writing, public school administrators in Dover, PA, Cobb County, GA, and Topeka,
KS have received national attention for considering revisions to their science curricula
enabling students to consider criticisms of and alternatives to Darwin’s theory of
evolution.1 What, then, is feeding this doubt about the power of natural selection?2
Clearly it is the growing influence of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, a loose
network of organizations devoted to the belief that neo-Darwinism can and should be
questioned on scientific, rather than religious, grounds.3
See Michael D. Lemonick, “Stealth Attack on Evolution,” Time vol. 165, no. 5 (Jan 31, 2005):
53-54; Jerry Adler, “Doubting Darwin, Newsweek vol. 145, no. 6 (February 7, 2005): 45-48.
1
2
By this question, we do not mean to suggest that there is now widespread openness to ID. See,
for example, the opposition to ID expressed in the resolution of the board of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106idIntro.html).
3 The national media closely identifies the ID movement with the Seattle-based Discovery
Institute and its Center for Science and Culture, headed by Steven Meyer and John West
(www.discovery.org/csc/). However, other important ID groups and resources would include: the
International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (www.iscid.org/); the Design Inference
Website (the writings of William A. Dembski) (www.designinference.com/); and the Access Research
Network (www.arn.org/). Two works that have effectively disseminated ID thought have been the
documentary video “Unlocking the Mystery of Life’s Origin” (2002) and the high school biology textbook
by Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Foundations for Thought and Ethics, 1993).
We should note, in fairness, that the Discovery Institute’s website merely advocates that schools and
textbooks not omit evolution’s problems as a theory; it does not advocate the teaching of intelligent
design.
1
This is done in part by establishing rigorous criteria by which intelligent design
can be detected. No one has contributed more to this task than William A. Dembski.4
As a popular illustration of these criteria, Dembski is fond of using the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) in the fictional movie Contact. 5 In the film, he asks, How
did the radio astronomers know that when they heard a series beats and pauses that
depicted all prime numbers from 2 to 101, they were in contact with a source of
intelligence? Dembski says they recognized a property that he calls “specified
complexity.” The sequence was contingent (i.e. nothing in the laws of physics required
this formation); it was complex (i.e. not a simple sequence that could easily happen by
chance); and it was specified (i.e. not just any sequence but a mathematically significant
one—the prime numbers). In short, design theorists contend that specified complexity,
provides compelling circumstantial evidence for intelligence.
Although we can trace the beginnings of the ID movement to the publication of
Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis in 1986,6 or perhaps to Philip Johnson’s
Darwin on Trial in 1991,7 it was not until 1996 that ID was, so to speak, put on the map.
The publication of Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box8 did three things: (1) it argued
popularly and eloquently for ID and gave the movement national exposure; (2) it moved
4 Dembski lays out the technical method for detecting design in The Design Inference: Eliminating
Chance Through Small Probabilities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). We should note that
this is a peer-reviewed scholarly monograph that was published as part of the “Cambridge Studies in
Probability, Induction and Decision Theory” Series.
5
Dembski has used this illustration in many different venues, but its most recent formulation is in
in William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent
Design (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004). 35.
6
Bethesda: Adler & Adler, 1986.
7
Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1991 (first edition).
8
New York: Free Press, 1996.
2
ID argument to a place where it could excel: at the micro-level of the cell; and (3) it
framed many of the terms of the current debate. Behe argued that the human cell
contains “machines” that are so “irreducibly complex” (unable to function in an
incomplete state), that no gradual, step-by-step Darwinian route could have led to their
creation.9 Though he drew from many examples, the one that has become the “poster
child” of the ID movement is the bacterial flagellum.10 Behe compares this swimming
device on the backs of certain bacteria to an outboard motor, with all the same
components: a motor, a rotor, O-rings, bushings, a drive shaft and a propeller. The
flagellum is a marvel of nano-engineering, requiring the interaction of approximately
forty different proteins. Behe asks, How could a blind, non-teleological process like
natural selection have brought all these interrelated parts together in incremental
fashion, if the absence of even one part would negate the very functional advantage
(navigation) needed to drive the entire process? The most probable explanation of the
flagellum’s origin, Behe says, is that the components of this irreducibly complex system
were brought together at once as part of an intelligent design.
What is striking is that nothing in the ID argument presented thus far has
presupposed any religious commitment. One need not be a Christian or a Jew or a
Muslim to affirm any of these scientific observations. “That is because the design
9
Ibid, 39-45.
10
Ibid, 69-72. Attacks on ID have focused disproportionately on the bacterial flagellum. See
Kenneth R. Miller, “The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of “Irreducible Complexity” in Debating Design:
From Darwin to DNA,” ed. by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: University Press, 2004)
81-97; David Ussery, “Darwin’s Transparent Box: The Biochemical Evidence for Evolution” in Why
Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, ed. by Matt Young and Taner Edis
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005) 48-57; Ian Musgrave, “Evolution of the Bacterial
Flagellum” in Why Intelligent Design Fails, 72-84.
3
inference as developed by Behe and Dembski depend entirely on the empirical
character of the effect—its irreducible or specified complexity—and not on the
presumed character of the agent who caused it.”11 In other words, ID is not about the
Creator of all material substances; it is only about the arrangement of certain material
substances.
As a result, non-theists can, and have, advocated ID. Plato spoke of an
“ordering Mind” behind the order in the world (Phaedo 97b-c) and Aristotle spoke of how
living things appeared designed toward desired ends (Parts of the Animal, 641a 7-17),
yet neither were believers in the God of revealed religion.12 Long time critic of evolution
Michael Denton is an agnostic.13 Dembski mentions in a Christianity Today interview
that he was recently invited to speak on ID by the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies. 14
Thus, although many Christians find great apologetic promise in the ID movement, its
ideas are not exclusively or even essentially Christian.
Is it fair game, then, to inquire as to ID’s apologetic value for Christianity? We
should note that ID theorists themselves, while insisting that their argument need not
presuppose religious commitment, feel quite free to give a place to the discussion of the
religious implications of their work.15 With their blessing, this paper seeks to size up
from a Christian perspective the apologetic benefits of the ID movement. How, if at all,
11
Angus Menuge, “Who’s Afraid of ID?” in Debating Design, 34.
12
See Michael Ruse, “The Argument from Design: A Brief History” in Debating Design, 14-15.
13
According to Menuge, “Who’s Afraid of ID?” 35.
14
March 30, 2004
See William A. Dembski’s comments to this effect in his address, “Darwin’s Berlin Wall,” given
at the 56th Annual Evangelical Theological Society Conference in San Antonio, TX, Nov 17-19, 2004.
15
4
does it make the tenets of Christianity more plausible and the message of the gospel
more persuasive? We will address this question with three considerations. First, we
will distinguish ID from two previous forms of Christian argument from the natural world:
(a) the classical design argument for the existence of God (notably expressed by
William Paley in 1802) and (b) the scientific creationism movement (1961 to the
present). We will then clarify ID’s apologetic value relative to these two. Second, we
will discuss the genetic code as a product of intelligent design, a line of ID argument
that, we believe, represents an advancement beyond Behe’s and a field that holds great
potential for advancing ID as a scientific research program. Third, we will discuss ID’s
timely role in the history of apologetics, how it partakes of both modern concerns and
postmodern concerns.
I.
Intelligent Design’s Apologetic Value Relative to Two Previous Forms of Christian
Argument from the Natural World
An evaluation of the apologetic value of the ID movement must begin with the
question of whether it represents an advancement over two similar types of Christian
argument from the natural world. We will discuss the design argument and the scientific
creationist argument and illustrate both wherever possible with Behe’s example of the
bacterial flagellum.
First, ID is understandably compared to the classical design argument for the
existence of God, since both begin with the observation of order in the cosmos. Thomas
Aquinas in the thirteenth century reasoned that since some intelligent being must be
directing unintelligent things, like a bacterial flagellum, toward desirable ends, like
5
swimming, this being had to be God. David Hume effectively responded to the design
argument by exposing two weaknesses.16 First, he said, it was an argument from
analogy. Bacterial flagella obviously share some features with machines, but not other
features. How do we known design is one of the shared features? Second, Hume
noted, it was an argument from induction. We can comfortably reason about causal
processes for machines because we have had past experiences with machines, but can
we really reason about causal processes for flagella, if we’ve had no experience in
watching them originate before?
William Dembski’s assessment is that Hume’s counter-arguments are
answerable, but worth listening to.17 When stacked up against the exaggerated claims
of 18th and 19th century British natural theology epitomized by William Paley (that we
can infer God’s character from nature), they rightfully keep the claims of the design
argument modest. Design in the flagellum doesn’t put us in any position to infer
anything about the nature or purposes of the Designer. Further, Hume’s counterarguments ensure that we recognize that our observation of the flagellum does not
prove a Designer (a design proof with certainty), but only suggests a Designer (a design
inference based on comparative probabilities). On the other hand, Dembski says,
Hume should not be overrated and be given credit, as he often is, for destroying the
design argument (and ID by association) so that it has no value at all. With the caveats
mentioned above, the design argument still works just fine.
16
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
17
Design Revolution, 223.
6
It is for this reason that William Paley’s famous watchmaker argument (you infer
a watchmaker when you stumble upon a watch in the woods) still works, 18 since Paley
also reasoned probabilistically from design to “an inference to the best explanation.”19
Contrary to popular belief, what discredited Paley was not Hume’s counter-arguments,
but the emergence of “another viable hypothesis” for apparent design that would claim
greater probability later—Darwinism.20 The ID movement has an advantage over Paley
in that it has benefited in large part to the demise of Darwinism in the late 20th century.
But is ID theory itself an advancement over Paley’s watchmaker argument as it
was formulated over two hundred years ago? We believe it is, in two respects. First, ID
offers greater precision in its language about design. Because of the developments in
information theory (the science of message transmission) in the 1940’s, ID theorists are
able to distinguish order exhibiting little information (like the formation of crystals) from
order exhibiting much information (like Mount Rushmore). Paley was not able to do
this.21 Second, ID has been able to move the design discussion from the realm of
theology to the realm of science. Paley would typically say something like, “Clearly the
designer of this ecosystem prized variety over neatness!” whereas a ID theorist would
say, “Although that’s an intriguing theological possibility, as a design theorist I need to
keep focused on the information pathways capable of producing that variety.” 22
18
Natural Theology (1802)
19
See Ruse, “Argument from Design,” 19.
20
Ibid, 20.
21 Walter Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life,” in The Creation
Hypothesis, ed. by J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 205-08.
These quotes are from William A. Dembski forthcoming encyclopedia article, “Intelligent
Design,” posted at http://www.designinference.com.
22
7
The second Christian argument to which ID must be compared is the scientific
creationist movement, which argues that the earth is no more than ten thousand years
old, that all fossilization is the product of a catastrophic worldwide flood at the time of
Noah and that species have not evolved, but are each the direct product of God’s
creative acts.23 Clearly critics of the ID movement view it as “stealth creationism,” and
often will pejoratively call ID “Intelligent Design Creationism” to encourage an attitude of
dismissive rejection and to avoid engaging ID’s proposals.24
The ID movement does share with the scientific creationist movement an
opposition to the approach of methodological naturalism among scientist as they
conduct their science (the belief that for an explanation to be scientific, it must be
naturalistic only). But it differs from scientific creationism in two important respects.
First, ID does not start with prior religious commitments. Unlike scientific creationism, it
does not start with the idea of an inerrant biblical text and does not try to find evidence
that backs up specific historical claims derived from a literal reading of Genesis.
Second, ID never tries to identify the cause of the intelligent design it detects as the
Creator God. Unlike scientific creationism, it does not speculate on the origin of
material world, only the arrangement of materials already in the world. Because ID
chooses to remain within certain boundaries, to follow only empirical data to where it
leads and no further, it ensures its legitimacy as a scientific theory.25
23
The movement is often traced to the 1961 publication of Henry Morris and John Whitcomb, The
Genesis Flood. It lives on in the Institute for Creation Research.
24
Menuge, “Who’s Afraid of ID?” 33-35.
25
Dembski, Design Revolution, 43.
8
In one very important sense, then, we believe these features make ID an
apologetic advancement over scientific creationism. Because it is free from religious
entanglements and does not represent church doctrine, it does not fall under the 1987
Supreme Court decision barring the teaching of scientific creationism as science in
public schools. One can therefore make the case that ID has a legitimate place in
public school science curricula (and many ID supporters have). As such, it has a better
shot than scientific creationism at overturning methodological naturalism in the sciences
and ultimately materialism as a general worldview, which quite possibly may be “the
greatest stumbling block to faith in the contemporary world.” 26 We conclude with a
statement from J. Gresham Machen, which may enable us to size up the potential
apologetic impact of the ID movement:
False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the gospel. We may preach with all the
fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there if
we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be
controlled by ideas which, by the relentless force of logic, prevent Christianity
from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.27
II.
The Genetic Code as a Product of Intelligent Design: Its Unique Persuasiveness
and Potential for Research
Any analysis of the apologetic value of the ID movement must raise the question
of the cogency of its argument. How convincing has ID theory been? How successful
has it been in winning adherents in the scientific community? Opponents of the ID
Jay Wesley Richards, ”Proud Obstacles and a Reasonable Hope: The Apologetic Value of
Intelligent Design,” in Signs of Intelligence, ed. by William A. Dembski and James M Kishiner (Grand
Rapids: Brazos, 2001), 59.
26
27 J Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” in What is Christianity? And Other Addresses,
ed. by Ned Stonehouse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 162, as quoted in Richards, “Proud
Obstacles,” 59.
9
movement have been relentless in pointing out the paucity of significant peer-reviewed
journal articles by ID scientists.28 Even though the ID movement is still quite young
(only a decade old since Darwin’s Black Box), critics are fond of saying its future offers
little hope for improvement.29 But with this last point we are inclined to disagree.
It is apparent to us that a specific form of the ID argument holds enormous
promise and perhaps has within it the potential to bring down, to use Dembski’s phrase,
Darwin’s “Berlin Wall”: the information embodied in genetic code. Indeed, the stated
reason the leading atheistic philosopher in the world, Anthony Flew, now 81, underwent
a highly publicized conversion from atheism to theism last year was because of ID work
in the area of DNA studies.30 Why?
Imagine for a moment, that you are walking through a jungle and you come
across a metal container that looks like a desktop computer. Who is responsible for this
item? If you were to examine the hardware components (power source, circuit board,
wiring), you might tentatively conclude it was the work of human beings, but you would
still hold out the possibility that monkeys had gotten a hold of some old machine parts
from a junkyard and fashioned them together. Now suppose you plug the machine in
and discover there is software running that gives you a map of the jungle and tells you
the exact location of the machine where you found it. Isn’t the monkey hypothesis now
much less probable? That is because the presence of programming instructions or
information communicated in encoded language points distinctively to human
Barbara Forrest, “The Wedge at Work: How Intelligent Design Creationism is Wedging its Way
into the Cultural and Academic Mainstream,” in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, ed. by
Robert Pennock (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 23-24.
28
29
Robert T. Pennock, “DNA by Design?” in Debating Design, 31.
30
See Flew’s interview at http://www.biola.edu/admin/connections/downloads/summer_2003.pdf.
10
intelligence. As far as detecting a human presence is concerned, the argument from
software has a higher persuasive value than the argument from hardware. In the same
way, as ID has focused its attention to biochemistry in recent years, we believe
arguments from the “software” of cellular life (the information in the genetic code) will
come to command greater plausibility than arguments from the “hardware” of cellular life
(the irreducible complexity of molecular “machines”).
Though Michael Behe’s argument in Darwin’s Black Box for intelligent design
from the bacterial flagellum was groundbreaking, it was still a “hardware” argument, an
observation about the bacteria’s mechanical engineering, which gave his opponents
some maneuvering room. Behe’s critics point to a subsystem (of perhaps ten genes or
so) in the flagellum’s basal region that may have acted as a pump (known as the type III
secretory system) and claim that this is a possible path through which the flagellum may
have evolved. Natural selection, they say, co-opted this pre-existing pump as the
bacterium gradually developed its swimming ability.31 Though Behe and Dembski have
critiqued this theory of co-optation as not much more than wishful speculation,32 one
does not get the impression that their response has been heeded.33 Their argument
from the “hardware” of the flagellum, at least for the present, has seemingly been
31 Miller, “Flagellum Unspun,” 85-87; Musgrave, “Evolution of the Bacterial Flagellum,” 82-84;
Ussery, “Darwin’s Transparent Box,” 54.
Michael Behe, “Irreducible Complexity” in Debating Design, 358-60; Dembski, Design
Revolution, 111-15, 215-17.
32
33
At a recent debate sponsored by the National Center for Science Education held at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York on April 23, 2002, neither Robert Pennock nor Kenneth
Miller would meaningfully respond to or even acknowledge any of the counter-arguments raised by Behe
and Dembski. See http://www.ncseweb.org/article.asp?category=15.
11
unable to advance beyond this impasse. Both adherents and opponents of ID seem to
have their own interpretation of how this system of interdependent parts came about
and that is that.
But “software” arguments for ID rest on a different plane altogether. Biologists
have long realized that living things are governed not merely by physical laws
(gravitational, electromagnetic, thermodynamic, etc.) but also by genetic information.
For example, the carbohydrate C6H12O6, which is found in plants, will not emerge if one
simply brings together water, carbon dioxide and light. The photosynthesis is a complex
process requiring many proteins,34 which themselves are built according to a set of
instructions found in the nucleus of each of the plant’s cells. These instructions are in
the universal codes common to every living thing: the sequence of four nucleotide
bases (symbolized by the letters C, T, G, A) in the spine of the DNA molecule’s double
helix strands.35 ID theorists have claimed these letter-sequences within DNA are the
ultimate examples of irreducible and specified complexity. 36
34
Consider the complexity of just the first two of the six steps in its photosynthesis. The first step
(Photosystem I) requires that twelve different protein molecules be bound to ninety-six molecules of
chlorophyll “a,” two molecules of the reaction center chlorophyll P700, four closely associated accessory
molecules, ninety antenna pigments, twenty-two carotenoid molecules, four lipid molecules, and three
clusters of Fe4S4. In the second step (Photosystem II), more than twenty different protein molecules are
bound to numerous other molecules: fifty chlorophyll “a” molecules, two molecules of the reaction center
chlorophyll P680, two closely associated accessory molecules, two molecules of pheophytin (chlorophyll
without the Mg++), antenna pigments, carotenoid molecules and two molecules of plastoquinone.
35
It is important to remember that the C,T,G,A nucleotides do not themselves form proteins.
There is an intricate machinery process to protein synthesis. In a nutshell, the DNA sequence is
transcribed and transported in long chains by RNA to an organelle in the cell called the ribosome, which
is something like a tape reading machine. For every nucleotide triplet it reads, the ribosome attracts an
adaptor molecule called tRNA, which has a matching anti-code. An enzyme called aminosynthetase
charges each tRNA molecule so that it connects up with a particular amino acid in the cell. The ribosome
then links these gathered amino acids into chains, which, after a sufficient length, fold themselves up into
three-dimensional protein molecules.
Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA By Designs: An Inference to the Best Explanation for the Origin of
Biological Information,” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs vol. 1, n. 4 (1998): 519-56; Walter Bradley and
36
12
What, then, is the origin of this genetic information encoded in DNA? Is there
any chance that it arose gradually over time? Did laws of attraction between the C, T, G
and A bases help bring about their present arrangement? ID theorists Stephen Meyer
and Walter Bradley have shown that there is as little reason to believe the nucleotides
have self-organizing properties as there is to believe the letters on this page were drawn
together by the chemistry of the ink.37 Unlike the “hardware” components of the
bacterial flagellum, the “software” in DNA is essentially a language.38 As in the case of
English letters and words, the sequence of nucleotide bases is a closed system of
symbols, whose meaning is confined to the internal coding system. In the English
language, the combination of the letters CAT represents an animal with four legs that
catches mice. In DNA, the nucleotide combination CAT represents the amino acid
Histidine. There is no intrinsic linkage of CAT to either the four-legged animal or to
Histidine—they are merely system-specific symbols.
Where does this leave us as far as origins are concerned? Our uniform
experience seems to suggest that internal coding systems are producible only by
intelligence. Why did Paul Revere know the British plan of attack after seeing two
lanterns in the Old North Church? Because the internal coding system, “one if by land,
two if by sea,” was designed by an intelligent source. One might even go as far as to
Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life,” in The Creation Hypothesis, ed. By J. P.
Moreland (InterVarsity Press, 1994), 206-08.
37 Several theories of pre-biotic self-organization are critiqued in Walter L. Bradley, “Information,
Entropy and the Origin of Life,” in Debating Design, 345-49; Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA By Design,” 533-34,
538-39.
38
Indeed, J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1987), 51, has put the parallelism this way: “We speak of a genetic code, of DNA being transcribed into
RNA, and RNA being translated into protein. The genetic code is composed of letters (nucleotides), words (codons
or triplets), sentences (genes), paragraphs (operans), chapters (chromosomes), and books (living organisms).”
13
define intelligence as the ability to devise and communicate encoded information.39 No
Darwinian process can convincingly account for a seemingly arbitrary set of one-to-one
mappings between symbols and their referents. In other words, ID’s “software”
argument, using the analogy between linguistic texts and genetic “texts,” strikes us as
more formidable than its “hardware” arguments to date.
But the ID movement’s apologetic value must lie not only in the plausibility of its
argument, but in the fruitfulness of its research program. Critics of ID have claimed
mainstream science’s rejection of ID has been because “it makes no real predictions
and lacks explanatory power.”40 They have a point. More must be done to move ID
research from the mere determination of design to the scientific outworking of design.41
We believe the genetic code may be the place where ID’s scientific research efforts can
make a great impact. Allow us briefly to suggest two possible ways.
First, ID theory may enable genomic scientists someday to explain what for years
has been called “junk code.” Evolutionary biologists have deemed long stretches of
seemingly barren DNA sequences in animal genomes to be the result of the sloppiness
of the evolutionary process.42 This is because they assume that as the animal evolved
and adapted to its changing environment, new information had to have been generated
through random mutations in its genetic code, rendering the remnants of the old
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists “the ability to use symbols” as one of the
characteristics of “intelligence.” John Oller and John Omdahl, “The Origin of Human Language: In Whose
Image?” in The Creation Hypothesis, 235-69, argue that language capacity is unique to human beings
and argue for a close relationship between language and intelligence.
39
40
Young and Edis, Why Intelligent Design Fails, ix.
41 The latter phrase come from Bruce L. Gordon, “Is Intelligent Design Science?” in Signs of
Intelligence, 213.
42
Dembski, Design Revolution, 317.
14
information useless. By contrast, ID theory gives the genomic researcher the freedom
to investigate whether the junk code represents “alternative information pathways,” a
design feature common in computer programs. Could there be “switches” built into the
genetic code that are programmed to remain “off” so long as a given environmental
condition ensues and turned “on” if that condition changes, enabling the animal to
survive a wide range of unforeseen contingencies? Could it be that sections of code
that have no obvious function in the present environment are alternative codes for either
a past or future environment? Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of “punctuated equilibrium”
made famous the twelve types of elephants in the fossil record. Were these “jumps”
due to mutations in the genetic code chosen by natural selection (Darwinism) or
“switches” in the genetic code, activating and de-activating apparent “junk codes”
(Design)? If scientific research were to show it is the latter, then ID’s explanatory power
would be vindicated, for it will have shown evolutionary adaptation to be, of all things, a
design feature.
Second, ID theory may enable genomic scientists someday to predict features in
the genetic code before they are discovered, simply because they would correspond to
good design in man-made codes. For example, software engineers know the lengths
they must go in order to maintain data integrity or data transmission fidelity (one bit
change in a bank account could cost millions of dollars). How does one ensure the
robustness of one’s information? Good design requires some sort of data check (e.g.
doublechecking whether the total number of “1’s” in a machine code is even or odd). Or
one might employ some form of information redundancy (e.g. transmitting the data
using multiple channels).
15
It is this method of information redundancy that draws our attention. If one
receives a string of information through one channel, there is no way to ensure the
accuracy of the data. When one receives that same information through two channels,
the likelihood of accuracy is high so long as the two streams match. If they do not
match, then one would be no more certain of the data than in the situation where there
was one channel (which one is correct?). The highest level of certainty would come if
there were three channels, because the third could serve as the “tie-breaking vote,”
assuming it matches one of the other two.43 The same logic is applicable to genetic
codes. Every person carries two sets of genetic codes, one from one’s mother and one
from one’s father. However, if a certain code from one set is different from the other
set, logically, there is no way for the system to determine which one is correct and
should be used. ID theory would suggest that there is a third means to determine the
accuracy of the transmission of the genetic code that awaits discovery. Perhaps there
is an error checking mechanism in each set. Perhaps there is some redundancy
information somewhere else in the genome. But given that the genetic copying
mechanism is very accurate, this further check on data integrity must be there. It stands
to reason that researchers will someday find it. When they do, ID’s predictive power will
be vindicated as well.
43 One of the authors in this paper (Dr. Lee) has received an US patent using this method to
minimize FM radio noise caused by the so called "multipath interference" in FM radio transmission. Using
three antennas and three FM receivers tuned to the same station, loss of an FM signal due to multipath
interference can be recovered by reconstructing the analog signal from at least two of the three channels
moment by moment, even in a moving vehicle.
16
III.
Intelligent Design at the Crossroads: A Timely Bridge Connecting Modern and
Postmodern Concerns
We now evaluate ID’s apologetic value with respect to the larger intellectual and
cultural Zeitgeist. To do this, we must first address at length our current postmodern
context. Much has been written about western society’s transition from an essentially
modern worldview to a postmodern worldview and the “emergent church” that must
adapt to these sweeping changes.44 Perhaps the best way to visualize postmodernism
is through Bob Fryling’s illustration of the robed priest (who represents traditional
culture), the scientist in the white lab coat (who represents modern culture) and the rock
musician (who represents postmodern culture). The priest is confident in the divine
authority for his beliefs and rituals; the scientist is confident in logic and technology to
make human life better; the rock musician is disappointed with, disillusioned with, and
suspicious of both the priest and the scientist.45
Postmodernism is perhaps better defined by what it rejects than what it affirms: it
rejects the notion that human rationality is the ultimate measure of truth and the ultimate
solution to the human predicament.46 It does not propose a substitute; it merely
declares that the Enlightenment’s enthronement of science as the great meta-narrative
has failed to elevate humanity or render human life more sensible. It deems naïve
44
See, for example, Brian D. McLaren, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the
Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000); also A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two
Friends on a Spiritual Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001); J. Richard Middleton & Brian J.
Walsh, Truth is Stranger Than it Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 1995); Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000);
Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 2002).
45
McLaren, Other Side, 160, citing Bob Fryling, Being Faithful in This Generation: The Gospel
and Student Culture at the End of the 20th Century (Downers GroveL InterVarsity Press, 1995).
17
Descartes’ notion that knowledge can be made precise and certain after the model of
mathematics. As a result, the postmodern spirit assumes an imprecision to knowledge
and views uncertainty as inevitable part of life. While it does not necessarily deny
absolute truth, postmodernism looks with great skepticism toward anyone who claims to
have it.47
What are Christians to make of postmodernism? On the one hand, some
thinkers who equate postmodernism with radical relativism view it as a dangerous
heresy. Because it threatens, they say, the objective meaning of Scripture, the
uniqueness of Christ, and absolute standards of morality, Christians must do all they
can to de-legitimize and defeat it. On the other hand, other thinkers who believe that
western Christianity has wrongly combined biblical faith with Enlightenment rationalism
welcome postmodernism as a great opportunity to liberate the church from its modernist
conceptual strongholds. They hold out the hope that a transformed, postmodern church
will someday relinquish the misguided conviction that the knowledge of God, like all
other knowledge, should be made precise and certain after the model of mathematics, a
conviction that has undercut Christianity’s character as a living, personal relationship
with God.
46
Middleton and Walsh, Truth, 9-27; McLaren, New Kind of Christian, 14-20.
47
McLaren, Other Side, 166, rightly says that the notion that postmoderns deny absolute truth is
a myth; it is a caricature that many Christian critics use to dismiss postmodernism hastily. Instead,
McLaren says, postmoderns reject absolute knowledge. He imagines one saying, “Well, of course there
is absolute truth out there. I don’t doubt that. I just doubt your ability, or my own for that matter, to
apprehend that truth and comprehend it and remember it and encode it in language and communicate it
to others and have them understand it in any absolutely accurate way.”
18
Whichever camp one places oneself,48 it is clear that (a) western culture is
moving from modern to postmodern and (b) the ID movement serves as something of a
middle ground between the two.49 On the one hand, as a scientific enterprise, ID
shares many modernist concerns: rationale argument, empirical verifiability,
mathematical precision, etc. But on the other hand, because ID seeks to demolish
methodological naturalism, a by-product of Enlightenment rationalism, it serves the
cause of postmodernism. Further, because ID raises, yet never answers, profound
metaphysical and existential questions (Who or what is the designer? Can we really
trust the scientific establishment who only wants to preserve the status quo?), it
interfaces with the concerns of postmoderns.50 Thus, at the crossroad in which we find
ourselves, from an apologetic point of view, ID holds a very timely and strategic
position.
Allow me to identify three ways in which the ID scientific program engages the
postmodern imagination. First, ID engages the postmodern hunger for mystery.51 For
years, Christians entrenched in modernity believed the task of apologetics was to offer
answers to life’s questions. The “emergent church,” however, recognizes that
48
D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1996), 10, says both reactions are valid.
49 This is recognized by J. P. Moreland, “Postmodernism and the Intelligent Design Movement,”
Philosophia Christi 2nd series, vol 1, no. 2 (1999), 97, who sees in ID the potential to mediate “between
the Scylla of the value-deprived universe of scientific naturalism and the Charybdis of anti-realist
conceptual relativism.”
50
William Dembski recognizes the potential within the emerging generation to bring down
Darwin’s “Berlin Wall” of methodological naturalism: So we’ve got a younger generation that is now going
through the educational process. Darwinism is totally status quo, youth thrive on rebellion. I think it’s
only a matter of time. I think there will be a Berlin Wall collapse. It could happen fast if we see some
major conversions” (Interview with Christianity Today, Mar 30, 2004).
51
Webber, Younger Evangelicals, 199.
19
postmoderns are tired and skeptical of easy answers. As McLaren says, the church on
the other side must seek a new apologetic, in which it will not approach life as a
problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be explored by faith.52 The operative
apologetic title is no longer, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Josh McDowell’s
courtroom decision metaphor), but Finding Faith (Brian McLaren’s journey metaphor).
Interestingly, the ID movement puts forth a call to mystery in a way that
methodological naturalism cannot. It affirms that there is a design to living things, but
leaves the identity, character and purpose of the Designer unspecified. Those
questions are unanswerable through empirical methods and therefore outside the scope
of ID.53 Is the Designer the God of the Bible? Or is it the Logos of the Stoics? Or “the
force” of Star Wars lore? And how did this Designer go about the design? All at once,
by fiat? Or through small, yet directed, incremental changes? ID tantalizingly raises
these open-ended metaphysical questions, but makes no attempt to answer them, even
though such questions beg for reflection and dialogue. At this point, ID theory invites
the observer to draw from philosophy and religion and to ponder what goes into the
unknown blank that science says must be there. Scientists talking about design
necessarily give a rightful place to mystery.
Second, ID engages the postmodern hunger for community.54 This is as much a
rejection of Enlightenment individualism as it is a rejection of Enlightenment rationalism.
McLaren, Other Side, 78: “Instead of ‘Here’s the solution to your mathematical problem,’ we will
say ‘Here’s the place to learn math.’”
52
53 William Dembski has likened this situation to seeing one side of a pan balance scale holding a
one pound brick suspended in the air and the other side of the scale behind a curtain. What is behind the
curtain? Two pounds? Five pounds? A hundred pounds? One does not know. All one knows is that the
cause must be equal to its effect. In the same way, the Designer must be equal to the effects.
54 Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims, 109-38; McLaren, Church on the Other Side, 164, 183, 196;
Webber, Younger Evangelicals, 104-05.
20
Leaders in the postmodern church know they will have to focus as much on “belonging”
as they do on “believing.” There is a corollary to this: “it is this yearning for
togetherness that inspires the oft-heard postmodern motifs of pluralism and tolerance.”55
Postmodern Christians will tend to find division over nonessential doctrinal opiniond
distasteful and will tend to embrace ecumenical efforts to bring unity. 56
This represents an interesting point of similarity with the ID movement. Unlike
scientific creationism, ID includes in its community of adherents a wide variety of
worldviews and religious faiths: Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, New Age enthusiasts,
agnostics, young earth creationists, old earth creationists. Recall that ID works primarily
with the data of the natural world and not with religious texts that claim divine authority.
This enables ID to be freed from the exclusiveness that marks scientific creationism.
ID, by contrast, is a uniting, inclusive movement, enabling an ID theorist of one religious
persuasion to connect with an ID theorist of another religious persuasion (or no religious
persuasion) in opposing the common enemy of naturalism. ID is a broad tent, which is
what postmoderns tend to like.
Finally, ID engages the postmodern trust in experience and intuition.57 Sweet
speaks of “experience currencies” and “experience industries” in our emerging
postmodern economy.58 Postmoderns literally “feel” their way through life. If this is the
55
McLaren, Church on the Other Side, 164
56
Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 37-38, points to globalization and multiculturalism
as major factors in the new evangelical ecumenism, which has expressed itself in increased dialogue
between evangelicals with Catholics and with the Eastern Orthodox.
57
McLaren, Church on the Other Side, 164; Webber, Younger Evangelicals, 101-04;
58
Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims, 27-52.
21
case, then, for good or for ill, they view experience and intuition as equally reliable
indexes to truth as they do reason. Further, Sweet tells us that postmodern Christians
are more hungry to experience God (worship) than to talk about God (theologize). The
overall effect of this postmodern slant, we believe, can work in ID’s favor. Dembski
reminds us:
It is only a recent phenomenon that atheistic materialism has taken hold. Most
peoples and places have held to some sort of underlying purposive-ness and
intelligence behind reality. Theism is not the only worldview that holds to this.
Intelligent Design is very congenial to a lot of people because they do want to
see the science match up with their deepest held convictions. . . To say Design is
detectable resonates with a lot of religious beliefs.59
Dembski’s statement would suggest that people from the non-western world and young
people from the postmodern west may have a prima facie appreciation for ID. It is
entirely conceivable that its arguments and proposals will increase, not decrease, in
plausibility to them as time goes on. We have every reason, with Dembski, to be
optimistic.
IV.
Conclusion
Leonard Sweet in one address captured the way he embraces our culture’s
transition from modernism to postmodernism with this line: “There’s a whole new world
out there! And I’m doing fine.” Times are changing rapidly. With the demise of
modernism, the postmodern church is slowing learning how to make the necessary
adjustments, free itself from its modernist trappings and become more authentically
Christian. It is investigating and learning how to do postmodern theology, postmodern
apologetics, postmodern worship, postmodern spiritual formation.
59
Address, “Darwin’s Berlin Wall.”
22
Could it be that the ID movement is opening the way to a new, postmodern
science? We share Dembski’s optimism for this emerging generation. If there’s anyone
who will figure out how to create it, it is them.
23