Outline the Anthropic Principle, Probability and Intelligent Design. How does
Darwinism answer these?
The Anthropic Principle was first put forward by F.R. Tennant, who was one of the
first to accept the coexistence of evolution and the design argument. According to
him, the apparent purpose of evolution allows the design argument to work, as it
appears to be directed by intelligence. If something was moving toward a goal, then
there must be a guiding hand.
What many feel is odd about the universe is the perfection of its creation – human
life as we know it only possible because of the very precise features (both physical,
astronomical, and thermal), that the big bang displayed. According to some, the
probability of these events happening by pure chance is so low that there must have
been a guiding hand in the process. However, what people must accept is that in the
millions of explosions that happen, have happened, and will happen, every second of
every day, there was, once, one that had the distinct characteristics to create the
world as we know it today. Therefore it is no coincidence that everything on the
Earth is right for our survival – God, of course, intended it to be so. The conclusion is
reached that the stability of structures that are essential to life, from the smallest of
nuclei to the entirely of the universe depends of such delicate balances between
different forces in existences. These balances occur in only a tiny fraction of possible
universes, so therefore our universe appears fine tuned for life.
But, for all we know, there could have been many events similar to the big bang,
previous to it, that did not have the characteristics to create the universe. Just
because it happened, doesn’t mean that we have to resort to the frankly illogical
leap of claiming there was a designer, or helping hand, behind the process. If I claim
that the helping hand behind the creation of our universe was a ten armed slime
monster with a green head, I would be ridiculed and my ideas ignored. However, if I
claim that an omnipresent, omnibenevolent and omnipotent ‘God’ was behind such
an event, I suddenly achieve credibility that, frankly, I do not deserve. We, as a
society, have merely been conditioned to accept such an idea of God as plausible.
The principle itself can be divided into weak and strong arguments. With the weak
principle, it states that because we are here the universe must have the properties
necessary for life. However, it does not explain why the universe is as such. The
participatory anthropic principle is far more subtle and states that the universe
would not exist unless there were observers to see it, however this is also flawed in
that it doesn’t account for the non-existence of humans. The strong anthropic
principle states that it is necessary for the universe to have the properties it did, and
the fine-tunings in its creation, and that these did not just happen but were
necessary. The universe was intelligently constructed, and could not have come into
being in any other way.
Richard Swinburne approached the design argument from his stance of the
“argument of probability”, in that the design and order that we see in the universe
increases the probability of God’s existence, and he refuses to accept the order of
the universe as ‘the way it is’. Despite accepting that science can explain many of the
regularities we see, it is still a logical and reasonable step to have a God who created
our universe. Fundamentally, he found a list of seven features of the universe which
exist the probability of its design, for example its very existence, its order, the
existence of consciousness, and evidence of miracles and religious experience. Of
course, the last point is non-sensical as we have no ‘evidence’ of religious
experience, due to its intensely personal nature.
Overall, Swinburne argues that the probability that God exists is greater than that he
doesn’t, and the God that probably exists doesn’t come under the laws of nature,
and as such must be the only designing God as others are now unnecessary.
However, he assumes that the world only exists for our existence, humanity (an
argument which is supported by Genesis), but surely any creature that survives, and
indeed thrives in the way we have, could claim the universe was created for them.
Also, if we accept that there is a probability God exists, there are also other
probabilities for other outcomes.
More recently, intelligent design has claimed that certain features of the universe we
find ourselves in are best explained by an intelligent cause. The term was first
created in 1987 by the US Supreme Court in the landmark case of Edwards v.
Aguillard which ruled that creation could not be legally required to be taught in
schools alongside evolution. Despite those who claim that intelligent design is a
scientific theory standing on an equal footing with other scientific theories about the
creation of the universe and the emergence of life, they are wrong. The consensus
amongst the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science, and the US
National Academy of Sciences justifies this by saying that “creationism, intelligent
design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of
species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.”
Intelligent design does not identify or name the intelligence behind it, however
merely states that one must exist.
A key principle of intelligent design is irreducible complexity, which argues that
certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from other simpler
ancestors. Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry, who created the argument,
defined an irreducibly complex system as one being “composed of several wellmatched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the
removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”.
This apparently proves that modern life forms could not have evolved naturally.
However, nearly all of the examples Behe provides have been rebuked by science,
and were based on misunderstandings of the systems in question. In the 2005
District Court trial Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where Behe gave
evidence, the court found that “Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has
been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the
scientific community at large.” However, despite the obvious failure of the argument
it continues to be used by proponents of intelligent design and creationism.
Many take the example of Haemoglobin, which is said to be such a complex
molecule that it cannot have come about through chance alone, and is apparently
irreducibly complex. The Darwinist's explanation is that there is a smooth path from
simplicity to complexitythat can be traced through the history of life, and
Haemoglobin molecules can be traced back to much simpler replicating molecules
which gained a greater and greater complexity through natural selection.
Darwinism answers the apparent challenges of "intelligent" design by stating that
the world is the way it is today simply because of the evolution of species and the
planet as a whole. The order and adaptation that we see in the natural world has
been achieved through billions of years worth of fine tuning, adaptation, and natural
selection, with species gradually evolving into the diverse life forms we see today.
Distinct species find different ways to cope with their environments, otherwise they
simply can no longer survive. He manages to explain how the order we see has been
created without taking the illogical step towards a designer, and also suggests that
the universe is not being led towards the goal of such a designer, but is adapting
itself to its dynamic conditions. Also, it does not argue that we are a special species
on the earth, merely that we are the best adapted for our conditions, and therefore
we thrive. This has the alternative conclusion that if conditions become unsuitable
for the human species we also can die out.