One of skepticism's patron saints, H. L. Mencken, remarked, "For every problem, there is a neat, simple solution, and it is always wrong." Yet in writing about Darwin's theory, Stephen Jay Gould remarked, "No great theory ever boasted such a simple structure" (quoted from Gould's introduction to Carl Zimmer's Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea). Intelligent design claims that Mencken's insight applies to evolutionary biology, overturning not just mechanistic accounts of evolution but skepticism itself.
Skepticism, to be true to its principles, must be willing to turn the light of scrutiny on anything. And yet that is precisely what it cannot afford to do in the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. The problem with skepticism is that it is not a pure skepticism. Rather, it is a selective skepticism that desires a neat and sanitized world which science can in principle fully characterize in terms of unbroken natural laws.
Indeed, why is the premier skeptic organization in the world known as CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal? (They sponsored the conference mentioned above.) Though I'm assured that the "COP" in CSICOP is purely coincidental, it is nonetheless singularly fitting. CSICOP is in the business of policing claims about the paranormal. The paranormal, by being other than normal, threatens the tidy world issuing from skepticism's materialistic conception of science.
No other conception of science will do for skepticism. The normal is what is describable by a materialistic science. The paranormal is what's not. Given the skeptic's faith that everything is ultimately normal, any claims about the paranormal must ultimately be bogus. And since intelligent design claims that an intelligence not ultimately reducible to material mechanisms might be responsible for the world and various things we find in the world (not least ourselves), it too is guilty of transgressing the normal and must be relegated to the paranormal.
There is an irony here. The skeptic's world, in which intelligence is not fundamental and the world is not designed, is a rational world because it proceeds by unbroken natural law: cause precedes effect with inviolable regularity. In short, everything proceeds "normally." On the other hand, the design theorist's world, in which intelligence is fundamental and the world is designed, is not a rational world because intelligence can do things that are unexpected. In short, it is a world in which some things proceed "paranormally."
To allow an unevolved intelligence a place in the world is, according to skepticism, to send the world into a tailspin. It is to exchange unbroken natural law for caprice and thereby to destroy science. And yet it is only by means of our intelligence that science is possible and that we understand the world. Thus, for the skeptic, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then evolves intelligence. If it starts out with intelligence and evolves intelligence because of a prior intelligence, then, for the skeptic, the world becomes unintelligible.
The logic here is flawed, but once in its grip, there is no way to escape its momentum. That is why evolution is a nonnegotiable for skepticism. For instance, on two occasions I offered to join the editorial advisory board of Michael Shermer's Skeptic magazine to be its resident skeptic regarding evolution. Though Shermer and I are quite friendly, he never took me up on my offer. Indeed, he can't afford to. To do so is to allow that an intelligence outside the world might have influence in the world. That would destroy the world's autonomy and render effectively impossible the global rejection of the paranormal that skepticism requires. It's no accident that the photo of Shermer which appears in his books shows him smiling with a bust of Darwin and a collection of writings by or about Darwin behind him.
Skepticism therefore faces a curious tension. On the one hand, to maintain credibility it must be willing to shine the light of scrutiny everywhere and thus, in principle, even on evolution. On the other hand, to be the scourge with which to destroy superstition and whip a gullible public into line, it must commit itself to a materialistic conception of science and thus cannot afford to question evolution. Intelligent design exploits this tension and thereby turns the tables on skepticism.
What, then, are skepticism's prospects for unseating intelligent design? To answer this question, let's review what intelligent design has going for it:
1. A method for design detection. There's much discussion about the validity of specified complexity as a method for design detection, but judging by the response it has elicited over the last five years, this method is not going away. Some scholars (such as Elliott Sober) think it merely codifies an argument from ignorance. Others (such as Paul Davies) think that it's onto something important. The point is that there are major players who are not intelligent design proponents who disagree. Such disagreement indicates that issues of real intellectual merit need to be decided and that we're not dealing with a crank theory.
2. Irreducibly complex biochemical systems. There exist systems like the bacterial flagellum. These exhibit specified complexity. Moreover, the biological community does not have a clue how they emerged by material mechanisms. The great promise of Darwinian and other naturalistic accounts of evolution was to show how known material mechanisms operating in known ways could produce all of biological complexity. That promise is now increasingly recognized as unfulfilled and even unfulfillable. Franklin Harold (who is not a design proponent), in his most recent book for Oxford University Press, The Way of the Cell, states, "There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." Intelligent design contends that our ignorance here indicates not minor gaps in our knowledge of biological systems that promise readily to submit to tried-and-true mechanistic models but rather vast conceptual lacunae that are bridgeable only by radical ideas like design.
3. Challenge to the status quo. Let's face it, in educated circles Darwinism and other mechanistic accounts of evolution are utterly status quo. That has advantages and disadvantages for its proponents. On the one hand, it means that the full resources of the scientific and educational establishment are behind the evolutionary naturalists, which they can use to squelch dissent and push their agenda. On the other hand, it means that they are in danger of alienating the younger generation-especially to the extent that they are heavy-handed in enforcing materialist orthodoxy (and they've been exceedingly heavy-handed to date)-which thrives on rebellion against the status quo. Intelligent design appeals to the rebelliousness of youth.
4. The disconnect between high and mass culture. The educated elite love mechanistic evolution and the materialist science it helps to underwrite. On the other hand, the masses are by and large convinced of intelligent design. What's more, the masses ultimately hold the purse strings for the educated elite (in the form of educational funding, research funding, scholarships, etc.). This disconnect can be exploited. The advantage that mechanistic evolution has had thus far is providing a theoretical framework, however empirically inadequate, to account for the emergence of biological complexity. The disadvantage facing the intelligent-design-supporting masses is that they've had to rely almost exclusively on pretheoretic design intuitions. Intelligent design offers to replace those pretheoretic intuitions with a rigorous design-theoretic framework that underwrites those intuitions, thus allowing it to go toe-to-toe with standard evolutionary theory.
5. An emerging research community. Intelligent design is attracting bright young scholars who are totally committed to developing intelligent design as a research program. We're still thin on the ground, but the signs I see are very promising indeed. It's not enough merely to detect design, for once it's detected, it must be shown how design leads to fruitful biological insights that could not have been obtained by taking a purely materialist outlook. I'm beginning to see glimmers of such a thriving designtheoretic research program.
What's a skeptic to do against this onslaught, especially when there's a whole political dimension to the debate in which a public tired of being bullied by an intellectual elite finds in intelligent design a tool for liberation? Let me suggest to the skeptic the following action points:
1. Establish the right rhetorical tone. Emphasize science as a great force for enlightenment and contrast it sharply with fanatical religious fundamentalism. Then stress that intelligent design is essentially a religious movement. Generously use the "C-word" to confuse intelligent design with creationism, and emphasize the similarity of creationism with astrology, belief in a flat earth and holocaust denial. Once guilt by association is in place, play on the theme that intelligent design is "deeply flawed" and that the evidence for evolution is "overwhelming." Think of the phrases deeply flawed and overwhelming evidence not as actual criticisms or argu ments but as slogans that evoke the appropriate emotional response. (Compare them to "Don't leave home without it," "This Bud's for you," and "Just do it!") For the record, I own the domain names <www.deeply- flawed.com> and <www.overwhelmingevidence.com> (as well as <www.underwhelmingevidence.com>).
2. Argue for the superfluity of design. This action point is getting increasingly difficult to implement simply on the basis of empirical evidence, but by artificially defining science as an enterprise limited solely to material mechanisms, one conveniently eliminates design from scientific discussion. Thus, any gap in our knowledge of how material mechanisms brought about some biological system does not reflect an absence of material mechanisms in nature to produce the system or a requirement for design to account for the system, but only a gap in our knowledge that's readily filled by carrying on as science has been carrying on.
3. Play the suboptimality card. For most people the designer is a benevolent, wise God. This allows for the exploitation of cognitive dissonance by pointing to cases of incompetent or wicked design in nature. Intelligent design has good answers to this objection, but the problem of evil is wonderfully adept at clouding intellects. This is one place where skepticism does well exploiting emotional responses.
4. Achieve a scientific breakthrough. Provide detailed testable models of how irreducibly complex biochemical systems like the bacterial flagellum could have emerged by material mechanisms. I don't give this possibility much hope, but if skeptics could pull this off, intelligent design would have a lot of backpedaling to do.
5. Paint a more appealing world picture. Skepticism is at heart an austere enterprise. It works by negation. It makes a profession of shooting things down. This doesn't set well with a public that delights in novel possibilities. In his Art of Persuasion, Blaise Pascal wrote, "People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." Poll after poll indicates that for most people a mechanistic form of evolution does not provide a compelling vision of life and the world. Providing such a vision is, in my view, skepticism's overriding task if it is to unseat intelligent design. Skeptics have my very best wishes for success in this enterprise.
William Dembski
The Design Revolution
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