The Case Against Intelligent Design

University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne, reviewing the ID textbook Of Pandas and People in The New Republic (free registration required), absolutely demolishes "Intelligent Design" theory. I've been kind of agnostic (no pun intended) on the merits of ID, which is part of the reason I haven't written about it much, but Coyne makes a very, very damning case.

According to Coyne, "theory" - as in, "the theory of evolution is only a theory" - is grossly misunderstood outside the scientific context, and that's why proponents of ID have been so successful:

It is important to realize at the outset that evolution is not "just a theory." It is, again, a theory and a fact. Although non-scientists often equate "theory" with "hunch" or "wild guess," the Oxford English Dictionary defines a scientific theory as "a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts." In science, a theory is a convincing explanation for a diversity of data from nature. Thus scientists speak of "atomic theory" and "gravitational theory" as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity.

The physical evidence for Darwin's theories is actually overwhelming, much to the chagrin of ID supporters, who scramble to find more "holes" in them every time new fossil evidence is discovered. Ultimately, like those who believe in alien abductions or that the Jews carried out the 9/11 attacks, "Intelligent Design" advocates always respond with "yes, but..." every time their theories are disproven. And, of course, a scientific hypothesis isn't falsifiable, it isn't scientific at all:

Insofar as intelligent-design theory can be tested scientifically, it has been falsified. Organisms simply do not look as if they had been intelligently designed. Would an intelligent designer create millions of species and then make them go extinct, only to replace them with other species, repeating this process over and over again? Would an intelligent designer produce animals having a mixture of mammalian and reptilian traits, at exactly the time when reptiles are thought to have been evolving into mammals? Why did the designer give tiny, non-functional wings to kiwi birds? Or useless eyes to cave animals? Or a transitory coat of hair to a human fetus? Or an appendix, an injurious organ that just happens to resemble a vestigial version of a digestive pouch in related organisms? Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes? Why didn't the intelligent designer stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species? And why would he make the flora and fauna on those islands resemble that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different? Why, about a million years ago, would the designer produce creatures that have an apelike cranium perched atop a humanlike skeleton? And why would he then successively replace these creatures with others having an ever-closer resemblance to modern humans?

There are only two answers to these questions: either life resulted not from intelligent design, but from evolution; or the intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to make it look as though it had evolved. Few people, religious or otherwise, will find the second alternative palatable. It is the modern version of the old argument that God put fossils in the rocks to test our faith.

The final blow to the claim that intelligent design is scientific is its proponents' admission that we cannot understand the designer's goals or methods. Behe owns up to this in Darwin's Black Box: "Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for a reason--for artistic reasons, to show off, for some as-yetundetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason--or they might not."
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Well, if we admit that the designer had a number of means and motives, which can be self-contradictory, arbitrary, improvisatory, and "unguessable," then we are left with a theory that cannot be rejected. Every conceivable observation of nature, including those that support evolution, becomes compatible with ID, for the ways of the designer are unfathomable. And a theory that cannot be rejected is not a scientific theory. If IDers want to have a genuinely scientific theory, let them propose a model that can be rigorously tested.

So much for the question of how life evolved. That's not to say we shouldn't think about the question of why. As usual, I'm with Lileks on that one:

I have no doubt about evolution – a recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed a study of some eggs laid down over many tens of thousands of years. Some low-life creature of little significance. The eggs showed how the creatures had adapted to changes in the predator population – growing spikes, losing them, growing them again. The article also pointed out variances within evolutionary biology camps, how they reacted to the data, and pointed out that it’s hardly a monolithic block staffed with unwavering acolytes. Opinions differ. Except, of course, for the idea that evolution occurs, which would seem to be a prerequisite for being an evolutionary biologist. But not one of the scholars asked the why behind the why, and I wouldn’t expect them too. Not their job.

Is that the job of high-school teachers? At some point, yes; I think any class could profit from philosophical exploration of the origins of life. And that’s all ID is to me, really: the possibility that the universe as a cause, that it was, for lack of better terms, summoned by volition. I know, I know – analogies are always imperfect, flattering to the believers and annoying to the disputers, but the world is like a newspaper: you either think that someone put it together, or you think that letters were thrown into a building and somehow they all arranged themselves in the form of editorials and recipes.

Yes, yes, bad analogy. Although putting a newspaper in the hands of an illiterate tribesman in the Amazon might give him pause; he would have no idea how this was put together, let alone what it was. I just hesitate to say that we have it all figured out, and everything above and around and below is simply clockwork crafted by the hand of chance.

Posted by damian at August 20, 2005 08:50 PM | TrackBack