The New Road

The Design Of Life

Recently Intelligent Design (ID) has been billing itself as a bold new form of science. That actually works for me and I wanted to know if they were really on to anything. So I went out and bought the reference work on ID, a textbook titled; "The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems".

Unfortunately, there was no exciting new form of science to be had. Seven of the eight chapters were spent pounding on macro-evolution, micro-evolution and science in general. The second two surprised me as ID's current stated position is that science is valuable, and that micro-evolution works. In fact, you really have to understand evolution to understand this textbook. Which is odd, since my understanding was that this book was meant to replace standard biology books.

I'm saddened by this book, actually, it's very lazy. I wanted a book that introduced biology from the ID perspective. This book didn't do that. I wanted a book that explained what ID was, even in vague terms. This book didn't do that.

Each chapter went something like this; vaguely introduce a field of scientific study, use it as a platform to blast evolution and demonize evolutionists, then say in general terms that ID solves all of these issues (i.e. God did it) but don't explain how. In fact the mechanism of ID is almost never discussed. It's saved for 'future research'.

One of the most basic questions I had about ID was; how do you decide what was designed and what was evolved. For example, by what standards do they claim that the bacterial flagellum was designed?
This designed/evolved formula is important because it's key to the 'watchmaker problem'. You've heard it before; you see a watch, it's complex so you know it's designed, so there must be a designer. The problem is that it's subjective. Sure, we almost all would agree a watch is designed, but how about geometric rock patterns, or the patterns in ice crystals? Are those designed? Some would say yes, others no. So you need a formula to say definitively.

The answer ID lies in 'specified complexity', but... "The full technical details for formulating specified complexity are complicated and best referred elsewhere." Seriously, 260 pages and they can't even be bothered to tell me the formulae they use to determine whether something is designed or evolved.

In fact, what's eluded to is that the designed/evolved formula takes into account (and I'm shaking my head as I write this) the complexity of the English paragraph used to describe to system. If it only takes a few words to describe it probably isn't designed (pgs. 168-170). The ID term for this is 'descriptive complexity'.

Sadly, I would consider this the Ann Coulter version of a science book; thick with attacks that are light on references, deeply ingrained in logical fallacies, heavy on the hyperbole and self aggrandizing to the extreme. And when trying to make the positive argument very light on specifics. One I found particularly funny was that actual geologic ages were only used once, instead preferring the age names (e.g. pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, etc.). That leaves open the possibility that the Earth could be only 6,000 years old.

I'll start to take ID seriously when they drop the logical fallacy; "If Darwin is wrong then ID is right". If Darmin is wrong then Darwin is wrong, period. Darwin being wrong does not prove there is a God.

Next up on my plate is Behe's latest book attacking evolution. I promised him I would buy it and read it and though I'm sure he couldn't care less I am a man of my word.