The Prism and the Rainbow: A Christian Explains Why Evolution Is Not a Threat

10. Is There Evidence Supporting Intelligent Design?

69 I t’s important to take a closer look at the arguments that people have used to try to support the teaching of ID as if it were a science. These arguments are usually not presented as evidence for something as much as they are complaints against problems they perceive in evolutionary theory. One line of reasoning and evidence (evolutionary theory) is attacked, but no real alternative is supplied. Another tactic (which is not unique to creationism or ID) is to use an “either/or” approach: if doubt can be cast on idea number one, then by default idea number two must be correct, as though these were the only two possible alternatives. It’s a setup, a “contrived dualism,”1 Is There Evidence Supporting Intelligent Design? 10 Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a real problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity”— but, as yet, no general theory of biological design. paul nelson When ideas fail, words come in very handy. johann wolfgang von goethe the prism and the rainbow 70 where any evidence against evolution must be evidence in favor of ID. That’s silly, of course; it’s like saying that evidence against a flat earth means it must be shaped like a donut. In addition, the either/or approach makes it sound as though there is a single alternative to biological evolution, when in reality creationism has a wide variety of forms, including young-earth creationism, progressive creationism, intelligent design, and others. Even within the intelligent design movement there is a great range of positions, from young-earth believers (e.g., Paul Nelson) to those who believe in a 4.5 billionyear -old earth and an evolutionary origin of all species, including humans, by way of natural selection (e.g., Michael Behe), prompting us to ask what, exactly, is being offered as the alternative to evolutionary biology. The perceived problems in evolutionary theory pointed out by ID supporters include “gaps” in the fossil record (also a favorite argument of creationists); asserting that life (or parts of life) are simply too complex to have arisen by evolutionary processes; pointing out that some species or groups of species have not changed much over time (which is true); pointing out disagreements among evolutionary biologists; or expressing the fear that evolution somehow removes God from the picture altogether—harking back to our prism and rainbow example. Let’s take a closer look at some of these arguments. As noted, some ID advocates point out disagreements among evolutionary biologists as evidencefor questioning evolution altogether. There certainly are disagreements among evolutionary biologists, sometimes heated ones. But these disagreements have to do with ongoing investigations into the mechanisms and patterns of evolution, not with evolutionary theory itself. Disagreements and ongoing discussions are a sign of any healthy and vibrant field of science; they do not imply that there is a “theory in crisis” as is sometimes charged. Indeed, the disagreements and continued refining of our knowledge is what makes a science a science—we don’t know everything yet, and we are continuing to explore and to discover. 71 Is There Evidence Supporting ID? Then there is the fear that evolution somehow removes God from the picture—a fear that usually is not voiced in court cases or with school boards so that the arguments will not appear religiously motivated. It is mostly the “randomness” of mutations that seems to concern creationists here, since this would seem to imply pure chance over the hand of a designer. But randomness in the context of genetic mutations simply means that they are unpredictable, as is true of so much about life. We simply do not know which variations will occur, when they will occur, or in which organisms. Additionally, “random” in this context means that mutations occur regardless of whether they are correlated with fitness (i.e., regardless of whether they are helpful or harmful to the organism). So far, I’ve talked mostly about the various attacks on evolutionary theory, and I have not mentioned any “positive” lines of evidence in support of ID theory. Do...