Intelligent Design…Is There Any Other Kind?

Signs of Intelligence : Specified Complexity

Hi Again, Rational Faith Readers!

I hope all is well since the last time you visited Rational Faith Online.

If you’ve been part of the discussion since the beginning, you recall that the reason I decided to start this project, whether you agree with my conclusions or not, was to show that Christianity is a reasonable and intellectually viable worldview.

So far I’ve been writing solely about why I believe God exists…and I still have lots more to go on that topic before I get onto other discussions regarding why I believe the Bible is reliable and why I think there is good evidence for the truth of the life and resurrection of Jesus…and a few other interesting things (Interesting to me, anyway!)  Looks like I won’t run out of things to ramble about anytime soon…thanks for staying with me so far!

Last time we talked about how contemporary probability theorists are increasingly realizing that the odds against our universe appearing by chance are pretty much insurmountable…unless you’re willing to believe in an ‘infinite ensemble’ of universes, or ‘multiverse’ theory.

Frankly, there’s no evidence for the existence of a multiverse. The theory was developed to support the naturalistic explanation that the universe occurred by chance.  Without a ‘multiverse’, the evidence regarding universal cosmological constants and specificity in the universe points to design.

I want to talk more about the concept of design, and why I believe it can be seen in our universe…and in our world.  The implications of this idea are obvious.  (Designs need designers.)  Today we’ll start a discussion on the discipline of Intelligent Design.

Though they point to design behind nature, Intelligent Design theorists do not make any conclusions about the designer in their theories.  They do not contend that their work specifically leads to God any more than it leads to a ‘directive impersonal force’ in the universe, aliens from another galaxy, or anything else you can come up with.  They just draw the conclusion that some kind of intelligence must have been involved.

I will be drawing from Dr. William Dembski’s work in Intelligent Design (ID) for the purposes of this discussion.  If you’re not familiar with him, check out his site at www.designinference.com.  He’s a smart guy.

Intelligent design is basically the investigation of “signs of intelligence.” Its focus is to identify features of objects that reliably indicate the involvement of an intelligent cause.  The picture of Mt. Rushmore above is a prime example.  It exhibits certain characteristics and patterns that point to an intelligence.  Design theorists study these characteristics in a formal, rigorous and scientific manner…and they don’t just study giant sculptures, but biological organisms and systems as well.

The sculptures at Mount Rushmore have what design theorists would call specified complexity.  The lines and curves that make up the faces are intricate and complex.  They are also specific…the fact that these are human faces…and more than that, the faces of four actual real-life persons, make it extremely specific.  The probability of wind and rain causing the mountain to erode into these specific shapes is basically impossible.  Add to that the fact that they are specific faces of real live people who were all presidents of the United States and you would have to be OK with the miraculous to believe they occurred by chance.

Biological systems and organisms, even when broken down to their most simple forms, are immensely more complex than the giant presidents of Mount Rushmore.  Dr Michael Behe has gotten a lot of press for his work in this area.  He uses the term ‘irreducible complexity‘ to describe molecular machines and biological systems like the bacterial flagellum and the human immune response.  He and his colleagues in the field concludes that these things, along with many others in biology, could not have evolved bit by bit over time due to the complexity of their systems and how many different structures or processes are working simultaneously that have no conceivable evolutionary advantage unless established all in place at the same time.

Could they have all evolved simultaneously? That would be statistically impossible.  Would natural selection have been able to ‘select’ each component gradually until they were all in place to work together? There is no conceivable benefit for most of the components on their own…no reason for them to have been ‘selected’ individually.  (We will talk a bit more about natural selection and Darwinian evolution in the future.)

In his book called Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Dr. Behe goes into specifics regarding several irreducibly complex systems.

Specificity can come in other ways as well.  For example, a group of mathematically significant numbers (i.e. a series of prime numbers) is also specific. This is the idea on which SETI researchers like Carl Sagan, an outspoken atheist,  have based their ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’.  They reason that if they find one instance of complex and specified information, they will have proven the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Forensic science, cryptography, archaeology and other disciplines have been using the concept of specified complexity as a sign of intelligence for years.  Intelligent design theorists apply these principles to naturally occurring systems.  The same methods are applied the delicate fine-tuning of the universe and to many of the intricate, complex and closely integrated biomechanical systems (known as irreducibly complex molecular machines) found in nature.  Thus applied, they point to an intelligence behind these systems rather than blind chance.

That’s the basics of what Intelligent Design is all about.

There’s much more to it…information theory and its implications in the structure of DNA…lots more specifics about biological systems…related problems with evolutionary theory…and so on.  I’ll bring up some of this in the next couple posts, but if you’re looking for detail, make sure you take a look at Dr. Dembski’s “In Defence of Intelligent Design” , Michael Behe’s Book, and the Resources page at Rational Faith Online where you’ll be able to access lots of great information.

Intelligent Design Theory is mostly rejected by the scientific community as untestable and therefore, not science.  Whether it is included in the definition of what is considered science or not, next time we’ll talk a bit about why it has a place in scientific thought and inquiry.

Until next time,

Have a Wonderful Day!

Tagged as: ID, Intelligent Design, specified complexity, William Dembski