A designer theory of design.
Sophisticated anti-Darwinians are eschewing Biblical literalism, invoking
statistics and probability instead -- misleadingly, some say

Dan Falk
National Post

>From the smallest bacteria to the largest whales and giant redwoods, our
planet is home to millions of species of plants and animals, each of them
remarkably well-adapted to its environment. Nearly 150 years ago, Charles
Darwin came up with an explanation for that degree of adaptation: His
theory of natural selection described how complex organisms evolve from
simpler forms of life. This, with some newer additions, has become one of
the cornerstones of science.

The implications of Darwin's theory have always made some people uneasy,
especially those who see a conflict between evolution and traditional
religious teachings. If nature really operates blindly, through natural
law, what role is left for God? Does it make sense to believe that God
created man in His image? In the early 20th century, a movement known as
Creationism sprang up in the United States, in opposition to Darwin's
theory. Creationists rejected evolution, arguing that living creatures --
and in particular, human beings -- were created directly by God, in their
present form.

Creationism has strengthened and weakened several times over the last 80
years, but recently it has been in the headlines again. Last year, Kansas
removed evolution from its science curriculum, while in other U.S. states,
Creationists have forced school boards to put disclaimers on biology
textbooks, cautioning students that evolution is "just a theory." Canada
become mired in the debate last month, after allegations that Stockwell
Day, the leader of the Opposition, has certain Creationist beliefs. And,
next year, evolution will no longer be a required subject in Ontario high
school science classes.

But Creationism has changed with the times. Today's practitioners rarely
insist on taking the Bible literally. They rarely argue about the age of
fossils or of the Earth itself. Instead, they have a new argument that
they say comes from science, not theology. Today's Creationists have
latched on to the notion of "Intelligent Design": the idea that certain
features of the natural world can have arisen only through the action of
an intelligent agent.

In his 1998 book The Design Inference, William Dembski, a mathematician
and philosopher, set the "ground rules" for Intelligent Design, using
symbolic logic, probability theory and statistics. If an occurrence cannot
be explained by chance or by necessity, he argued, it must have involved
design. And the biological world, he says, displays exactly such
signatures of design.

Even more central to the Intelligent Design movement is the work of
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemist. In 1996 he wrote the
controversial Darwin's Black Box, arguing that certain microbiological
structures are "irreducibly complex" and therefore defy Darwinian
evolution.

For Behe, the best example of irreducibly complexity is the "bacterial
flagellum": a tiny propeller-like structure that some cells use for
propulsion. He says the flagellum has to have all of its many component
parts before it can function. But natural selection can only gradually
make an organism more complex, and it can do so only if each newly added
part confers an advantage. Behe says a partially formed flagellum does
nothing, and therefore could not have been produced by Darwinian
evolution. The flagellum and similar complex structures send us "a loud,
clear, piercing cry of design."

Behe's theory quickly came under fire from biologists. The most common
counter-argument is that Behe has misunderstood how natural selection
operates. If evolution were required to bring together all of the
flagellum's individual parts at once, it would indeed seem miraculous --
but, say Behe's critics, that's not how natural selection works. Instead,
nature brings together a few of the individual parts that happen to be
suited to some other function; the flagellum's propulsion system only
emerges later, when all the parts are in place.

"The whole notion of irreducible complexity doesn't stand up to scientific
analysis," says Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University. "When you
analyze the parts of these [structures], you find that most often, the
individual parts -- or small assemblies of two or three of them -- do
indeed have function. And because the individual parts have function, they
can indeed be produced by Darwinian natural selection."

Critics of the Intelligent Design movement are also suspicious of the
motives of those who oppose Darwinian evolution. They believe that
references to an "intelligent designer" are a clever strategy to gain
access to the U.S. school system, where courts prohibit discussions of God
in science classrooms.

Proponents of Intelligent Design deny the charge, saying they're motivated
by science, not by religion. "God need not enter into this discussion,"
says Dembski. While the old Creationism was necessarily rooted in
theology, he says, Intelligent Design is different. "If you're doing
Creation, you are doing theology," he says. "But if you're doing
Intelligent Design you're not doing theology. There's no commitment."

Dembski's first book, The Design Inference, was rather technical, and had
no listing for God in its index. But his next two books, put out by the
Christian publisher InterVarsity Press, have numerous references to God,
and in particular to Christ. In Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between
Science and Theology, Dembski writes that "Christ completes scientific
theories" and that "Christ transforms the world, and pervades the
scientists' domain of inquiry."

Michael Behe restricts his discussion of God to the final chapter of
Darwin's Black Box, urging readers to draw their own conclusions as to the
identity of the "designer" behind Intelligent Design. But he said in an
interview that he believes the designer is indeed God.

Just as Darwinians accuse Creationists of having a conservative Christian
agenda, Creationists accuse Darwinians of being anti-God. Phillip Johnson,
a Berkeley law professor and outspoken critic of evolution, has described
Darwinism as a "cultural steamroller" that has entrenched the naturalistic
explanations of traditional science, at the expense of any alternative
viewpoints.

"The evolutionary biologists claim that mindless natural processes are
capable of creating living organisms from non-living chemicals, and then
taking simple living organisms and making them a great deal more
complicated," says Johnson. "But it's also clear that they've assumed this
from the starting point, and that they don't permit anyone to disagree
with that conclusion."

Of course, not all scientists are atheists; Miller, for example, is a
practising Roman Catholic. But he's adamant that theology should be kept
separate from science. Eugenie Scott, of the U.S. National Center for
Science Education, agrees that Intelligent Design is rooted primarily in a
set of religious beliefs, rather than in science. Instead of embracing a
God who works through natural law, Scott says, the Creationists are
pushing for a more personal, active God. "The anti-evolution movement is
really a function of religious ideology," she says. "I don't argue with
theologians about which view of God is correct -- but quit whacking a
perfectly good science to promote your theological view."

Of course, the majority of religious believers -- even the majority of
Christians -- have managed to reconcile their faith with the idea of
biological evolution. For many believers, evolution is simply a tool that
God used in creating life. The Pope recently stated that evolution is part
of God's creative plan. Yet as interest in the Intelligent Design movement
has shown, opposition to evolution is unlikely to fade away. Darwin's
theory "concerns our own origins, it concerns where we come from," says
Miller. "And therefore it has stirred, and will continue to stir, strong
emotions."

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