Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural Theology?: William Dembski

grassie@METANEXUS.NET Billy Grassie
Metanexus:Views. 2001.05.11. 7760 Words.

Below is another lengthy and engaging submission from William Dembski
addressing the question "Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural
Theology?" In the essay, Dembski takes on "the brahmins of the
'science-religion biz'", Arthur Peacocke, Ian Barbour, and others. He
argues that while Intelligent Design Theory may in the end be significant
to contemporary natural theology, IDT is not itself engaged in natural
theology. "The fundamental claim of intelligent design," write Dembski
below, "is straightforward and easily intelligible, namely, there are
natural systems that are in principle incapable of being explained in
terms of natural causes and that exhibit features that in any other
circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

I would question whether it is possible to segregate metaphysical and
theological views from scientific questions in the way that Dembski
proposes (and I have never understood Barbour's distinction between
natural theology and theology of nature). In my own thinking, it would not
be a big leap to go from the intelligibility of nature, which is the
precondition to science, to the intelligence of nature, which would see
the insights of science residing not in the mind of the beholder but in
the phenomena itself. However, there is no reason to assume in advance
that such intelligence is singular, conscious, or anthropomorphic. Nor is
there any reason to assume in advance that "design" is the metaphor which
best captures the nature of such intelligence(s) in nature. Certainly the
attempt to understand the limits of scientific disciplines, as in say the
boundaries to Newtonian Mechanics or more pointedly Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle, are vital questions. For instance, I do not hold
out much hope for a predictive science of long-term weather and climate
change. There are just too many feedback loops and too much complexity to
give us much insight into the future of global warming. To say that there
is irreducible complexity in climate change, however, does not then
logically necessitate either "intelligence" or "design" in understanding
this set of natural phenomena.

Never mind me though. Read Dembski's essay and let us know what you think
about this influential and controversial thinker by participating in the
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IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN A FORM OF NATURAL THEOLOGY?
By William A. Dembski

There are good and bad reasons to be skeptical of intelligent design.
Perhaps the best reason is that intelligent design has yet to establish
itself as a thriving scientific research program. Thus far philosophical,
theoretical, and foundational concerns have tended to predominate. From
the vantage of design advocates, this simply reflects the earliness of the
hour and the need to clear the decks before a shift of paradigms can take
place. Give us more time, and we'll deliver on the program. That's our
promise. Skeptics are at this point in their rights to refuse such
promissory notes, albeit without sabotaging our efforts to make good on
this promise.

Besides good reasons for being skeptical of intelligent design, there are
also bad reasons. I list about ten in the appendix of my book _Intelligent
Design_ (InterVarsity, 1999) and another ten or so in the final chapter of
my forthcoming book _No Free Lunch_ (RowmanLittlefield, 2001). One bad
reason I've touched on but haven't addressed at length in either of these
books is the charge that intelligent design is a form of natural theology.
These days within the science-religion community, natural theology tends
to be viewed as a disreputable enterprise that hearkens back to
pre-Darwinian days and is now thoroughly pass=E9. While I regard this
judgment as unduly harsh, I also regard it as irrelevant to intelligent
design. Intelligent design is not a form of natural theology.

Not everyone agrees. Ian Barbour is a prominent case in point. In speaking
before the American Academy of Religion regarding Huston Smith's doubts
about evolutionary theory, Barbour directed the following criticism at
intelligent design: "Philosophical proponents of intelligent design, such
as William Dembski and Stephen Meyer, write in the tradition of natural
theology in which science is used as evidence of the existence of a
designer. My own approach is not natural theology but a theology of nature
in which one asks how nature as understood by science is related to the
divine as understood from the religious experience of a historical
community." (Metaviews 099, 30 November 2000; talk originally presented at
the American Academy of Religion, Nashville, 19 November 2000.)

In this essay I'm going to argue that intelligent design is not a form of
natural theology. What's more, I'm going to argue that Barbour's theology
of nature, as he calls it, is itself a form of natural theology, though
the theology in this case is not traditional theism but the panentheism of
process theology. First let's turn to the charge that intelligent design
is a form of natural theology. To be fair to Barbour, he does not say that
my colleagues and I are actually doing natural theology. Rather, he says
that we write in the tradition of natural theology. He therefore seems to
allow that we are not committing the exact same mistakes (if in fact they
were mistakes) as natural theologians of the past. On the other hand, in
saying that we write in the tradition of natural theology, he suggests
that our aims are substantially those of the old natural theologians.

I submit that intelligent design isn't doing natural theology. What's
more, I submit that whatever intelligent design is doing, its aims are
substantially different from those of natural theology. To see this,
consider the last major push of natural theology prior to the publication
of Darwin's _Origin of Species_. I have in mind here the eight Bridgewater
treatises. The Rev. Francis Henry Egerton, eighth and last Earl of
Bridgewater, died in 1829. At the time of his death he directed that
L8,000 be used by the president of the Royal Society of London to publish
works on "the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the
Creation illustrating such work by all reasonable arguments as, for
instance, the variety and formation of God's creatures, in the animal,
vegetable and mineral kingdoms; the effect of digestion and thereby of
conversion; the construction of the hand of man and an infinite variety of
other arguments; as also by discoveries ancient and modern in arts,
sciences, and the whole extent of modern literature."

This passage from Lord Bridgewater's bequest captures perfectly the spirit
of natural theology. Natural theology was primarily in the business of
identifying and expatiating on features of the natural world that provided
independent evidence of what revealed or sacred theology already knew
about God, namely, that God is powerful, wise, and good. The titles of the
eight Bridgewater treatises indicate this as well: (1) _The Adaptation of
External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man_, by
Thomas Chalmers (1833); (2) _Chemistry, Meteorology, and Digestion_, by
William Prout, (1834(3) _History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals_, by
William Kirby (1835); (4) _The Hand, as Evincing Design_, by Sir Charles
Bell (1837); (5) _Geology and Mineralogy_, by Dean Buckland (1837); (6)
_The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man_, by
J. Kidd, (1837); (7) _Astronomy and General Physics_, by William Whewell
(1839), (8) _Animal and Vegetable Physiology_, by P. M. Roget (1840).

The stereotypical argument of a natural theologian begins with "Isn't it
amazing how ...." The natural theologian then fills in the blank with some
feature of the natural world that inspires admiration and argues how this
feature, once properly interpreted, demonstrates the manifold wisdom,
power, and goodness of God. The problem with such arguments, of course, is
that they can be turned on their head. Thus for every instance where the
natural theologian finds reason to sing God's praises, the natural
anti-theologian finds reason to lament nature's cruelty. Darwin, for
instance, thought there was "too much misery in the world" to find solace
in natural theology: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and
omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the
express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of
Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice." Other examples he
pointed to included "ants making slaves" and "the young cuckoo ejecting
its foster-brother."

The impulse to natural theology remains alive to this day, though it's
particular expressions have changed. These days, instead of looking to
some particular feature of the world located at a specific place and time
(e.g., the human hand, the mammalian eye, or some other biological
contrivance), contemporary natural theologians tend to look to global
features of the natural world. Thus Michael Corey will look to the laws of
physics and the fine-tuning of cosmological constants and therewith draw
inferences about the attributes of God (cf. his forthcoming _The God
Hypothesis: Discovering Design in Our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe_
with Rowman & Littlefield). Or consider Michael Denton's _Nature's
Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe_ (Free
Press, 1998). In that book Denton considers the highly specific conditions
that needed to be satisfied in our solar system and on the earth in
particular for intelligent life like ours to form. From these
considerations Denton concludes that there is a grand purpose behind the
natural world.

Denton and Corey are happy to identify themselves as doing natural
theology. Other thinkers, especially those influenced by process theology,
though perhaps disavowing that label, are nonetheless properly viewed as
engaged in natural theology as well. To see this, consider the locus
classicus of natural theology, namely William Paley's _Natural Theology_,
subtitled _Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity,
Collected from the Appearances of Nature_. The subtitle is revealing.
Paley's project was to examine features of the natural world ("appearances
of nature") and therewith draw conclusions about a designing intelligence
responsible for those features (whom Paley identified with the God of
Christianity).

The impulse to natural theology is always this: To look at some aspect of
the natural world and therewith draw conclusions about some reality that
extends beyond the natural world. This impulse is anti-reductionist. Thus
instead of seeing nature built from the ground up of mindless elementary
constituents that come together through equally mindless forces, the
contemporary natural theologian argues that a top-down purposiveness is
intrinsic to a proper understanding of the world. Contemporary natural
theologians point to the very existence of the world, the laws by which
the world operates, the capacity of the world to organize itself, the
intelligibility of the world, and the unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics for comprehending the world as questions that nature raises
but that also point beyond nature.

In this respect Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, and Ian Barbour are as
much engaged in natural theology as any natural theologians of time past.
Peacocke, for instance, is much taken with Charles Kingsley's children's
book _The Water Babies_, in which nature is described as "making things
that make themselves." This self-organizational co-creating feature of the
natural world is for Peacocke unaccountable except in theological terms
whereby God becomes the source of being for the world. What's more, on the
basis of what contemporary science teaches about the natural world,
Peacocke is as quick to ascribe attributes to God as any of the British
natural theologians of old. To be sure, Peacocke's list of attributes
differs significantly from the lists of earlier natural theologians, who
were seeking to underwrite traditional Christian theism. Peacocke has
little use for traditional Christian theism, with its outdated (at least
from his perspective) view of miracles and divine perfections. For
instance, on the basis of contingency in both quantum physics and
evolutionary biology, Peacocke rejects the idea that God knows future
events. For Peacocke the future is simply not there to be known. Our best
science doesn't allow it, and so theology must follow lock step. This is
natural theology. Moreover, unlike natural theology prior to Darwin, this
is natural theology unconstrained by revealed theology.

I want now return to the question that motivated this essay in the first
place: Is intelligent design a form of natural theology? If intelligent
design were a form of natural theology, then intelligent design should be
looking at certain features of the natural world and therewith drawing
conclusions about some reality that extends beyond the natural world. Is
intelligent design doing that? I submit it is not. The fundamental idea
that animates intelligent design is that events, objects, and structures
in the world can exhibit features that reliably signal the effects of
intelligence. Disciplines as diverse as animal learning and behavior,
forensics, archeology, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence thus all fall within intelligent design.

Intelligent design becomes controversial when methods developed in special
sciences (like forensics and archeology) for sifting the effects of
intelligence from natural causes get applied to natural systems where no
reified, evolved, or embodied intelligence is likely to have been
involved. What if the methods for identifying intelligence tell us that
Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical machines are in fact
designed? What if careful analysis of such systems shows that natural
causes (like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random
variation) are in principle incapable of generating such systems? In that
case to charge intelligent design with trading in arguments from ignorance
or invoking a god-of-the-gaps is no longer tenable. In that case gaps in
naturalistic explanations for such systems are not gaps of ignorance about
underlying natural causes but rather gaps in the very structure of
physical reality.

The idea that nature is a closed system of natural causes and that natural
causes provide a complete account of everything that occurs in nature is
deeply entrenched in the West and in its current incarnation is most
directly traceable to Spinoza (within liberal Christian theology its
fountainhead is Friedrich Schleiermacher). Nevertheless, the idea that
natural causes are complete has no more warrant than that mathematics
should be complete in the sense that every true mathematical claim should
be deducible from a simple set of axioms. G=F6del effectively demolished the
latter misconception. Intelligent design is challenging the former.
Moreover, it is challenging the former by pointing to phenomena in nature
that nature is in principle incapable of accounting for strictly in terms
of natural causes.

In arguing that naturalistic explanations are incomplete or equivalently
that natural causes cannot account for certain features of the natural
world, I am placing natural causes in contradistinction to intelligent
causes. The scientific community has itself drawn this distinction in its
use of these twin categories of causation. Thus Francisco Ayala writes,
"Darwin's greatest accomplishment [was] to show that the directive
organization of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural
process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or
other external agent [read 'design']." Natural causes, as the scientific
community understands them, are causes that operate according to
deterministic and non-deterministic laws and that can be characterized in
terms of chance, necessity, or their combination (cf. Jacques Monod's
_Chance and Necessity_). To be sure, if one is more liberal about what one
means by natural causes, and includes among natural causes telic processes
that are not reducible to chance and necessity (like the ancient Stoics
did by endowing nature with immanent teleology), then the claim that
natural causes are incomplete dissolves. But that is not how the
scientific community understands natural causes.

The distinction between natural and intelligent causes now raises an
interesting question when it comes to embodied intelligences like us, who
are at once physical systems and intelligent agents: Are embodied
intelligences natural causes? Even if the actions of an embodied
intelligence proceed solely by natural causes, being determined entirely
by the constitution and dynamics of the physical system that embodies it,
that does not mean the origin of that system can be explained by reference
solely to natural causes. Such systems could exhibit derived
intentionality in which the underlying source of intentionality remains
irreducible to natural causes. A fundamental tenet of intelligent design
is that intelligent agency, even when conditioned by a physical system
that embodies it, cannot be reduced to natural causes without remainder.
Within the intelligent design literature that remainder is typically
identified as some form of complexity ("irreducibly complexity" for
Michael Behe, "functional complexity" for Marcel Sch=FCtzenberger, and "
specified complexity" in my case).

Design has had a turbulent intellectual history. The chief difficulty with
design to date has consisted in discovering a conceptually powerful
formulation of it that will fruitfully advance science. While I fully
grant that the history of design arguments warrants misgivings, they do
not apply to intelligent design. The theory of intelligent design as my
colleagues and I envision it is not an atavistic return to the design
arguments of William Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises. William Paley
was in no position to formulate the conceptual framework for design that
is now being developed. This new framework depends on advances in
probability theory, computer science, the concept of information,
molecular biology, and the philosophy of science -- to name but a few.
Within this framework design promises to become an effective conceptual
tool for investigating and understanding the natural world.

Increased philosophical and scientific sophistication, however, is not
alone in separating our approach to design from Paley's. Paley's approach
was closely linked to his prior religious and metaphysical commitments.
Ours is not. Paley's designer was nothing short of the triune God of
Christianity, a transcendent, personal, moral being with all the
perfections commonly attributed to this God. On the other hand, the
designer that emerges from a theory of intelligent design is an
intelligence capable of originating the complexity and specificity that we
find throughout the cosmos and especially in biological systems. Persons
with theological commitments can co-opt this designer and identify this
designer with the object of their worship. But this move is strictly
optional as far as the actual science of intelligent design is concerned.

The crucial question for science is whether design helps us understand the
world, and especially the biological world, better than we do now when we
systematically eschew teleological notions from our scientific theorizing.
Thus a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a
fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any special
significance to questions like whether a theory of design is in some
ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Philosophers
of science would call this a "constructive empiricist" approach to design.
Scientists in the business of manufacturing theoretical entities like
quarks, strings, and cold dark matter could therefore view the designer as
just one more theoretical entity to be added to the list. I follow here
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote: "What a Copernicus or a Darwin really
achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point
of view." If design cannot be made into a fertile new point of view that
inspires exciting new areas of scientific investigation, then it deserves
to wither and die. Yet before that happens, it deserves a fair chance to
succeed.

We are now in a position to see how intelligent design parts company with
natural theology. Ian Barbour claims that my colleagues and I are in the
business of using scientific evidence to establish the existence of a
designer. And presumably once we've established the existence of a
designer, then we'll want to expatiate on the attributes of that designer.
If Barbour's characterization of our enterprise were correct, then the
charge that intelligent design is a form of natural theology would stand.
But that's not what we're about. Barbour has the logic of intelligent
design backwards. That logic does not move from features of the world to
proof of the existence of a designer to cataloguing attributes of the
designer. Rather, intelligent design begins with features of the world
that are inherently inexplicable in terms of natural causes -- not merely
features of the world that for now lack a natural-cause explanation but
rather for which natural causes are in principle incapable of providing an
explanation (for instance, in my writings I argue that the specified
complexity of certain biological systems constitutes such a feature).
Next, intelligent design notes that in our ordinary experience, when
objects whose causal story we know exhibit such features, then a designer
was crucially involved in the object's causal history.

It's at this point that intelligent design could be co-opted into doing
natural theology, proclaiming that natural objects exhibiting such
features establish the existence of a designer. But intelligent design
resists that temptation. Instead of arguing for the existence of a
designer (and thus formulating a revamped design argument), intelligent
design asks how positing an intelligent cause to explain such objects
offers fresh scientific insights. The designer of intelligent design is
not the God of any particular religious faith and not the God of any
particular philosophical reflection but merely a generic intelligent cause
capable of originating certain features of the natural world. Positing
such a designer to account for certain types of biological complexity is
like positing quarks to account for certain properties of subatomic
particles. The point is to see what a designer helps explain; the point is
not to establish the existence of the designer.

Granted, many of my colleagues in the intelligent design movement are
Christians and believe on independent theological grounds in a designer
qua God. But some, like Todd Moody, are agnostics who are perfectly
content investigating design in nature, reject the sufficiency of
undirected natural causes to account for that design, but also avoid
making any ontological commitments about a designer. To be sure,
intelligent design provides ready fodder for natural theology. Thus it's
understandable why critics of intelligent design are eager to conflate it
with natural theology. But intelligent design's connections with natural
theology are peripheral. Unless and until intelligent design can be made
to succeed as a scientific research program, there can be no talk of
developing a natural theology from it. And even if intelligent design
succeeds as a scientific research program, developing a natural theology
from it is purely optional.

Indeed, when I consider my own motivation and that of my colleagues in the
intelligent design movement, the traditional concerns of natural theology
seem largely irrelevant. Our motivation is certainly not to offer yet
another argument for the existence of God. Instead, our motivation is to
explore some fascinating possibilities for science and create room for
that exploration to proceed unfettered. The subtitle of Richard Dawkins's
_The Blind Watchmaker_ reads _Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a
Universe Without Design_. Dawkins may in the end prove right about design
being absent from the universe. But design theorists insist that science
needs to address not only the evidence that reveals the universe to be
without design but also the evidence that reveals the universe to be with
design. Evidence is a two-edged sword: Claims capable of being refuted by
evidence are also capable of being supported by evidence. Even if design
ends up being rejected as an unfruitful explanatory tool for science, such
a negative outcome for design needs to result from the evidence for and
against design being fairly considered. Darwin himself would have agreed.
At the very start of the _Origin_ he wrote, "A fair result can be obtained
only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides
of each question." Consequently, any rejection of design must not result
from imposing arbitrary constraints on science that rule out design prior
to any consideration of evidence.

Two main such constraints have historically been used to keep design
outside the natural sciences: methodological naturalism and dysteleology.
According to methodological naturalism, in explaining any natural
phenomenon the natural sciences are properly permitted to invoke only
natural causes to the exclusion of intelligent causes. Methodological
naturalism is a regulative principle that purports to keep science on the
straight and narrow by limiting science to natural causes. In fact it does
nothing of the sort but constitutes a straitjacket that actively impedes
the progress of science. If an intelligence actually did play a crucial
role in the origin of biological complexity, methodological naturalism
would ensure that we could never know it. Imagine a detective absolutely
committed to explaining by natural causes why Frank's corpse has a knife
through the heart and the words "Die, Frank, Die!" etched on his chest.
Methodological naturalism requires the same unthinking commitment from
science.

The other constraint for excluding design from science is dysteleology.
Dysteleology refers to inferior design -- typically design that is either
evil or incompetent. Dysteleology rules out design from the natural
sciences on account of the inferior design that nature is said to exhibit.
Dysteleology might present a problem if all design in nature were wicked
or incompetent. But that's not the case. To be sure, there are microbes
that look designed to do a number on the mammalian nervous system and
biological structures that look cobbled together by a long trial-and-error
evolutionary process. But there are also biological examples of
nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have concocted or
entertain hopes of concocting. Dysteleology is primarily a theological
problem. To exclude design from biology simply because not all examples of
biological design live up to our expectations of what a designer should or
should not have done is an evasion. The problem of design in biology is
real and pervasive, and needs to be addressed head on and not sidestepped
because our presuppositions about design happen to rule out imperfect
design. Nature is a mixed bag. It is not William Paley's happy world of
everything in delicate harmony and balance. It is not the widely
caricatured Darwinian world of nature red in tooth and claw. Nature
contains evil design, jerry-built design, and exquisite design. Science
needs to come to terms with design as such and not dismiss it in the name
of dysteleology.

A possible terminological confusion over the phrase "intelligent design"
needs now to be cleared up. The confusion centers on what the adjective
"intelligent" is doing in the phrase "intelligent design." "Intelligent"
can mean nothing more than being the result of an intelligent agent, even
one who acts stupidly. On the other hand, it can mean that an intelligent
agent acted with consummate skill and mastery. Critics of intelligent
design often understand the "intelligent" in "intelligent design" in the
latter sense, and thus presume that intelligent design must entail optimal
design (and therefore a program of natural theology). The intelligent
design community, on the other hand, understands the "intelligent" in
"intelligent design" simply to refer to intelligent agency (irrespective
of skill, mastery, or cleverness) and thus separates intelligent design
from optimality of design.

But why then place the adjective "intelligent" in front of the noun
"design"? Doesn't design already include the idea of intelligent agency,
so that juxtaposing the two becomes redundant? Redundancy is avoided
because intelligent design needs also to be distinguished from apparent
design. Because design in biology is so often attributed to natural forces
(e.g., natural selection), putting "intelligent" in front of "design"
ensures that the design we are talking about is not merely apparent but
actual (for scientific realists, actual in the sense that there is a real
designer behind the design; for scientific anti-realists, actual in the
sense that the design is in principle irreducible to natural causes).
Whether the intelligence thus posited acts cleverly or stupidly, wisely or
unwisely, optimally or suboptimally are separate questions.
 

At this point critics of intelligent design often protest that design
theorists have yet to provide a careful definition of intelligence. While
I agree that terms need to be defined as carefully as possible, the call
for definition can itself become a subterfuge. Thus the call for
definition can become a way of avoiding the challenge posed by an idea by
endlessly requiring further clarification of key terms. The later
Wittgenstein certainly thought the call for definition was overrated.
Indeed, the finiteness of language itself implies that the call for
definition must at some point either end or issue in circularity. Within
intelligent design, intelligence is a primitive notion much as force or
energy are primitive notions within physics. We can say intelligible
things about these notions and show how they can be usefully employed in
certain contexts. But in defining them, we gain no substantive insight.

The very word intelligence derives from the Latin words "inter" (a
preposition meaning "between") and "lego" (a verb meaning to "choose" or
"select"). Thus strictly speaking intelligence refers to the capacity to
choose or select. Yet unlike natural selection, which operates without
goals or purposes, ordinarily when we think of an intelligence as choosing
or selecting, it is with a goal or purpose in mind. We could therefore
define intelligence as the capacity for rational or purposive or
deliberate or premeditated choice. Have we therefore defined intelligence
to the satisfaction of the critics of intelligent design? Hardly. When
Howard Van Till, for instance, issues his call for definition, his worry
is not what intelligence or design means as such, but what these terms
mean in contexts where no embodied intelligence was acting and thus where
his view of nature as a complete system of natural causes (cf. his fully
gifted creation and robust formational economy) comes under pressure.
Invariably I've found that the call to define intelligence by critics of
intelligent design is not a call for clarification but a defensive move to
relieve pressure from some aspect of the critic's own worldview that
intelligent design calls into question.

>From the foregoing description of intelligent design it's clear that
intelligent design is not a form of natural theology. Natural theology
attempts to answer theological and metaphysical questions on the basis of
what the science of the day is saying about nature. Intelligent design, on
the other hand, is simply interested in seeing whether any interesting
science can be done once it is found that certain natural systems bear
marks that in other contexts reliably signal the effects of intelligence.
Ian Barbour is therefore mistaken when he claims that Stephen Meyer and I
"write in the tradition of natural theology in which science is used as
evidence of the existence of a designer." We are not employing science as
evidence for the existence of a designer. We are merely trying to
rehabilitate design as a fruitful concept for science.

Skeptics like Michael Shermer will regard this characterization of
intelligent design as disingenuous. As he kept repeating at last summer's
_Design and Its Critics_ conference (Concordia University, Mequon,
Wisconsin, 22-24 June 2000), "We all know who you mean by the designer."
Thus according to Shermer, even though design theorists advertise that
they are merely proposing a generic designer, in fact they intend the
Christian God in all his glory. This for Shermer is enough to vitiate
intelligent design as an intellectual project. As far as he is concerned
to destroy the program's credibility it is enough that many design
theorists are Christians who privately identify the designer coming out of
intelligent design as the God of their religious faith. In so arguing,
Shermer commits an obvious fallacy. The source or motivation for an idea
does not ultimately determine its merit, which must be assessed on its own
terms if it is to be assessed at all (to claim otherwise, as Shermer does,
is to commit what philosophers call the genetic fallacy).

Do we really want to play the motivations game? If so, let's turn the
tables. Does Shermer, for instance, as a proteg=E9 of Stephen Jay Gould,
likewise regard Gould's ideas about evolution as in any way undermined
because of Gould's philosophical and political views? Should the fact that
Gould's philosophical views about contingency influence his evolutionary
theorizing be enough to overthrow his evolutionary theorizing? Should
Gould's views on religion, in which he rejects all religious belief that
is not reducible to ethics and subjective experience, count against his
scientific views? Gould explicitly rejects that humanity is made in the
image of a beneficent God and attributes that realization to Darwin (cf.
his _Ever Since Darwin_). But such theological (or anti-theological)
claims are properly speaking beyond the remit of science. Do Gould's
extra-scientific views vitiate his scientific views? If not (and I agree
that they should not), then why should design theorists be held to a
different standard? Each of us has motives for doing the things that we
do, and in very few instances are those motives entirely pure or
defensible. So what. The biographies of the great scientists of the past
hardly read like hagiography.

Intelligent design may for the time being be operated mainly by
Christians. But it is not owned by Christians. It is not even owned by
theists. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the _Summa Contra Gentiles_, remarked,
"For seeing that natural things run their course according to a fixed
order, and since there cannot be order without a cause of order, men, for
the most part, perceive that there is one who orders the things that we
see. But who or of what kind this cause of order may be, or whether there
be but one, cannot be gathered from this general consideration." Leaving
aside whether Thomas's argument from order to a cause of order is sound,
it's clear that just what that cause of order is, is almost wholly
unspecified for Thomas and can only be given definite content by recourse
to theology and metaphysics. Indeed, for Thomas the "cause of order" that
we infer strictly from reflection on the natural order does not even issue
in a generic monotheism.

In my own experience, I've found acceptance of my work on intelligent
design from theists of all stripes. I've also had Hindu believers
congratulate me for my work on intelligent design. Intelligent design sits
well with Jungian psychology, stoicism, and Neoplatonism. Just about
anyone who takes teleology seriously and refuses the reductive naturalism
of contemporary science finds intelligent design congenial. Intelligent
design is not in the business of filling in the details of who or what the
designer is. That's a task for theology and metaphysics. Michael Shermer,
Eugenie Scott, and their supporters think science will suffer irreparable
harm if intelligent design proves successful and thus would like the
public to believe that intelligent design is a theological enterprise. As
a consequence, they keep their propaganda mills busy issuing the
appropriate denials, disinformation, and damage control.

Intelligent design has theological implications, but that does not make it
a theological enterprise. The truth is that intelligent design is a
fledgling scientific research program that wants to demonstrate its merits
fair and square in the scientific worldwithout appealing to religious
authority but also without having constantly to defend itself against
willful misrepresentations. Often when I write and speak about intelligent
design and then step back to reflect on the vituperation my work receives,
I'm reminded of those Kafka short stories where some hapless figure is
tied up and smothered in endless bureaucratic red tape. The fundamental
claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible,
namely, there are natural systems that are in principle incapable of being
explained in terms of natural causes and that exhibit features that in any
other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence. That claim can be
considered on its own merits. Let's look at some actual systems and do the
analysis. Science is filled with proscriptive generalizations about things
that can't happen. Do such proscriptive claims apply to certain types of
natural systems and do those systems exhibit clear hallmarks of
intelligence? I fully grant that intelligent design has its work cut out
for it, and that the requisite analysis is only now beginning. But instead
encouraging a fair scientific assessment of this question, Shermer, Scott,
and their supporters do everything in their power to delegitimize this
question so that it cannot receive a fair hearing within the scientific
community. Although intelligent design is supposed to be weak on
predictions, here is one prediction you can take to the bank: Shermer,
Scott, and their supporters will continue to spend their time
manufacturing new forms of red tape aimed at marginalizing intelligent
design rather than admit that intelligent design raises a problem of
genuine scientific merit.

Why are critics of intelligent design so quick to conflate it with
theology -- and a disreputable form of theology at that? Darwinists like
Kenneth Miller and Robert Pennock, who write full-length books on
intelligent design, lament that intelligent design is theology
masquerading science. To this theologians like John Haught and Ian Barbour
add that intelligent design doesn't even succeed as theology? Why is that?
The problem isn't that intelligent design doesn't raise legitimate topics
for scientific research. To reiterate, the central question that
intelligent design raises for science is this: Are there natural systems
that are in principle incapable of being explained in terms of natural
causes and do such systems exhibit features that in any other circumstance
we would attribute to intelligence? This is a legitimate scientific
question. Moreover, it's answer cannot be decided on philosophical or
ideological grounds, but must be decided through careful scientific
investigation. Nonetheless, critics of intelligent design remain adamant
that intelligent design is a misbegotten form of theology.

A little reflection shows why this is the case. Indeed, why does Kenneth
Miller write a book titled _Finding Darwin's God_ and why does John Haught
write a book titled _God after Darwin_? The juxtaposition here of God and
Darwin is not coincidental. I submit that the preoccupation by critics of
intelligent design with theology results not from intelligent design being
inherently theological. Instead, it results from critics having built
their own theology (or anti-theology as the case may be) on a foundation
of Darwinism. Moreover, because intelligent design challenges that
foundation, critics reflexively assume that intelligent design must be
inherently theological and have a theological agenda. Freud, if it were
not for his own virulent Darwinism, would have instantly seen this as a
projection. Critics of intelligent design resort to a classic defense
mechanism in which they project onto intelligent design the very thing
that intelligent design is unmasking in their own views, namely, the
extent to which Darwinism, especially as it has been taken up by today's
intellectual elite, has itself become a project in theology (or
anti-theology as the case may be).

Consider Ian Barbour, for instance. Barbour claims that intelligent design
is a form of natural theology, a designation that in today's
science-religion dialogue guarantees it second-class status. The brahmins
of the "science-religion biz" know better than to engage in natural
theology, which they leave to the pariahs like me. But what is Barbour's
alternative to natural theology? He writes: "My own approach is not
natural theology but a theology of nature in which one asks how nature as
understood by science is related to the divine as understood from the
religious experience of a historical community." In offering a theology of
nature rather than natural theology, Barbour appropriates the intellectual
high-ground. But what does that high-ground entail? Indeed, why in an
address to the American Academy of Religion does Barbour need to stress
that design advocates like Huston Smith "underestimate the weight of
evidence favoring neo-Darwinian theory"? Why in that same talk does he
emphasize that "the scientific account is complete on its own level" and
that "scientists have to assume methodological naturalism, that is, they
seek explanations in terms of natural causes" (thus delimiting the
activity of unembodied intelligences that throughout history have played a
non-negligible role in theological discussions -- notably God)? Why does
Barbour perpetuate the myth that "the God of the gaps has steadily
retreated in the history of modern science," when the history of science
is filled with cases in which scientists thought they had resolved a
problem only to discover they hadn't?

The answer, clearly, is that Barbour has built his "theology of nature,"
as he calls it, on Darwinian theory and the naturalistic philosophy that
undergirds it. Specifically, Barbour presupposes that nature is a complete
system of natural causes and that the Darwinian mechanism is the means by
which biological complexity has emerged within nature. As a consequence,
intelligent design cannot appear to him as anything but a thoroughly
theological enterprise. Yet intelligent design is not a theological
enterprise. It only seems like a theological enterprise because, as a
scientific theory that challenges Darwinism, intelligent design challenges
the theological edifice that Barbour himself has built on Darwinism. To
challenge a foundation is to challenge any edifice built on that
foundation. That theological edifice, which Barbour refers to as a
theology of nature, is rightly understood as a natural theology. To be
sure, it is not a natural theology of the classic "isn't it amazing that
..." variety that the British natural theologians are widely caricatured
as having exemplified (in fact, some of the British natural theologians
were far more subtle that we ordinarily give them credit -- e.g., Robert
Boyle). But the basic impulse behind natural theology is certainly there
in Ian Barbour's work, which is to take the science of the day, baptize
it, and use it to obtain theological mileage.

A lot of theology and anti-theology has been built on Darwinism (Cornelius
Hunter details just how much in his forthcoming book _Darwin's God_, due
out this spring with Brazos Press). The anti-theology of Richard Dawkins,
Daniel Dennett, and William Provine is well-enough known as not to require
comment. But the positive theology that gets built on Darwinism is worth
exploring briefly since its connection to more traditional theologies is
not always clear. In describing his theology of nature, for instance,
Barbour characterizes the theologian's task as relating "nature as
understood by science" with "the divine as understood from the religious
experience of a historical community." What exactly is "the divine as
understood from the religious experience of a historical community

[tu czegos brak]
 

Traditional theologies -- whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or even
Mormon -- take as their basic datum divine revelation, and see that
revelation as encapsulated in inspired and authoritative texts that have
an objective sense and that are binding on believers.

But divine revelation is not the decisive factor for Barbour and others
who build their theology on the deliverances of science. Instead, the
decisive factor is how the divine is "understood from the religious
experience of a historical community." Notice that all the emphasis here
is on the understanding of the religious community and not on the divine
self-revelation that within traditional theologies is the reason for those
communities arising in the first place. Ultimately what's decisive for
Barbour is how the community as it has come down to the present day
understands its religious experience. Now I don't mean to suggest that
this source of theological reflection is irrelevant in what I'm calling
traditional theology. But in putting the emphasis on our current
understanding of religious experience as opposed to our obligation to
align ourselves with an objective revelation, Barbour opens the door to
radical re-understandings of the divine as the religious experience of the
community of faith evolves. And evolve it has, especially in the light of
Darwinism. Conditioned as its religious experience is by Darwinism, the
overwhelming move these days in science-religion discussions is to
universalize evolution as a principle that applies even to the divine.
Thus the unchanging God of traditional theologies gives way to the
evolving God of process theologies. Thus traditional theism with its
strong transcendence gives way to panentheism with its modified
transcendence wherein God is inseparable from and dependent upon the
world.

Let me stress that I'm not arguing here for the superiority of one
approach to theology over another. My point is simply that Darwinism has
radical implications for theology, and that in challenging Darwinism,
intelligent design likewise has radical implications for theology. This is
not to say that intelligent design is a theological enterprise, any more
than Darwinism is a theological enterprise. Darwinism, conceived as a
theory about how biological complexity has emerged in the history of life,
is a scientific theory. Intelligent design, conceived as a theory about
the inherent limitations of natural causes to generate biological
complexity and the need for intelligence to overcome those limitations, is
likewise a scientific theory.

In conclusion, there is no surprise that intelligent design is as
controversial as it is. Intelligent design highlights a breach between
popular culture, which is largely committed to intelligent design, and
high culture, which largely rejects it in favor of Darwinian naturalism.
Our intuitions invariably begin with design. Only by being suitably
educated are we educated out of those intuitions. Even Michael Shermer
admits as much in his book _How We Believe_. According to a poll of 10,000
people that he commissioned, the overwhelming reason people believe in God
is because of the order and complexity they observe in the natural world
and the evidence these are supposed to provide for design. The problem to
date has been that our common intuitions about design have been inchoate,
pretheoretical, and theological. On the other hand, our reasons for
rejecting design as a result of Darwinism have been well-developed,
extensively advertised, and without apparent theological pre-commitments.
Intelligent design is turning the tables on this disparity by promising to
place those inchoate and pretheoretical intuitions on a firm rational
foundation, and by carefully distinguishing design from theology (and
especially natural theology).

Darwinists, who have held the intellectual high ground for so long, are
understandably reluctant to relinquish their monopoly over high culture.
The question is whether they will continue to misrepresent intelligent
design as a theological enterprise to artificially insulate their theory
from competition, or whether they will take the moral high ground by
opening scientific discussions to the questions intelligent design raises.
Not having a particularly optimistic view of human nature, I expect
Darwinists will continue business as usual, misrepresenting intelligent
design as long as they can get away with it and relinquishing their
monopoly over biological education only once the evidence for intelligent
design becomes overwhelming. My hope for the success of intelligent design
therefore resides not with Darwinists but with a younger generation of
scholars who can dispassionately consider the competing claims of
Darwinism and intelligent design.

William Dembski

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