What are arguments against Intelligent Design?

Answer 1

ID can refer to either a pseudo scientific concept, a philosophical argument, or a political/ideological crusade against science and naturalism. I will explain the arguments against each.

The pseudoscientific concept is pseudo scientific because it is not testable empirically, and has no potential to ever be falsified. The scientific method (observe, hypothesize, predict, experiment and invite peer review) cannot and has not been brought to bear on it, but it's supporters want it taught in science textbooks anyway, and are using the political process to bypass the scientific process, making it the very definition of pseudoscience.

The philosophical argument is that life, the universe etc is too complex or too orderly to have arisen by any means other than intelligence. While I myself do not agree with that logic, this is the most respectable and logical form ID takes. The next and last is the sleaziest. The political/ideological movement known as ID is a movement intent on undermining science and naturalism. The organization leading the ID movement in the US, the Discovery Institute, had leaked an internal memo called the Wedge Document (available on the internet, google it and you will find it in about 10 seconds) which they first denied was from their organization, and later admitted to. It laid out their plans to undermine the teaching and public acceptance of evolution based on clear religious motives. They blame scientific naturalism for every bad thing that's happened in the past several centuries and want to open science up to include non-natural explanations, which of course cannot be tested by any scientific means. This last form of ID is particularly awful because it seeks to lie to children (teach them false science) and uses all manner of lies, manipulation and deception to meet it's goals. The leaders of the ID movement routinely lie about their religious motives, lie about the state of scientific acceptance of their arguments, and lie about their true motives. If they wanted to come out and argue that naturalism or science is responsible for this war or that social trend, that would be fine. They would be wrong, and would be shown to be wrong very easily. But at least it would be an honest mistake or an honest opinion, not a dishonest propaganda campaign.

Intelligent design says we were made by something smart. Science says we evolved; Science has no opinion one way or the other as to whether or not something intelligent and supernatural was involved in that evolution. Basically, the reason some people would prefer that ID not be taught in school is because it's religion, and it's a waste of time in a science classroom. If God was involved there's no way to prove or disprove that - so why deal with it in a class solely devoted to things you *can* prove or disprove? Religion's what your parents and church are for, not school. There's a place for ID, but it's not in a science class. Basically scientists are upset that religious people want to say religion is a science when the religious answer is usually "it's a miracle". Nobody will ever learn anything new if the answer is "it's a miracle". Science wants to know why; if the answer is "don't ask questions, that's God's business" that's not really useful, so scientists want to keep the two firmly separated.

Another Answer

I will be anwering their points in order to demonstrate arguments against Intelligent Design, because arguments against ID consistent entirely of deconstructing ID's nonarguments.

Here is their first point: ---- "Any argument against intelligent design would have to demonstrate how information and design, including irreducible complexity, can arise by chance processes." ---- >>>>This sounds very much like someone who has bought the ID sophistry line, hook, and sinker, as even the very first sentence has many things wrong with it. First, 'information' in ID has never been a coherent concept. In fact, in the case of Dembski's attempts to mislead, using definitions of information from information theory shows that specification (which is a reasonable substitution for the responder's 'design') is the antithesis of information. On that same note, irreducible complexity is also a highly misleading term, and one which is quite simply inane. How does 'irreducible complexity' work, you ask? Well, let's just see how the originator (and definer) of the term goes about showing it: take a biochemical process with multiple parts, declare that taking out any part would make the process no longer perform its current function, and then declare that because of this, it could not have evolved. This is a deceptively convincing argument, but there is nothing that forces evolutionary changes to always add parts to a process, which is what one must assume to find Behe's argument a reflection of reality. If we were to take an example at a larger scale than Behe usually concentrates on, we could look at horse's digits, of which four have been lost from their ancestor, which posessed five. However, maybe that's not complex enough for someone convinced by ID's nonsensical ideas, so instead we will take the example of a European Mayfly's front limbs, which are used for mating. Does it really make sense to look at this fact and declare that because of this, the Mayfly could not have arisen through natural evolutionary mechanisms? To use the reasoning of Behe, we'd have to start declaring that four legs cannot support a Mayfly, certainly during the transition (denying contingency). The answerer also used the classic Creationist terminology: it isn't evolutionary explanations that need to be offered, but 'chance processes'. The problem here is that 'chance' can mean various things depending on the context. Many people in this discussion call 'chance' anything that doesn't involve something like a deity. However, there's no need to use that language if that's the case. Instead, it is used to mislead by implying that evolutionary mechanisms are 'random', like static or flipping a coin, when in fact natural selection is constrained by the environment, heredity, contingency, etc, all of which fit nicely under the term 'deterministic'. But I've gone on quite a while on ID's general weaknesses. The more obvious problem, still with the very first sentence, is that it is very likely an argument from ignorance. It's an essential declaration that unless there is an evolutionary explanation for X, there aren't arguments against ID. This at best assumes ID's accuracy and at worst is presented as a cogent argument. Well, that took a while. Hopefully the rest won't be so verbose! ---- "It would probably also need to demonstrate how the genetic code and the 'reading' of that code as well as its repair and replication mechanisms could all arise simultaneously by chance processes."

---- >>>>This should be familiar by now. They're using the creationist rhetoric of 'chance processes' and the assumption of their own accuracy to demand answers from others. If they don't get them, this person thinks ID 'wins' by default because they've entirely skipped the very first problem with ID: none of the arguments for its accuracy are interesting, let alone sound. Many are based on obvious fallacies, some (like Behe's) on pure, arrogant ignorance. So, time for some labels: this one's an argument from ignorance or a denial of the burden of proof. ---- "Any argument against ID would need specifically need to be on a scientific basis, as ID proponents specifically deny any role for religion in their 'movement' which is why most Creation scientists, while appreciating the work done by ID scientists, distance themselves somewhat from them."

---- >>>>Why should the arguments against ID be on a scientific basis when ID itself is not just pseudoscience but illogic? It doesn't take an in-depth familiarity with biology to realize the vacuity of ID, just a little bit of the vocabulary of logic. ID proponents lie. The responder may want to get used to this, because despite denying any role for religion in their 'movement', these pesky things like the Wedge Document and Casey Luskin in general keep popping up. Or 'Of Pandas and People'. Or Dembski's declarations of his motives and how he wraps up ID into his Christianity. ---- "All the arguments used by ID are scientific and scientifically verifiable and so arguments against ID would need to do the same." ---- >>>>The responder would have to demonstrate a single one. However, they can't, because ID simply does not have 'scientifically verifiable' arguments. It has no predictions, in fact in many cases the logic is so vague and twisted that it's entirely untestable even with speculation. I would recommend to readers that reading the 'party line' of ID and the short responses of those defending science is not enough to understand why ID isn't scientifically verifiable. For me, it helped significantly to read about the scientific method and the scientific blogs which argued, quite well, how ID's arguments do not fit the bill. ---- "Just so' stories about a hypothetical primordial soup in which life arose by chance from chemicals, contrary to the scientific law of Biogenesis would not disprove ID anymore than it does Creation." ---- >>>>Now it's very apparent that the poster is likely a creationist unwilling to openly admit their opinion. Even the major ID proponents recognize the difference between abiogenesis and evolutionary theory and anyone who finds the above nonsense convincing can simply read any definition of 'evolution' (biological) and 'abiogenesis' to see the difference. The relevance of all this is that ID is sold as an alternative explanation for evolutionary mechanisms, not those of the origin of life. However, if we are thinking that God is doing this, you can see how easy it would be to insert the creation of life in there. ---- "One of the problems with arguing against ID on the part of some is that they fail to understand that it is, in large part, an argument by analogy ." ---- >>>>This would be because it is not an argument by analogy. It's an argument by sophistry. However, rather than getting into that explanation, anyone can see that an argument by analogy is not scientific because it's an admission of having no empirical evidence. Why is this? Because there is no analogy necessary if the empirical evidence is actually there. The author may have meant 'inference', however even in that case it is again easy to see that it's an appeal to intuition most of the time, pretending that the invention of a 'designer' actually explains the things we see in biology. It doesn't: the designer ID proponents always point out, man, would design things quite differently, and this is where 'stupid design' comes in. Man designs things without the level of contingency we see in biology. Man, by planning ahead, can avoid silly actualities like the laryngeal nerve which takes what any designer would call an unnecessarily long and looping path. Why is this significant? Contingency in evolution explains these things, as evolutionary mechanisms tinker, they do not design. Parts can fold in on themselves (on an evolutionary time scale), they can change shape, etc, moving parts like nerves up, around, twisted... But a designer? No, that 'analogy' and 'inference' just lost all its supposedly intuitive explanatory power. This is why Dembski et al have presented a reductionist version of ID with incoherent concepts of 'information' and 'specification': they know that the general 'designer' does not act like a person, so they've attempted to cut off all other properties of the person outside of the mythical creation of 'specified complexity'. ---- "What this means is that we take an example of something that we know to happen and use this as an analogy for something about which we wish to theorize. This is done, for example in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial) program where the argument goes like this - 'We know that no signal from outer space could arise by chance, it must come from an intelligent life form, therefore if we detect one, we have discovered extraterrestrials.' This is essentially the type of analogy used by the ID people." ---- >>>>First, it is not an analogy. Second, it is not the inference made by ID proponenets. In SETI, the generic hypothesis goes like this: if intelligent life exists out in the cosmos, our only current way of getting even a hint of that directly is to scan EM frequencies. Similarly, the only intelligent life we have to go on, or at least the only intelligent life capable of creating such signals is us. In order to communicate with these signals, we must do certain things with them. Therefore, our best bet to find things out there like us is to look for signals like ours. How is the ID "analogy" like that? Well... it's not. Sure, it has the comparison to people, however it is not couched in the honest ignorance of those in SETI. It is not presented as, 'well, if a designer exists, we'd expect to see X, Y, and Z. Let's look for that.' That would be reasonable. It would also require ID proponents to actually do some science on ID, which we all know is far too much to ask. ---- "They are essentially saying 'we know that complex systems which are irreducibly complex and therefore require a whole lot of things to fall into place simultaneously do not happen by chance in the real world.'" ---- >>>>There's that weasel word again. "by chance". This is a concept which was disposed with all the way back at the origins of a mechanistic evolutionary theory with Lamarck and Darwin, both of whom had ideas of how lineages changed which depended on a deterministic environment. A short explanation of things wrong with the responder's point: irreducible complexity is a nonsense (and misleading-named) term. Similarly, in 'the real world', the poster is trying to appeal to one's everyday experiences. They may not have realized this, but a huge amount of evolution's history, and therefore the contingency which impacts current systems, occurred over vast amounts of time, periods which are almost unimaginably large. Unimaginably large periods of time are clearly not everyday experience and have significantly impacted what we see today in biological systems. ---- "Secondly, biological systems are also much more complex than the technology we observe to be designed, therefore, the conclusion is that these systems have been designed by an intelligence." ---- >>>>Now, this doesn't make any sense at all if we try to pin down the ideas of complexity and then look at the actual real world. It almost reads like bad religious apologetics in its blurring of what its terms mean. 'designed by an intelligence'? If you weren't appealing to intelligence as part of the 'designer' "explanation" in the first place, what is any ID proponent then referring to? How does the latter part of the argument follow from the first? More complex = smarter? If we take Dembski's version of complexity, which is garbled and non-explicit, and use the common information theory idea of information and specification, we'll find that increasing information means increasing the uncompressibility (randomness) of the set in question, something accomplished nicely by static or entirely random things. Now we get to throw the straw man of evolution as 'random' back in the ID proponent's face, as their obfuscatory terms result in a designer who maximizes randomness. However, there's also specification, which is the antithesis of that, so in the end the 'designer' is, by analogy, simultaneously hot and cold, also hungry and not hungry, as those things which possess these two contradictory properties are made by people, right? Apologies for the ramble. Yes, sarcasm was rampant throughout. ---- "This analogical argument is the central piece of argumentation supporting ID. It needs to be shown to be false to disprove ID." ---- >>>>Why disprove that which isn't disprovable and is based on a large slew of pseudophilosophy, pseudologic, and psueodscience? The problems with ID are so deep that 'disproven' is likely impossible, because ID hasn't even started to get an inkling of offering a 'proof' of any kind. The examples like the laryngeal nerve, the example of contingency or even the remaining function of a mousetrap tie clip are attempts to show how ID's declarations are not just wrong, but are deeply ignorant and illogical. Looking at how ID proponents deal with criticism is the best evidence for its lack of scientific, and logic credibility: a short slew of nonresponses followed by a declaration of how much the others 'don't understand', followed by an explanation of their position which is either consistent with the one criticized or so vague as to be meaningless. ---- "In other words, it needs to be demonstrated that life, in a very complex way can arise by chance." ---- >>>>This is just getting sad. Evolution is not abiogenesis. ID isn't even presented as a challenger to abiogenesis and all the poster is doing is exposing their underlying opinions, ones they'd prefer to keep secret. "This would basically be another form of 'spontaneous generation' disproved by Pasteur and formulated as the scientific law of Biogenesis - life only comes from life." ----Pasteur's experiments disproved the notion that entire flies arose from broth spontaneously, etc. These are entire, large organisms that by popular convention were often held to simply pop into existence, like mice being a product of improperly stored hay as opposed to the result of successful parentage. It is quite common for creationist to exaggerate the situation to the generality of 'life does not come from nonlife', though, as if scientists were not aware of Pasteur. It is a rather insulting idea, when you get right down to it. "It would also need to show, not just the spontaneous generation of life but the spontaneous development of complex structures in the DNA blueprint itself in an organism, in order for it to develop these irreducibly complex systems." ---- Another argument from ignorance/shifting of the burden of proof. The problem with ID is that it doesn't explain anything, it has no specific predictions which follow from its ideas. Even if there were absolutely no scientific explanation for how life changes or began, it would not make ID the default 'correct' answer nor would it fix the deep flaws in ID logic. "These are arguments against ID which remain to be proven, especially since they go against known scientific laws." ---- This is a perfect example of the arrogance ID inspires: it gives people the impression that scientists are unaware of Pasteur, it relies on an ignorance of scientific terminology and the scientific method, and first and foremost fallacy. Hopefully that wasn't too painful for everyone. To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it. --Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker : Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design p. 141 "In December 2005, federal Judge John E. Jones III ruled that ID must meet the same fate that creationism met in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled religious doctrines can't be promoted in secular institutions under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Judge Jones wrote in his decision regarding a policy of the Dover, Pennsylvania, school district that added ID to the school's biology program: The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy...." " Two scientists often cited by defenders of ID are Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box (The Free Press, 1996), and William Dembski, author of Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1998). .... However, their arguments are identical in function to the creationists' arguments: rather than provide positive evidence for their own position, they mainly try to find weaknesses in natural selection. As already noted, however, even if their arguments are successful against natural selection, that would not increase the probability of ID." Excerpted from "Intelligent Design". Please see link..

Presumably, a really intelligent designer would always produce the best design. Yet the world is full of imperfect designs that could only be explained by evolution - the exact opposite of what is usually proposed by advocates of intelligent design. * Why would aquatic creatures such whales and dolphins have lungs, when gills are more suited to aquatic life? Science tells us that whales and dolphins evolved from land-based mammals. * Why do tree-dwelling koalas have their pouches opening downwards, risking the lives of their young? Science tells us that koalas evolved from burrowing marsupials similar to wombats, which have backward-facing pouches that avoid dirt getting thrown into the pouch. * Why do humans have: sinuses that drain upwards, causing so many people to suffer sinus problerms; poorly supported diaphragms; skeletons so unsuited to walking upright. Science tells us that when our distant ancestors walked on all fours, sinuses drained normally, diaphragms were supported appropriately and our skeletons were well suited to the task. If we answer the Intelligent Designer has been existing all along, then why not go a step further and state that everything has been in existing all alone. Intelligent Design does not provide good arguments to begin with and because of this its proponents usually attempt to shift the burden of proof. One of the answers above did just this, beginning with the argument from ignorance: if you don't explain how something arose, my answer is correct. This is how many of Intelligent Design's arguments work, it's fallacious, and it mirrors its antievolution creationist roots. The vast majority of Intelligent Design arguments are in fact arguments from ignorance, including Irreducible Complexity, the idea that a complex structure is too complex to have evolved with stepwise mutations. To be able to say this with any certainty, someone like Michael Behe, Irreducible Complexity's resurrector (see Paley's Watchmaker), would need to demonstrate that he has gone through all the possibilities and ruled them out. He does not do this and as such Irreducible Complexity relies entirely on shifting the burden of proof. When he could be doing research, he writes popular books that are easily refuted. It is this type of behavior that leads some to call Intelligent Design a science stopper. William Dembski, however, has provided a hypothetical argument that is not an argument from ignorance, something known as "specified complexity" and the "design inference". The little he has given in support of his idea has been thoroughly criticized by mathematicians and information theorists, however the strongest objection to his claims is that "specified complexity" is never openly-presented or fully explained, always to be found in his next book. Given his many predictions about the demise of "Darwinism", one would expect that if his ideas had any validity, he would release them over a ten-year period! Most of the arguments for specified complexity involve vague explanations of what specification and complexity are individually and describing designed objects as having high specified complexity. At no point is specified complexity presented as would be expected for any slightly-rigorous mathematical concept: in full, with work shown and clearly defined. There is scant else in the repertoire of arguments for Intelligent Design. A large number of the arguments are simply criticisms of mainstream evolution, usually based on lazy scholarship, which in no way establish Intelligent Design as anything better. In addition to this, Intelligent Design follows none of the rigors of science: there are no clear hypotheses, no testable predictions from those nonexistent hypotheses, and very little research done on the topic. The few "peer-reviewed" articles the Discovery Institute (the main political arm of the Intelligent Design movement) lists have been forced through in scandal without proper peer review (see the Sternberg controversy) or are from very strange journals, often with dubious connections, academic integrity, and little respect (like Rivista di Biologia). Some are often not peer -eviewed scientific papers and are rather opinion pieces while others have little or nothing to do with Intelligent Design. Essentially no papers by any Intelligent Design proponent include any original research, the bread and butter of any truly scientific enterprise. The next argument against Intelligent Design is how it is presented in the public sphere. Rather than acknowledging its flaws as unscientific (and often antiscientific), many fellows of the Discovery Institute, including Behe and Dembski, tout the strength of their ideas in the media, going so far as to postulate conspiracies within science as an explanation for why no one respects their ideas. They go even further and promote teaching Intelligent Design in public schools, self-publishing texts marketed to high school biology teachers and students as an obvious attempt to use political means when their efforts to convince scientists utterly failed. This partially led to Kitzmiller v Dover, which ultimately threw shame upon the town and cost the school district over one million dollars. The Discovery Institute's language also finds its way into a number of "academic freedom" bills in an attempt to undermine science education. As such, we can see that not only is Intelligent Design deeply flawed and unscientific, it is presented in a largely dishonest and fallacious manner to the public and scientists and undermines science literacy and good science education.

Answer 2

There are many sound arguments that refute so-called Intelligent Design. Presumably, a really intelligent designer would always produce the best design. Yet the world is full of imperfect designs that could only be explained by evolution - the exact opposite of what is usually proposed by advocates of intelligent design.

• Why would aquatic creatures such whales and dolphins have lungs, when gills are more suited to aquatic life? Science tells us that whales and dolphins evolved from land-based mammals.
• Why do tree-dwelling koalas have their pouches opening downwards, risking the lives of their young? Science tells us that koalas evolved from burrowing marsupials similar to wombats, which have backward-facing pouches that avoid dirt getting thrown into the pouch.
• Why do humans have: sinuses that drain upwards, causing so many people to suffer sinus problems; poorly supported diaphragms; skeletons so unsuited to walking upright. Science tells us that when our distant ancestors walked on all fours, sinuses drained normally, diaphragms were supported appropriately and our skeletons were well suited to the task.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation