Intelligent Design and Evolution
Sermon by Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.
January 8, 2006
My topic today is "Intelligent Design and Evolution." You will note that I used the word "AND" and not "OR". There is an important reason why I chose that wording which should be clear by the end of this talk. But first a little background.
What is evolution? Evolution, or as Darwin called it "descent with modification" is a change in the characteristics of living organisms over generations, including the emergence of new species. The modern theory of evolution includes two critical parts: first, natural genetic variation in offspring and, second, natural selection. Evolution is not magical but rather the outcome of natural processes. Its workings are as logical as gravity.
Normal dice have six sides. If one is tossed, the probabilities are equal that any one of the six sides will land face-up. But some dice are "loaded" with weights. The weights are placed in such a way that when a pair of these altered dice is tossed, the sides are more likely to land in combinations producing sums of sevens or elevens. The concept of loaded dice is not difficult to understand. Loading does not guarantee certain outcomes but it does increase their probabilities.
It should also not be difficult to understand that in a population of organisms with varying traits, those individuals with traits most attuned to current environmental conditions are more likely to survive that those individuals with traits less attuned to current conditions. Unlike dice, biological organisms have the capacity to pass on characteristics to succeeding generations through what we now know to be a genetic code that is common to all living things on Earth. Within a population, individuals with characteristics that make them even slightly better at surviving to reproductive age will have more offspring. Succeeding generations of offspring will genetically pass down the characteristics. During successive generations, the proportion of individuals in the population with the more favorable characteristics will increase. As populations grow and become separated geographically into subpopulations, individuals with characteristics most favorable to each new local surrounding will tend to become more prominent in succeeding generations of their respective subpopulations. Eventually the disparate subpopulations may become so distinct that they no longer are able to interbreed and have become distinct separate species with common ancestors. Modern scientific data show that life has existed on Earth for at least 3.8 billion years. Thus there have been many years and many generations for this process of descent with modification to give rise to the diversity of life that we now see on Earth.
So what is "intelligent design". Intelligent design, according to its main proponents, is the concept that "certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to an unguided process such as natural selection." These proponents say that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the origin of life.
Let me give you an example of the thinking of this concept. If I showed you a watch you would almost certainly agree that it did not come into being by chance. Upon inspection, you would see that the parts and pieces of the watch were clearly designed so that when they were put together the hands would move pointing the hours, minutes, and seconds of the day. You would surely agree that the watch, whose parts have such obvious purpose, was designed by someone. That someone, the creator of the watch, would be human. As William Paley said in 1802:
"the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker - that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use."
The quote is at the heart of the Intelligent Design debate. It is the image of the watchmaker, the metaphor being that the watch is so complicated that it is difficult for us to imagine its existence without an "artificer" or "designer." For creationists like Paley the same argument applied to the human eye, a heart, or a complete organism. Like a watch or telescope, these living things are very complex. So complex that it was hard to imagine their existence without the presence of a "designer."
Modern proponents of the concept of Intelligent Design would like the public (especially school boards) to think that this is a new idea with new "evidence" to support it. Their arguments are somewhat different than those given Paley in the 1800s. Rather than talk about the complex nature of the eye, they talk about the "irreducible complexity" of the bacterial flagellum. Also, unlike Paley they never mention the word God in their arguments but rather the word "designer." Using the word "designer" rather than God is meant to sound more scientific. The strategy for using a word like "design" rather than "creation", was in response to a 1987 Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that so called "creation science" which specifically mentions God, could not be taught in public schools.
While Intelligent Design proponents insist that their "findings" are new, in fact the argument that the complexity of nature indicates the existence of a purposeful natural or supernatural designer has been debated by philosophers for millennia. The first recorded arguments come from Greek philosophy around 500 years B.C. This teleological argument for the existence of God or a Designer was subsequently dealt with by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Thomas Aquinas. Paley's watchmaker argument was well known to Charles Darwin. In fact, Darwin was required to read Paley's works for his theological studies at Cambridge. In his autobiography, Darwin said that in college "the logic of Paley's book" gave him "much delight." Darwin had taken Paley's arguments "on trust" and "was charmed and convinced of the long line of argumentation."
The amazing thing about Darwin and Paley is that Darwin used virtually all of Paley's arguments, except to the opposite effect. Where Paley praised the amazing order and organization of living creatures as evidence of a magnificent creator, Darwin used virtually the same observations to laud the amazing consequences of descent with modification.
Darwin summed up his differences with Paley and the creationists this way:
"the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to clear and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting great changes of which we do not see the steps... The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of even a million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations."
Darwin addressed most of the issues that modern-day intelligent design creationists try to portray as new "evidence" against evolution. Darwin argued that this type of reasoning portrayed by creationists of his time and by today's Intelligent Design proponents just shows a lack ability to comprehend the time-frames involved. During Darwin's time, geologists thought he Earth to be no more than 20 to 400 million years old. We now know that number to be about 4.6 billion, with life being present for at least 3.8 billion years. Darwin argued that humans might have difficulty conceiving the frame of millions of years. Even more difficult today is consideration of spans of billions of years.
Here is how Darwin explained it relative to the evolution of the eye:
"In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alteration, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"
Darwin first presented his theory to the public in July of 1858. However he had actually developed the theory by 1838, shortly after his return from his famous 5 year voyage on a ship named the Beagle. Why did Darwin wait 20 years to present his ideas?
Darwin's first concern was for his wife Emma. You see Darwin, who had a bachelors degree in theology from Cambridge, knew that his ideas conflicted with both the religious and naturalist dogma of the time. Emma was deeply religious and Darwin's skepticism of religious dogma regarding creation and design caused Emma great pain and Darwin great sadness. Before the marriage, Darwin's father advised his son to keep his spiritual doubts to himself telling Darwin that "some women suffered miserably" if they thought that their husbands would not make it to heaven with them in the afterlife. Darwin agonized for many years over the conflict between his scientific findings and what his religion told him. In fact, Darwin suffered through much of his life after the Beagle Voyage with bouts of severe illness.
Imagining the reaction of the public and the established church filled Darwin with dread. A decade after formulating his theory, he began to confide his secret to some trusted friends. However, he wrote that revealing his secret was "like confessing a murder."
Darwin finally decided to publish the theory after receiving the draft of an essay in the summer of 1858 from a younger British naturalist named Alfred Wallace. Darwin was surprised to find that Wallace had reached basically the same conclusions as his regarding evolution. Realizing that both he and Wallace had, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the very same very theory, Darwin's 20 year writer's block ended.
Perhaps Darwin's decades long fears of exposing scientific beliefs that were contrary to religious dogma were related to his own knowledge of English religious history. You see Darwin's wife Emma Wedgwood was and remained devout Unitarian throughout her life. Charles Darwin himself had worshiped at Shrewsbury Unitarian Church with his mother and sisters, and as a boy, attended the minister's school until his mother's death at age 8. The Shrewsbury Church's website claims that Darwin continued his education at the St. Chad's Church because "Dissenters were not given places at Universities." Since the Unitarian Doctrine rejected the Trinity, English Unitarians were considered "Dissenters" and had suffered from state sponsored oppression in the British Isles for several centuries. So perhaps Darwin's personal knowledge and experience that Unitarians had suffered by expressing views contrary to Church of England doctrine contributed to his trepidation for releasing his own views on the evolution of life on Earth that were contrary to all Christian dogma of the time.
I find it interesting that Darwin's struggles with religion and science are reflected in the discussions that we have today on evolution. On the one side, some religious conservatives continue to see the theory of evolution as a threat against their beliefs and therefore propose this duel between evolution and intelligent design. On the other hand, some notable scientists and science historians have stated that Darwin's theories of evolution have made it easier for people to accept atheism in their religious or philosophical beliefs. Yet Darwin rightfully concluded that science could neither prove nor disprove the existence of a God or a designer.
Darwin's theory of evolution provides detail on how biological diversity and new species are generated. But it does not tell us the why? Why is it that the physical laws of the universe are such that this wondrous thing called life emerged? Why is it that this amazing process called evolution worked so well to have produced the complex structures, organisms, and diversity that we see on Earth today? What we are talking about is a the mystery of creation that is not testable and therefore does not lie within the realm of science but rather within the realm of faith and philosophy.
Through science, Darwin led an incredibly productive life and was able to answer many questions regarding how things worked in the natural world. But Darwin realized that the question that Paley and today's Intelligent Design proponents tried to answer was beyond the realm of science. This dilemma affected his own religious views. Since science could not help him he left the question open and stated the following:
"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
In the beginning of this talk, I used the phrase Intelligent Design "AND" Evolution. Design proponents would have us use the word "OR" because they see Intelligent Design as an alternative to Evolution.
However, as a federal court ruled last month regarding a case in Dover, Pennsylvania, "Intelligent Design" is not science, it is a belief, a particular religious belief that should not be taught in science class. The theory of evolution, however, is based upon scientific observation of the natural world. It is testable and is continually being tested and refined.
Intelligent design proponents have only resurrected a false conflict between subjects that will forever lie within two distinct realms: one, evolution, that has its place in the science lab and classroom and the other, "the mystery of the beginning of all things," that has its place in peoples' hearts and their churches.
Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.
January 8, 2006
© Copyright Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D. 2006 . All rights reserved.
