Signs of Intelligence: Replies To Critics

My article on intelligent design has generated a stream of replies. Some of the objections to the design inference for certain biological systems defended in my article were due to (1) the problem of evil; (2) the belief that the existence of the designer (assumed by the respondents to be God) is known only by faith with no evidence to support it, and therefore if no designer, then no design; (3) the idea that if not the Darwinian random variation and natural selection, then some other yet unknown natural mechanism was responsible for the origins of species, so that ID is "god of the gaps"; (4) the idea that the designer must be much more complex than the biological organisms that he designed, so then: who designed the designer? (5) the idea that contingent specified complexity is not a good criterion for detecting design; and (6) that no scientific experiments to verify ID are possible.

I will reply to each concern in turn.

(1) It bears repeating that the imperfections of design, the suffering of creatures, and all the rest have no direct relevance to the problem of detecting design in nature and to the other constituents of the design-theoretic research program. Whether the designer is a malevolent divine tyrant, a strange race of space aliens, or God as He is known in Christian theology is not important in order for the purely scientific aspects of ID to have legitimacy.

The problem of evil is the only known argument against the existence of the Christian God. Volumes can be written on it, and I will mention a few points below for the sake of placating those critics who cannot by some psychological quirk move beyond it. The basic fact, it seems to me, is that God does not will evil to happen nor will it not to happen, but permits it in order to give us humans the opportunity to do good and thereby grow in love.

Now all evil is essentially an obstacle to perfect being (likeness of God), perfect external operation (power), perfect internal operation (happiness), and perfect subjection to God's law. Evil is a privation of good; it is an absence of something that ought to be there (such as sight in a blind man, but not sight in a stone). There are three types of evil: physical, moral, and metaphysical. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Physical evil includes all that causes harm to man, whether by bodily injury, by thwarting his natural desires, or by preventing the full development of his powers, either in the order of nature directly, or through the various social conditions under which mankind naturally exists... By moral evil are understood the deviation of human volition from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation... Metaphysical evil is the limitation by one another of various component parts of the natural world. Through this mutual limitation natural objects are for the most part prevented from attaining to their full or ideal perfection, whether by the constant pressure of physical condition, or by sudden catastrophes."

First, why moral evil? The traditional answer is that given free will, which is a desirable property of human beings, it was impossible for God to ensure that human actions will always be without sin. Thus there are possible worlds, such as the world in which everyone always freely abstains from sin, which God is incapable of creating. This means that it is possible, as Moreland and Craig argue, that "God could not have created a world that had so much good as the actual world but had less evil, both in terms of quantity and quality." (E.g.: perhaps the world in which no one sins can contain at most two people.) It may be objected that heaven is precisely the world that both exists and is better than our own. That much is true, but the blessed enjoy the vision of God and cannot sin (more precisely, they do not sin because their wills are perfectly ordered, but they are, I imagine, free to enjoy God and all the other heavenly goods in whatever way they please). Why then are we not made beatified in the first place? Because we must first merit the beatific vision and our proper place in the communion of saints by exercising our free will. Even angels, who have a more perfect nature than we do, had to merit salvation by turning to God after being created in grace. Evil for the soul is like a dumbbell for the body: it is spiritual exercise by defeating which we increase in love and virtue. Unless we soul-build and define ourselves, what will there be in heaven to enjoy it? Now why does God create human beings who He knows will sin? Because if He didn't, there would be no one left on earth. But why could not God give us perfect natures from the beginning? Why are we required to work hard for our virtues? Because such is God's design for the race that we are to run in this life and the crown of glory that we are to win in the next. In other words, if moral evil is not permitted, then it cannot be defeated. Who is to say that our lot is worse than the angels' who won beatitude or deserved damnation by one act only? Again, we must start out as nothing, so that we can become something that we ourselves through our choices want to become. At any rate, God helps us with grace. One might accuse God of making our task too difficult. What of all the people, for example, who commit suicide? Well, perhaps God cannot save them; they are "transcircumstantially depraved": no matter what God does, they screw up anyway. Or what of those who, by virtue of the accident of birth or upbringing, cannot realize their full potential? It is obvious that we are born unequal into unequal families, unequal communities, and unequal countries. There is no such thing as "equality of opportunity," and not even the most coercive and brutal state can bring it into being. The question is why? There are four answers to it. First, it is necessary for division of labor and social cooperation. Different people must be suited for different occupations and be born in places that allow for production of different goods. Second, if everybody were born the same, individual uniqueness would be lost, whereas perfection of the universe requires different grades of being. The world is a "woven tapestry." Third, God could not make everybody equal without taking away man's capacity to bring forth children, which would 1. have made it difficult for God to insert new souls into the world while staying hidden from sight, and 2. prevent people from experiencing parental love. And fourth, it does not matter where you begin; it only matters how far you advance; the important thing is the distance between where you start and where you end up. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Lk 12:48) Finally, it may be asked why God might not allow sinful acts, but stop their evil consequences. The example given is that "if I fire a rifle at your head, God allows me to make the decision, but then makes the trigger stick, or the rifle misfire, or the bullet pop out of existence." Seemingly, this does not violate anybody's free will. The solution, obviously, is that actions are performed in order to obtain their consequences. If the link between action and its consequences is severed, nobody will sin, and this will be God's doing. This is clearly no better than having God eliminate free will entirely.

What about physical evil? In his "free will defense" Alvin Plantinga argues that physical evils could be due to demonic activity. As long as such a thing is even possible (though it is hardly probable), the case for God's non-existence from the logical problem of evil is undercut. Further, according to St. Augustine, evil may be "permitted for the punishment of the wicked and the trial of the good." Some evils are necessary in order to foster higher-order goods. Thus a broken arm is an opportunity for the doctors to use their skills for a good purpose. Sinful behavior of one person can elicit the good of forgiveness in another. It is true that physical and moral evil can lead to higher-level evils as well as to higher-level goods as a response to it (e.g. some people get better as a result of tribulations, while others get bitter), but it only shows that physical evil is reducible to moral evil. Now why did not God "fortify" humans so as to make them less vulnerable to physical evil? Because it would have removed the incentives for us to overcome these evils on our own. God made us good enough, but He is not going to fight our battles for us. Further, even those evils that are seemingly pointless may have a good purpose known only to God. We are simply not in a position to know. For example, God may permit such evils so that he might reward in the afterlife those who persevere against such evils in faith, hope, and charity. Still other evils are byproducts of something good. Thus the good purpose of having water (to sustain life) has an evil byproduct of allowing the possibility of drowning. It may be asked why it is not fitting that God miraculously intervene every time there is a need to save someone from drowning. The answer is that in that case no human would learn to swim or bother to come to the rescue of the drowning person. It is our job to take care of our own. Finally, we may wonder, as Norman Geisler does "why the physical world was necessary. Why did not God create spirits, who could not hurt their bodies or die? The answer is: God did; they are called angels. The problem is that, while no angel can die of food poisoning, neither can they enjoy a prime rib. While no angel has ever drowned, neither has any angel ever gone for a swim or went water skiing. No angel has ever been raped, but neither has any angel enjoyed sex or the blessing of having children... In this kind of physical world we simply must take the concomitant evil along with the good." Thus many good things would not exist if all evil were done away with.

It may be objected that this explanation is not entirely persuasive. For example, consider a massive natural disaster, which kills thousands of people. Now notice that all the victims of the disaster may have had nothing in common with each other except that they were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet they all died in the same way, from the same cause, and at the same time. All men must die, but this seems outrageous. These people's lives are unique; why are not their deaths? One tentative solution is that it matters less how one dies than how one lives. Besides, death can come at any moment, and the best thing we can do is be always ready for it.

Speaking of death, why must we die? I fully agree that death is appalling, but it is also a passage to glory. "For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day." (2 Tim 4:6-8) What other means of transitioning into the next world for humans could God have designed? True, for as long as we have an ounce of strength in our bodies, we must fight for life. But while imperfect and temporary happiness is possible in this life, this world is a dark and cold and perilous place, and we lived much longer, at some point we would realize that we have been stuck here in this dark for way too long. Further, and more to the point, it is possible for anybody to commit a mortal sin, and if we lived forever, then in infinite time all possibilities would be realized, and we would, as a matter of fact, at some time or another commit the most terrible sins imaginable, such as hatred of God or of our own souls, abject despair, and, finally, suicide. This line of reasoning may also help to explain a difficult mystery: why do people die at a young age, especially as children, before they have a chance to earn a sufficient score to qualify for a higher place in the heavenly hierarchy? We can argue that God mercifully provides for their deaths in order to prevent them from deserving hell or, at least, receiving an even lower place in heaven as a result of their future actions. Again, as long as it is even possible, the case for atheism from the logical problem of evil is not made.

As for metaphysical evils, we observe that in this world life for the lion means death for the lamb. Apparently then, in designing the world God had to make compromises. It is simply not true that God intended all things to flourish. The question arises as to why did He not design a world in which lions did not have to eat. Well, the universe is a finite spatio-temporal creation. Thus at least limitedness of individual things and scarcity of resources are unavoidable. Further, God's aim of creating a hostile yet conquerable world, in which we must survive and prosper and improve, must have guided His hand during the creation of the world. Ultimately, however, it is a mystery why the universe is structured precisely the way it is.

(2) is probably the most common complaint against any theory with theistic implications. In reply I usually give this quote from Thomas Aquinas, which is to my mind one of the most important things that he has written:

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated.

People need to stop equating faith with absence of reason. Faith is not "opposed" to reason; it perfects, it crowns reason; faith, just like all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, lifts man above his nature into knowledge that cannot be acquired naturally without divine revelation.

(3) ID is not "god of gaps." It is an inference to best explanation. There are two arguments here: one is negative, the other positive. The negative argument is that what we have here is a complete failure of the evolutionary biologists to come up with detailed testable step-by-step scenarios of how complex biological systems have arisen. To say, as Allen Orr does, that "It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. But then it can be hard, with any complex historical process, to reconstruct the exact order in which events occurred, especially when, as in evolution, the addition of new parts encourages the modification of old ones" is to admit that the purely natural evolution of irreducibly complex systems is an unfalsifiable theory.

Random variation and natural selection are powerless with respect to specified complexity and Behe's irreducibly complex molecular machines, and purely random evolution is very improbable (possibly below Dembski's universal probability bound). (In fact, you will find no evolutionist who will defend purely random evolution.) The positive argument is that since specified complexity is reliably correlated with intelligent design, we can extend this correlation to biological systems and argue that they, too, were designed. Chance, necessity, and design cover all the possible options. If not the first two, then the last one must be.

Orr continues: "As biologists pointed out, there are several different ways that Darwinian evolution can build irreducibly complex systems. In one, elaborate structures may evolve for one reason and then get co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function." I will be most pleased if someone can give me one or two examples of how one "elaborate structure" was "co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function." Or, again, "But biologists have shown that direct paths to irreducible complexity are possible, too. Suppose a part gets added to a system merely because the part improves the system’s performance; the part is not, at this stage, essential for function. But, because subsequent evolution builds on this addition, a part that was at first just advantageous might become essential. As this process is repeated through evolutionary time, more and more parts that were once merely beneficial become necessary." Again, I ask any skeptic of ID to provide more details about what happened when with respect to the flagellum, the blood clotting cascade, etc. If these details are not forthcoming, how can you blame me for entertaining intelligent design?

Just as grace and nature work together, so, too, the precise delineation of which features and systems of organisms are due to evolution, which to processes such as self-organization, and which to design is still unclear. Much more work needs to be done to untangle the various causes of biological systems. Far be it from me to suggest that either ID or evolution or other natural mechanisms have been fully understood. (In the article I mentioned that evolution may have degraded design. That is just one possibility. Evolution may have also improved upon the original design. Both outcomes are possible. Exactly what happened is, once again, a task for future research.)

(4) is just bad theology, because in Christian understanding, God is not complex at all but is absolutely simple.

It is possible to claim that the probability of the existence of the designer is less than the probability that life came about by chance; as one replier wrote: "the existence of an intelligent designer for life can't really be considered as more probable than random chance." He gave a number for random chance as something like 10^10,000 and said that it is even less likely that a designer exists.

But if the designer is simple, then this criticism no longer applies. What is so difficult to grasp about the concept of a perfectly simple being that one is lead to believe that it cannot exist? In order to show that the probability of God's existence is 0, one needs to show that God's existence is impossible, that is, that God does not exist in all possible worlds, that He cannot exist. And that, of course, cannot be done.

How can a simple being create a diverse world? God has a unique internal unity, so great, that He is perfectly One. Now unity is one of the four transcendentals, the other three being goodness, beauty, and truth. The more of them are present in a thing, the more that thing is loved. God is the supreme and perfect unity, beauty, etc. Hence He can create that which is less than Himself, viz., our world. In our world the transcendentals are far (infinitely) less intense than they are in God. Thus the unity of a human being, thanks to which a person, though composed of diverse elements and systems, is unified into a whole, is less than the unity of God. This world is a pale imitation of God in terms of the transcendentals that are exemplified within it.

God is simple in the way that white light is simple, though containing within itself all the colors of the visible spectrum. Thus God contains within itself life, power, justice, counsel, knowledge, etc. that, when combined together in the utmost degree, result in a simple being. God's simplicity therefore does not make Him "simple" (as in, stupid and primitive) but perfect and the source of all perfections.

Intelligence demands complexity in us, not in God. As Aquinas writes, "With us composite things are better than simple things, because the perfections of created goodness cannot be found in one simple thing, but in many things. But the perfection of divine goodness is found in one simple thing."

(5) First, specified complexity is not a simple order, as a snowflake or a crystal is orderly. It is a complex order of tightly integrated, well-unified multiple parts that all work as one with a high level of competence. It is the order of extremely sophisticated and fully automated molecular robots and other biological systems. It is only that kind of order that I claim to be evidence for design in nature.

Allen Orr continues: "The most serious problem in Dembski’s account involves specified complexity. Organisms aren’t trying to match any 'independently given pattern': evolution has no goal, and the history of life isn’t trying to get anywhere. If building a sophisticated structure like an eye increases the number of children produced, evolution may well build an eye. But if destroying a sophisticated structure like the eye increases the number of children produced, evolution will just as happily destroy the eye. ... Despite all the loose talk about design and machines, organisms aren’t striving to realize some engineer’s blueprint; they’re striving (if they can be said to strive at all) only to have more offspring than the next fellow."

And yet the alleged result of evolution is a large variety of sophisticated biological machines. The very problem that we are trying to solve is whether evolution can build such dynamic structures. Saying that "evolution may well build an eye" begs the question. Can it?

It is true that as they evolve, "organisms aren’t trying to match any 'independently given pattern'." Yet such patterns are actually present. The problem is precisely whether specified complexity can arise by random variation and natural selection. It is argued that evolution can only preserve existing information; it cannot create novel information which is both complex and specified. What is Orr’s evidence to the contrary? How did it happen that creatures have systems that look like "CALLMEISHMAEL" rather than "JKXVCJUDOPLVM" (complex but not specified) or "XXXXXXXXXXXXX" (specified but not complex)? Orr seems to believe that evolution can build any system, whether irreducibly complex or not. It builds what it builds. The specified complexity of a structure is an irrelevant accident. Even if a system looks like "CALLMEISHMAEL," which would become non-functional if "CALL," "ME," or "ISHMAEL" were removed from it, then that’s what evolution has constructed, because doing so was beneficial to a creature’s survival and reproduction. Unfortunately, this is just an assertion without any proof. Does unaided nature have such marvelous creative powers, when, in fact, specified complexity is highly reliably correlated with intelligent design, and that is precisely the criterion that we actually use to infer design elsewhere in real life? But, Orr might object, unlike human creations, organisms have access to random variations and natural selection. Perhaps these two are sufficient to generate new specified and complex information. This, however, is just wishful speculation. No evidence for evolution producing biological complexity has ever been presented, and if Dembski’s application of the No Free Lunch theorems is correct (which, however, I am in no position to evaluate), then no such evidence actually exists. Does that mean that the matter is inconclusive? Let me put it this way. As of right now the evidence for design outweighs the evidence for purely unintelligent evolution. If the supporters of the latter want to strengthen their position, they must take the design theory seriously and get to work. If they feel helpless in the face of the challenges of ID, then, as the song goes, that is their misfortune, and none of my own.

Is there a better criterion than specified complexity? On respondent suggested that matter could be it. But all matter from which our own creations are made occurs in nature. That’s, after all, where we get it from. How do we know that the metal and glass of which a watch is made do not occur naturally? That’s precisely what we need to establish. It is only forms that are special. Only they can help us to distinguish between design on the one hand as their cause and chance and necessity on the other. Complexity specification is how our intuitions about design are made rigorous.

(6) It is impossible to produce experiments that prove ID, because the actions of a designer are unpredictable. You cannot just sit there and wait for design events to occur. However, that inability to set up experiments does not entail that ID is bad science. Evidence for design is static; it's just sitting there inside biological systems, waiting for us to discover it. Since it is static, it does not need to be confirmed with cause-and-effect dynamic processes such that can be produced by an experiment.

On the other hand, the evolutionary theory proposes a precise natural process that leads to certain results. We are entitled to demand that biologists set up experiments that prove macro-evolution. If any such experiments have been performed, I would very much like to know what insights they have yielded.

Conclusion

None of the replies that I have received have done any damage to intelligent design. Die-hard evolutionists should do better.

January 30, 2006

Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University.

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