Strefa dla członków PTKr
Casey Luskin, ""What is the concept of 'intelligent design'?" (2005)
Zapomniałeś hasła?
Kody genetyczne wyższego rzędu
Casey Luskin, ""What is the concept of 'intelligent design'?" (2005)
Response to ACLU ID FAQ: Part 1 http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1288
Response to ACLU ID FAQ: Part 1
"What is the concept of 'intelligent design'?"
by Casey Luskin
Response:
The ACLU is correct to state here that intelligent design does indeed purport to be a scientific hypothesis. The important question is, has the ACLU accurately characterized the hypothesis?
The ACLU characterizes intelligent design theory as the sum of 2 primary claims:(a) "life owes its origins to a master intellect"
(b) the designer was "intelligent" and "supernatural" From where does the ACLU obtain these claims about ID?
Analysis of Part (a): "life owes its origins to a master intellect"
Any legal writer knows that you put your most incriminating points at the very beginning (and perhaps also at the very end) of a document where people might remember them most. Thus, the ACLU thinks they've got something big with this phrase "master intellect." The ACLU's statement that "life owes its origins to a master intellect" is likely derived from a quote out of Pandas which uses very similar phraseology to state that "life itself owes its origin to a master intellect" (pg. 58, 85). Before working on this FAQ, I've never seen any phrase like "master intellect" in any book by ID proponents which attempted to exposit the science of ID theory. It seems a bit odd to me that in its first statement about intelligent design, the ACLU would use a statement that appears only twice in a relatively obscure and out-dated book about intelligent design. So let's explore why the ACLU care about so much about Pandas and this particularly obscure phrase.
Pandas is a supplemental textbook intended for use by biology students that provides extra detail as they study the topic of biological origins. The book takes a pro-intelligent design stance. Pandas is not intended as a primary biology textbook for students as it mostly deals only with issues related to biological origins. The ACLU cares about Pandas because it was recently sanctioned for use by students in Dover, Pennsylvania, which spawned a much publicized lawsuit filed by the ACLU. I want to note that my purpose here is not to defend the science of Pandas, but rather to assess any claims that might be made that teaching from it would establish religion. I am not claiming that Pandas has no scientific problems. (Indeed, I do believe it gets much of its science correct, but I do recall that the first time I read it, an error jumped out out at me on pg. 37-38 where it incorrectly characterizes predictions from evolutionary biology for the evolution of cytochrome C.)
Those who follow ID literature closely may have never even read or seen Pandas, much less own a copy. Why is that? The first edition of the book was published in 1989, and the second edition in 1993.
Though Pandas was indeed one of the first major works to mention "intelligent design," that title must be read in its context: Pandas predates all of the seminal and widely known books of the intelligent design movement which have specifically formulated the design hypothesis. To demonstrate how out-of-date Pandas is, the book contains neither the term "irreducible complexity" nor any hint of Dembski's famous explanatory filter for detecting design--both of which are fundamental concepts in current intelligent design theory. Many see the first true ID book as Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe. The first edition of Pandas was published 7 years before the publication of Darwin's Black Box. Others may see the seminal book in design detection as William Dembski's The Design Inference. The first edition of Pandas was published 9 years before The Design Inference and 12 years before its sequel, No Free Lunch. A timeline comparing the publication date of Pandas with these and other major ID books is summarized in table 1.
To be sure, Pandas is one of the first major works to elaborate on intelligent design theory. Despite this fact, it has not historically played a major role in the development of intelligent design theory. The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, perhaps the largest organization funding intelligent design research, does not list Pandas in its online list of "Essential Readings" on intelligent design. The reason many have probably never even read Pandas is because it's basically out-dated and predates nearly all widely-known ID scholarship which has played a significant role in formulating current intelligent design theory.
This table should clearly indicate that Pandas is somewhat out-dated with respect to the current mainstream ID movement. In my personal experience, I have rarely (if ever) seen Pandas relied upon by ID scholars as a source for discussing intelligent design theory. I do not think that ID proponents see it as an authority on intelligent design theory. Before writing this response, I personally had never used Pandas in any context other than reading a few assigned pages for a course I took at Scripps Institution for Oceanography in 1999. I had to go to the library to check out Pandas for the class.
Thus, regardless of whether or not teaching out of Pandas is constitutional, it seems very possible that conclusions about the general constitutionality of teaching ID based upon the treatment of ID in Pandas would not necessarily apply to teaching ID theory in general, such as in future textbooks presenting intelligent design.
To provide a little perspective on Pandas, legal scholar Jay Wexler, who believes that the version of intelligent design theory taught in Pandas is unconstitutional, is still able to concede the following points: "The book contains no mention of the word 'God' or 'Creator.' There is also no mention of any specifically biblical account of the origin of life. The book does not preach, and it consistently suggests that there are two competing, at least somewhat reasonable, interpretations of the biological data. The book does, however, strongly advocate the idea that life was created by an intelligent agent, not simply evolution. For the most part, the authors of the book are engaged in a familiar project. Like most creationists before them, they concern themselves primarily with raising doubts about Darwinian evolution. The book is unique only insofar as it postulates that an unnamed intelligent agent, rather than a particularly Christian God, created the world and its creatures. Even the claim that the belief in a creator is scientifically warranted derives from traditional creationism. The creation science movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which culminated in Edwards, was based almost exclusively on the tenet that the events of the Bible could be supported by scientific investigation. Pandas breaks new ground not in its methodology but only in its conclusion that some intelligent agent, not necessarily God, created the world." (Jay D. Wexler, "Of Pandas, People, and the First Amendment: The Constitutionality of Teaching Intelligent Design in the Public Schools," 49 Stan. L. Rev. 439, 453-454 (January, 1997) (citations omitted)). While I would object to many of Wexleter's characterizations in this quote, it remains important that he concedes that the book does not talk about God, does not preach, and presents evidence two theories about origins: one that life evolved by Darwinian processes and the other that it was designed by an unidentified intelligence. As discussed later in more detail, Wexler's argument is that teaching out of Pandas would cause an unconstitutional establishment of religion. However, Pandas needs to be understood in its whole context before we can make any firm conclusions about whether or not using it in public schools would be is unconstitutional.
When the ACLU quotes the phrase that "life owes its origins to a master intellect," it wants you to think that in saying "master intellect," that the authors of Pandas must have been implying that life owes its existence to some kind of a mind that holds power over all life on earth--the key word being "master." The ACLU probably wants this quote to be read with all kinds of religious overtones, such as that saying a "master intellect" means an intellect which is actually our master. But what does the quote really mean?
The ACLU probably wants you to believe that when the authors say the word "master" they are trying to imply some kind of a ruler who deserves some kind of response, akin to religious devotion. If this is the case, then clearly teaching as such would be unconstitutional in public schools. The ACLU probably would hinge their bet that teaching intelligent design out of Pandas is unconstitutional upon their hope that such is the proper interpretation of the word "master."
According to Webster's Encylcopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word "master" can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb. Most of the entries given for "master" can be broken down into those which (a) imply some relationship to another being or (b)those which describe a being's abilities. To help illustrate this point, let's break up some of the entries for "master" out of Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language ("WEUDEL") (1996):
To state that life was designed by an "intellect" seems to be a central claim of ID theory. The writings of ID proponents make it clear that intelligent design theory implies that life owes its origin to some kind of an "intellect" (i.e. a mind). But what does it mean to say that intellect is a "master." To understand the meaning of this word, one has to return to the original context of the quote. Here are the two paragraphs in full that contain the phraseology: "On the other hand, the experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes. This parallel suggests that life itself origin to a master intellect." (Pandas, pg. 58)
"The experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes. This strong analogy leads to the conclusion that life itself owes its origin to a master intellect. One can talk about adding innumerable random mutations, but proponents of intelligent design still wonder: How were such impressive gains in functional information consolidated? It is a fair and crucial question." (Pandas, pg. 85) In the context of both of these quotes, the "master intellect" is discussed in the context of theh ability of the intelligent designer to create sophisticated biological informational molecules such as DNA or proteins. This clearly corresponds to the intellectual abilities of the being. There is nothing in the text implying a definition of "master" where the "master" somehow is supposed to have a relationship of superiority to anything else. By discussing the abilities of the designer to design complex molecules, the likely response would be to understand the creative knowledge necessary on the part of the designer to create the molecules in question. This would probably evoke in the minds of readers definitions akin to numbers 1, 5, or 29: n. 1. a person with the ability or power to use, control, or dispose of something; a master of six languages; to be master of one's fate.
n. 5. a person eminently skilled in something, as an occupation, art, or science: the great masters of the Impressionist period.
adj. 29. being a master of some occupation, art, etc.; eminently skilled a master diplomat; a master pianist. The definition which poses the most likely candidate is probably number 29, where the examples given are a "master diplomat" or a "master pianist"--this is similar to the phraseology "master intellect." Pandas contains nothing in the context implying we are to take the word "master" as if it is discussing the relationship of this "intellect" to humans, but the word "master" simply implies that the being is "eminently skilled." The designer has the "skill," "ability," or "power" to "control" the genetic code. All of this could be true without there being any need for inferring some kind of a religious devotion or unconstitutional establishment of religion.
The context of where the quote appears reveals that in each case the authors are calling the intelligent agent a "master" after talking about the complex informational structure of the genetic code which that intelligent agent designed. The authors are simply talking about some intellect that designed the fundamental nature of the information carrying molecules common to all life on earth. Calling such a being a "master" could simply a skill in manipulating genetic material. Such flowery descriptions could describe an intelligent agent capable of inventing the working of the DNA genetic code, without needing to invoke any kind of religious overtones. Thus, Pandas clearly does not intend to imply any religious content in calling the designer a "master intellect."
Despite the fact that this phraseology need not be religious, it should be admitted that it probably does not belong in a science textbook. Textbook authors often use flowery language to make the text more interesting, but in doing so can stray from keeping students honed in the spirit of pure scientific inquiry. That appears to be the very case here: scientific inquiry does not require discussing whether or not the intelligent agent was skillful or good at designing functional genetic sequences and proteins. This is an inappropriate statement for a science textbook even if it does not establish religion. Nonetheless, when the question of constitutionality is at stake, there is no doubt that the word "master" was not intended to imply any particular religious response to the designer, which becomes strikingly clear when the greater context of many other statements in the book is considered. And context is key in constitutional analysis.
While a strong argument can be made that the phrase "master intellect" has no religious implications and would not establish religion, what really matters is how courts would look at this issue. Just how do courts determine if teaching something in schools is unconstitutional? Teachers may be asked to cease teaching something if it constitutes the establishment of religion. Since its creation in 1971, the three-pronged “Lemon test” has been the primary judicial vehicle for determining if the government has established religion: First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971) (internal citations and quotations omitted).) Despite Lemon’s significance, many cases dealing with the constitutionality of individual teacher expression of religious devotion have employed Justice O’Connor’s “endorsement test.” Justice O’Connor explains how the endorsement test meshes with the Lemon test: "The purpose prong of the Lemon test asks whether government's actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion. The effect prong asks whether, irrespective of government's actual purpose, the practice under review in fact conveys a message of endorsement or disapproval. An affirmative answer to either question should render the challenged practice invalid." (Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring).) O'Connor's endorsement test also employs an objective component to determine the effect the government action will have upon those in the community. This essentially asks whether a reasonable observer would take the actions of the government to establish religion. "The meaning of a statement to its audience depends both on the intention of the speaker and on the "objective" meaning of the statement in the community. Some listeners need not rely solely on the words themselves in discerning the speaker's intent: they can judge the intent by, for example, examining the context of the statement or asking questions of the speaker." (Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (emphasis added).) It is clear that the immediate context of the phrase "master intellect" does not contain any religious implications. However, to understand why a reasonable observer would not objectively think this book endorses religion, one has to look at the larger context of the statements in the book, as is elaborated in the following discussion:
Analysis of Part (b): the designer was "intelligent" and "supernatural"
The ACLU's statement that the designer was "intelligent" is right on the money. Were it not for the fact that the designer was "intelligent," it would be impossible to detect when an intelligent agent was at work. The very property of intelligence tells us about how that agent operated, and gives us clues as to what sort of informational patterns might help us to detect the past action of that agent.
What about the claim that the designer was "supernatural?" Is this something which intelligent design proponents, and Pandas, claim about ID? The claim that intelligent design theory proposes a supernatural designer appears to a pure fabrication on the part of the ACLU. Not only is there is nothing in Pandas claiming that the designer is supernatural, but there is firm evidence exactly to the contrary. Quotations from both Pandas and many writings from leading scholars in the ID research community clearly indicate that intelligent design theory does not allow one to identify the designer as natural or supernatural, and also consistently give the same reason why that is the case.
Since the textbook at issue here is Pandas, let's start there. It's quite easy to find quotes from post-Pandas ID scholars stating that the scientific method does not permit intelligent design theory to identify the designer as natural, supernatural, or whatever. However, despite the fact that Pandas was written first over half-a-decade before the primary ID theorists published their seminal works, let's look at some long passages from Pandas to see what they say about the nature of the designer: "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause. But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. But that should not prevent science from acknowledging evidences for an intelligent cause origin wherever they may exist. This is no different, really, than if we discovered life did result from natural causes. We still would not know, from science, if the natural cause was all that was involved, or if the ultimate explanation was beyond nature, and using the natural cause." (Pandas, pg. 7, emphasis added)
"Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the progress of science. For example, the place of intelligent design in science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (Pandas, pg. 126-127, emphasis added)
"The idea that life had an intelligent source is hardly unique to Christian fundamentalism. Advocates of design have included not only Christians and other religious theists, but pantheists, Greek and Enlightenment philosophers and now include many modern scientists who describe themselves as religiously agnostic. Moreover, the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, pg. 161) In each of these quotes, it seems clear Pandas is telling students that intelligent design theory cannot tell us anything about the nature of the designer, and cannot determine if the designer was natural or supernatural. The fact that they explicitly disclaim a connection to Christian fundamentalism or creationism would imply, given the explicit context, that they are explicitly not trying to endorse fundamentalist Christianity or creationism. The reason for this is clear: there are limits on what science can tell us, and science is not capable of studying the evidence to tell us if the designer was supernatural or natural. Science can only discover what is found in the observable realm. We cannot access the supernatural, and thus inteligent design proponents make it clear that all their theory can do is tell if a natural object bears the hallmarks of having been designed--it cannot tell you anything about the designer, much less that it was a supernatural deity. Science can indeed tell us if aspects of biology were designed, but it turns out to be silent on the question on the nature of the designer. These statements create a context where a student reading Pandas would be unlikely to infer that other statements such as "master intellect" ought to be interpreted in such a manner so as to imply religious devotion to any particular deity or other being. The text seems clear that the books is not advocating any particular viewpoint about the identity or nature of the designer: "But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. ... We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science ... Moreover, the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, using quotes taken from pages 7, 127, and 161.) The intent of the authors of Pandas is clearly for students to not take their book as advocating beliefs which go beyond science, as the introduction states that the book's intent is to focus on scientific answers and to go no further: "This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins. We don't propose to give final answers, nor to unveil The Truth. Our purpose, rather, is to help readers understand origins better, and to see why the data may be viewed in more than one way." (Pandas, pg. viii) The authors clearly intend for students to understand the book as advocating scientific answers only. Thus, their disclaimer that specifically religious answers regarding origins may be beyond science would thus mean that specifically religious answers would also be beyond the scope of what they intend for students to see them as advocating in the book.
Significantly, post-Pandas ID scholars have said nearly exactly the same thing about the inability of intelligent design theory to identify the designer: "Although intelligent design fits comfortably with a belief in God, it doesn't require it, because the scientific theory doesn't tell you who the designer is. While most people - including myself - will think the designer is God, some people might think that the designer was a space alien or something odd like that." (Michael Behe, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 02/08/01).
"One of the worries about intelligent design is that it will jettison much of what is accepted in science, and that an “ID-based curriculum” will look very different from current science curricula. Although intelligent design has radical implications for science, I submit that it does not have nearly as radical implications for science education. First off, intelligent design is not a form of anti-evolutionism. Intelligent design does not claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation." (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 314, emphasis added)
"The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all the firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer." (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pg. 197)
"Intelligent design is modest in what it attributes to the designing intelligence responsible for the specified complexity in nature. For instance, design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the competence of science and must be left to religion and philosophy." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42)
"The most obvious difference is that scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not. ... Intelligent design ... has no prior religious commitments and interprets the data of science on generally accepted scientific principles. In particular, intelligent design does not depend on the biblical account of creation." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 40)
"Intelligent design begins with data that scientists observe in the laboratory and nature, identifies in them patterns known to signal intelligent causes and thereby ascertains whether a phenomenon was designed. For design theorists, the conclusion of design constitutes an inference from data, not a deduction from religious authority." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42-43)
"Natural causes are too stupid to keep pace with intelligent causes. Intelligent design theory provides a rigorous scientific demonstration of this long-standing intuition. Let me stress, the complexity-specification criterion is not a principle that comes to us demanding our unexamined acceptance--it is not an article of faith. Rather it is the outcome of a careful and sustained argument about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design." (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 223)
"ID is not an interventionist theory. Its only commitment is that the design in the world be empirically detectable. All the design could therefore have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang. What's more, the designer need not be a deity. It could be an extraterrestrial or a telic process inherent in the universe. ID has no doctrine of creation. Scott and Branch at best could argue that many of the ID proponents are religious believers in a deity, but that has no bearing on the content of the theory. As for being “vague” about what happened and when, that is utterly misleading. ID claims that many naturalistic evolutionary scenarios (like the origin of life) are unsupported by evidence and that we simply do not know the answer at this time to what happened. This is not a matter of being vague but rather of not pretending to knowledge that we don't have."(William Dembski, Commentary on Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch's "Guest Viewpoint: 'Intelligent design' Not Accepted by Most Scientists, emphasis added) These are all quotes that the ACLU does not want you to read because they show that (1) ID theory does not identify the designer as supernatural or otherwise and (2) there is a very simple and clear rationale for why ID theory does not identify the designer: science is limited in what it can investigate--it can identify the past action of an intelligent agent but it cannot tell you who the designer was or anything else about "metaphysical" nature of that designer. ID theory thus remains simply silent about the identity of the designer, for science simply cannot speak to that question. ID seems to be a concept which respects the empirical and epistemological boundaries of science and does not make unscientific claims which might establish religion.
It seems undoubtedly clear that ID theory does not identify the designer, and much more so that ID theory does not claim the designer was supernatural. If the ACLU is to claim that intelligent design theory teaches that a supernatural designer designed life, then they should explain why so many ID proponents consistently state the exact opposite, and they should also provide their own rationale for how we could determine that the designer was supernatural based upon the observable, empirical data alone.
Why does the ACLU care so much to characterize (wrongly) ID as teaching the designer was supernatural?
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in Edwards v. Aguillard that the creationist viewpoint that a supernatural creator had created life was religion, and thus was unconstitutional to teach. In the case, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's "balanced-treatment" law on the grounds that it had no secular purpose, but it did make the following important statement regarding teaching creationism: "The legislative history therefore reveals that the term 'creation science,' as contemplated by the legislature that adopted this Act, embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 591-592 (1987).) The Court seems to have indicated that teaching that a supernatural designer created life is a religious viewpoint which is unconstitutional to teach. The benchmark seems to be that one teaches that something "supernatural" created life. In order to have teaching intelligent design declared unconstitutional, the ACLU must force-fit intelligent design theory into the box of unconstitutionality created by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.
(Some Darwinists, including NCSE director Eugenie Scott, have previously interpreted Edwards as not prohibiting the teaching of creationism. In Edwards, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's "equal time" law because it purportedly was not enacted under a secular purpose. Thus, the Court did not reach the second prong of the Lemon test which presumably would have reached the question of whether or not teaching creationism actually had the effect of establishing religion. Dr. Scott interpreted Edwards as such, and wrote that "[r]eports of the death of ‘scientific creationism’, however, are premature. The Supreme Court decision says only that the Louisiana law violates constitutional separation of church and state; it does not say that no one can teach scientific creationism—and unfortunately many individual teachers do.” (Eugenie C. Scott, “Creationism Lives,” Nature 329:282, Sept. 24, 1987.))
ID clearly doesn't fit in the ACLU's box of a holding that a supernatural designer designed life. Despite the fact that Pandas was written years before the bulk of ID theory was constructed, Pandas' treatment of the designer's identity as a question beyond science is perfectly consistent with how "modern" ID proponents have treated the subject.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this first sentence of the ACLU ID FAQ it's this: when the facts don't help your case, change them! If the ACLU was really interested in accurately representing how intelligent design theory is portrayed in Pandas (and by most other major ID proponents), then the ACLU could have simply quoted the definition of intelligent design in the glossary: "In biology, the theory that biological organisms owe their origins to a preexistent intelligence." But of course this definition may not get them very far in their suit to have ID declared unconstitutional to teach.
There could be one last clue as to how the ACLU will make its claim that the designer is supernatural. The aforementioned legal scholar Jay Wexler constructed an argument that Pandas teaches a supernatural designer in his 1997 law review article: "Although the authors do not use the word 'supernatural,' by placing the theory of intelligent cause in counterdistinction to natural causes and by arguing that an intelligent designer can do things that could not be accomplished through natural causes, they clearly imply a supernatural designer." (Wexler (1997), note 146.) This is quite interesting, because, as noted in previous quotes, Pandas makes it explicitly clear that it is impossible for science to positively identify the designer as supernatural: "[S]cientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. ... We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (Pandas, pg. 126-127)
"But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy." (Pandas, pg. 7)
"A final misconception you may encounter is that intelligent design is simply sectarian religion. According to this view, intelligent design is merely fundamentalism with a new twist; teaching it in public schools allegedly violates the separation of church and state. This view is wide of the mark. The idea that life had an intelligent source is hardly unique to Christian fundamentalism. Advocates of intelligent design have included not only Christians and other religious theists, but pantheists, Greek and enlightenment philosophers and now include many modern scientists who describe themselves as religiously agnostic. Moreover, the concept of intelligent design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (A Note to Teachers, by Mark D. Hartwig and Stephen C. Meyer in Pandas, pgs. 160-161) If Wexler is correct, then when the authors explicitly say that the designer cannot be identified as supernatural, they really mean that implicitly, the designer was supernatural. Wexler's basis for his claim is that Pandas contrasts the cause of "intelligence" with "natural," and thus Wexler would argue that since "supernatural" is the opposite of "natural," the contrast of "intelligent" with "natural" must imply that "intelligent" is to be equated with "supernatural." This argument employs equivocation with regards to the word "natural" when Pandas clearly uses the word "natural" in only one sense.
On the first order, Wexler's explanation requires that Pandas authors are meaning the exact opposite of what they explicitly say in the quotes above, where the authors explicitly disclaim that intelligent design implies a supernatural designer, and specifically when they state that science cannot study the realm beyond the natural world: "We still would not know, from science, if the natural cause was all that was involved, or if the ultimate explanation was beyond nature, and using the natural cause." (Pandas, pg. 7) The authors are exceedingly clear in this and the aforementioned passages that the designer cannot be identified as supernatural by scientific methods. To claim that when the authors contrast "intelligent" with "natural" that the authors really meant "intelligent" to mean "supernatural" would contradict their plain statements. In fact, there exist a completely reasonable explanation for how the authors contrast "natural" with "intelligent" without trying to imply that "intelligent" means "supernatural."
Simply put, the authors of Pandas make it exceedingly clear that when they say "intelligent" they don't necessarily mean supernatural. A nearly-identical passage is twice in the book emphasizing how the authors characterize intelligent causes as "intelligent" but not necessarily "supernatural": "In the world around us we observe two classes of things: natural objects, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, such as houses and computers. To put this in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two fundamentally different causes: natural and intelligent. (Pandas, pg. viii)
"In the world around us, we see two classes of things: natural objects, like rivers and mountains, and man-made structures, like houses and computers. To put it in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two kinds of causes: natural and intelligent." (Pandas, pg. 6) In these key paragraphs, the authors make their typical contrast of "natural" versus "intelligent." According to Wexler (and presumably, the ACLU), when they say "intelligent," they must therefore mean "supernatural." Yet when they speak of intelligently designed objects, they list houses and computers! These are not objects created by supernatural agents--they are designed by "natural" agents--humans! As will be seen, the root of confusion here is that "natural" can have multiple definitions, and thus it has antonyms with very different definitions. Furthermore, as can be seen in Table 3, when they give examples of intelligent causes (which, as it turns out, are often contrasted with "natural" causes), they give many examples of non-supernatural intelligent agents. Let's explore how the authors contrast intelligent causes with natural causes:
This table is probably not exhaustive, but the importance of this table should not be overlooked The fact that when Pandas give examples of intelligent causes, that they are essentially always non-supernatural, shows that when the authors speak of "intelligent causes" they are not implying to students that there is a "supernatural designer." These causes are given as hypothetical examples of types of intelligent causes which help explain intelligent design theory--they are not offered as the specific causes behind life. But clearly, when they contrast "natural" with "intelligent" that are not implying that "intelligent" necessarily means "supernatural." The fact that many examples of intelligent causes are not supernatural indicates that under intelligent design theory, intelligent does not necessarily equate with supernatural. This means that Pandas does not fail the test given in Edwards v. Aguillard of proposing a "supernatural" designer.
Most examples they give of intelligently designed objects are clearly not designed by supernatural beings, but are made by non-supernatural humans. Viewing the examples the authors give of intelligent causes and intelligently designed objects, it is utterly clear that when they say "intelligent" they do not necessarily mean "supernatural." The contrast between "intelligent" and natural" must be understood in light of the many non-supernatural examples they give of intelligent causes and intelligently designed objects.
The crux of the problem is that the word "natural" can have different meanings, such that when look for the antonym of "natural," you might end up with different words. On the one hand "natural" can mean "". The antonym of this might be intelligent. But such definition of natural is very different from "within the physical realm." Thus, we must not equivocate on the meaning of "natural" such that "intelligent" is equated with "supernatural."
Most of the intelligent causes given by the authors are "natural" in the sense that they exist within the universe and do not require a supernatural realm beyond the universe. But when the authors use the word "natural" they mean it in a different sense. "Intelligent" is clearly not contrasted with "natural" to imply "supernatural." Rather, intelligent is constantly contrasted with "natural" to represent a break the normal progression of the unguided physical processes of nature.
The distinction the authors are making is not "natural" vs. "supernatural" but "unguided events we see happening around us in nature without the aid of intelligence" vs. "guided events we see happening around us as the result of intelligence." Things that don't require intelligence are said to be "natural"--they are unguided events that happen in nature. In this sense, something which is "non-natural" requires a break in the normal way the universe operates when it is unguided by intelligence. Here, "non-natural" takes on a meaning that implies nothing about the "supernatural." In essence, "natural" means something which happens normally in nature when the laws of nature are allowed to progress without any influence from an intelligent agent. There is nothing supernatural about engineers designing a car engine, but few would argue that car engines do not appear as a result of "natural" processes. Here we must read natural to mean the unguided, unbroken, lawlike processes of nature.
To crystallize this explanation "natural" is properly contrasted with "intelligent" and not with "supernatural", consider the fact that there are instances in Pandas where the authors substitute the word "natural" with "nonintelligent:" "As we have seen, many of the most important assumptions underlying the idea that life originated by nonintelligent processes do not correspond to the facts of science..." (Pandas, pg. 58, emphasis added). This comes at the end of a chapter which the authors began by noting "Many who accept intelligent design as the best theory of life origins also believe that observations show natural processes are inadequate to account for the appearance of major types of living things..." (Pandas, pg. 42, emphasis added). This implies that "natural" can be equated with "nonintelligent" and is not properly equated with supernatural.
Another clue as to what the authors mean by "intelligent" causes comes from a quote regarding archaeology: "Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes." (Pandas, pg. 127) Archaeology is typically seen as the study of human-made objects. Archaeologists around the globe look for artifacts, edifices, and tools made by past civilizations of humans. The science of archaeology is the study of human civilization. And in this very quote, the authors indicate that archaeology is used to detect intelligent causes. This unequivocally indicates that the authors believe that intelligent causes need not be supernatural. There is no equating "intelligent" with "supernatural" in this quote, unless archaeologists believe that supernatural beings created the ruins of civilizations they now study.
Finally, some explicit clarity is brought at the end of the book in the "Note to Teachers" authored by Mark Hartwig and Stephen Meyer. In this note, Hartwig and Meyer shed some light on the meaning of "natural" and how under their understanding of the word, it can be properly contrasted with an "intelligent" cause: [S]ome scientists and philosophers assert that the concept of intelligent design inherently non-scientific. According to this view, science must explain things by using natural laws--not by invoking the special action of an intelligent agent. Thus, we no longer explain the orbit of a planet by saying that an angel pushes it through the heavens. We explain it through Newton's law of universal gravitation.
In the same way, design is ruled out-of-court because it invokes an intelligent agent rather than natural laws. Philosopher of science Michael Ruse, for example, has said: Science attempts to understand this empirical world. What is the basis for this understanding? Surveying science and the history of science today, one thing that stands out: Science involves the search for order. More specifically, science looks for unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws). Things in the world do not happen in just any old way. They follow set paths, and science tries to capture this fact. There are serious problems with this view, however. One problem is that it ignores areas of scientific investigation where intelligent design is a necessarily explanatory concept. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is one example. At the time of this writing, radio telescopes are scanning the heavens, looking for artificial radio signals that differ from the random signals generated by natural objects in space. If we were to limit science to the search for "unbroken, blind, natural regulatories (laws)" we would have to say that SETI is unscientific, by definition.
Archaeology would meet the same fate. Archaeologists routinely distinguish manufactured objects (e.g. arrowheads, potsherds) from natural ones (e.g., stones), even when the differences between them are very subtle. These manufacturers objects then become important clues in reconstructing past ways of life. But if we arbitrarily assert that science explains solely by reference to natural laws, if archaeologists are prohibited from invoking an intelligent manufacturer, the whole archaeological enterprise comes to a grinding halt.
(Pandas, pg. 157) In this quote it is clear that when the authors speak of "natural" they mean exactly what Darwinist philosopher of science Michael Ruse meant: "unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws)" or thing which "follow set paths." This definition of "natural" implies processes which are continuously happening in nature, unaltered by any intelligent agent. When an intelligent agent steps in (regardless of whether that agent exists in the natural world or is "supernatural"), then there is a break in the natural process (making it not "unbroken"), there is purpose (making it not "blind"), and there is no longer a lawlike regularity at work. This is why archaeology and SETI can be properly contrasted with Ruse's sort of "natural" explanation: both represent attempts to recognize instances where an intelligent agent did something that the regular lawlike processes of nature couldn't. Intelligent design theory operates in exactly the same way: it seeks to find where natural (i.e. unbroken, "blind, natural regularities (laws)") were not at work, but intelligent causes were. There's no necessary implication that intelligent design seeks supernatural explanations any more than archaeologists or SETI researchers seek "supernatural explanations." All ID proponents seek are where the blind, natural processes of nature have stopped working, and some intelligent agent broke the chain and committed some act in the natural world. According to ID proponents, biology is full of examples of such instances where unbroken, lawlike natural processes are not the best explanation. Thus, when the contrast "natural" with "intelligent" they are not talking about the "supernatural" but rather are talking about where there hasn't been "unbroken, blind, natural regularities" because an intelligent agent has caused something to happen which normally wouldn't happen during the normal processes of nature. Pandas merely puts forth that we can identify where an agent has intervened and broken these natural processes. And there's nothing supernatural, unscientific, or unconstitutional about that.
The crux of the confusion here is that Wexler's argument fails to recognize that the word "natural" can have multiple definitions, and thus can have antonyms with very different definitions. Only by equivocating on the definition of "natural" could Wexler equate "intelligent" with "supernatural." To use Wexler's forarguments to claim that contrasting "natural" with intelligent mandates that "intelligent" means "supernatural" requires intellectual slight of hand. If you don't watch carefully, you'll fall prey to the same trick: The opposite of easy is hard.
The opposite of hard is soft.
The opposite of soft is rough.
The opposite of rough is calm.
The opposite of calm is excited.
The opposite of excited is depressed.
The opposite of depressed is happy.
The opposite of happy is sad.
Thus, it follows things which are easy are sad, but things which are hard are happy. This ludicrous logic shows how many terms can have multiple meanings, and that comparisons don't make sense unless one keeps the meaning consistent throughout the argument. If "natural cause" can mean either (1) "an unguided and unbroken cause" or a (2) "a cause within the physical universe" but then "natural causes" are being contrasted against "intelligent causes" within the physical universe, then it is clear that the proper meaning of natural in this context is option (1) "an unguided and unbroken cause." Otherwise, the opposite of a natural cause within the physical universe is an intelligent cause within the physical universe. Such an absurd result indicates that option (2) is the improper meaning of natural. Finally, the fact that many intelligent causes named in Pandas are not supernatural indicates unequivocally that intelligent should not be equated with supernatural.
What does the ACLU mean when it says that ID is an "inherently religious argument?" The ACLU's precise meaning here is difficult to discern, but we can take a guess. Once again, constitutional law critic Jay Wexler's arguments may lend a hint as to what they mean: "[T]he idea that a designer created the universe in an intelligent fashion is such a central aspect of these traditional religions that it itself should be considered an inherently religious idea for constitutional purposes, regardless of whether it is accompanied by other characteristics of a traditional religion. It is true that simply acknowledging the existence of a creator does not necessarily imply that human beings have any obligations towards that creator or that the creator's existence has any ethical or other implications for human behavior. But the absence of these ancillary features does not negate the essentially religious nature of the belief in the creator in the first instance. Indeed, the idea that the universe was created by a designer is the central animating idea of the major Western theistic religious traditions." (Jay Wexler, :Darwin, Design, and Disestablishment: Teaching the Evolution Controversy in Public Schools," 56 Vand. L. Rev. 751, 817 (April, 2003))Incidentally, if Wexler is correct, then another commonly taught scientific theory--the Big Bang theory--must also be unconstitutional. The Big Bang has been held by many scientists as implying the universe had a beginning, a creation event. This is also a fundamental tenet, or animating characteristic, of many religions, and the notion of a creation event is also an inherently religious idea.
In his article, Wexler had just previously discussed a definition of religion given by Judge Adams in a 3rd Circuit case, Malnak v. Yogi. Judge Adams' analysis of the Big Bang theory in Malnak found that the theory provided answered various religious questions, but yet was an “astronomical interpretation of the universe,” implying that the scientific method it used to make its claims trumped its minimal religious significance. Similarly, ID theory might answer a question often relegated to the realm of religion, but it finds its answers is through the scientific method. Both ID and the Big Bang arrive at conclusions about profound (and often religious) questions via the scientific method, solely depending upon the scientific method. If we follow Wexler’s method to define religion by propositions which are a “core tenet of a familiar and traditional religious belief system,” neither the Big Bang nor ID theory may be taught in schools as scientific theories. The fact that ID may have “religious implications” is immaterial. If the Big Bang, an established theory of cosmology and astrophysics cannot be taught in science classes, a test such as Wexler’s leads to unacceptable results.
If the ACLU has arguments in mind akin to those of Wexler, then the "inherently religious idea" test must fail as a model for determining what should be taught about origins because it clearly leads to unacceptable results.
It is also possible that the ACLU derived its "inherently religious" language from McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education: "The idea of sudden creation from nothing, or creation ex nihilo, is an inherently religious concept." (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1266 (W.D. Ark. 1982) (also cited in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 600, n2 (Justices Powell and O'Connor, concurring)) However, it is clear that creation ex nihilo is not the mandate nor even the trend in modern intelligent design theory. William Dembski writes: "Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation. A doctrine of creation presupposes not only a designer that in some manner is responsible for organizing the structure of the universe and its various parts but also a creator that is the source of being of the universe. A doctrine of creation thus invariably entails metaphysical and theological claims about a creator and the creation. Intelligent design, on the other hand, merely concerns itself with features of natural objects that reliably signal the action of an intelligence, whatever that intelligence might be. More significantly for the education curriculum, however, is that intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form. To be sure, intelligent design leaves that as a possibility. But intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as 'common descent.' (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 314)
"Intelligent design, as a scientific theory, is distinct from a theological doctrine of creation. Creation presupposes a creator who originates the world and all its materials. Intelligent design only attempts to explain the arrangement of materials within an already given world. Design theorists argue that certain arrangements of matter, especially in biological systems, clearly signal a designing intelligence.” (Dembski, The Design Revolution, pgs. 42-43) Clearly modern intelligent design does not mandate that species came into existence in their present form, much less that they were created "ex nihilo." Rather, intelligent design takes the matter in the world as a given and there is no need to invoke miraculous "creation out of nothing." Intelligent design thus simply seeks to understand where objects in nature were designed. There is never any need to invoke "creation out of nothing."
While it is tough to tell exactly what the ACLU means by "inherently religious," it is not difficult to show that ID is not easily characterized as an "inherently religious" argument. Dembski explains in plain terms how intelligent design is based upon scientific data, and does not have religious premises: "Intelligent design begins with data that scientists observe in the laboratory and nature, identifies in them patterns known to signal intelligent causes and thereby ascertains whether a phenomenon was designed. For design theorists, the conclusion of design constitutes an inference from data, not a deduction from religious authority." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42-43) Dembski's statement here would an assertion were it not for the fact that he has made extremely detailed purely scientific arguments which had absolutely no religious premises to back up this statement. Exhibit A might be his 1998 Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference where he lays out a detailed argument by which we may detect design. This technical book contains no religious arguments whatsoever, and it has formed the basis for how we may detect design when we find unlikely and specified structures in biology. But what about Pandas? When Pandas urges us to make the design inference, does it use religious arguments or scientific arguments? The best way to know is to look at Pandas itself and find out how it makes the design inference:
Pandas proclaims that it has the singular goal of presenting data which one can either interpret as supporting intelligent design and Darwinian evolution: "This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins ... From these six areas of science, we will present interpretations of the data proposed by those today who hold alternative concepts; those with a Darwinian frame of reference and those who adhere to intelligent design. We will concentrate, however, on explaining what few other textbooks do: the scientific rationale for the second concept." (Pandas, pg. viii). The question is, what is the "rationale" the authors provide? If it is based upon observations of empirical evidence, using the scientific method, then it must be judged, as they claim a "scientific rationale." But if it requires faith or divine revelation, then it must be judged an "inherently religious" rationale. "In the world around us we observe two classes of things: natural objects, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, such as houses and computers. To put this in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two fundamentally different causes: natural and intelligent.
"If we didn't see it occur, how do we decide whether something resulted from natural or from intelligent causes? ...
"Walking along a beach you may be impressed by the regular pattern of ripples in the sand. The scene may be artistic but it isn't likely you would like around for an artist who might be responsible. A natural cause, you rightly conclude. But if you come across the words "John loves Mary" etched into the sand, you would know that no wave action was responsible for that. Nor would you be likely to imagine that, given enough time, grains of sand would spontaneously organize themselves so uniquely. Rather, you would look around for an intelligent cause: John...perhaps even Mary.
"What do these examples suggest? The way we decide whether a given phenomenon arises from natural or intelligent causes is from experience, refined as we mature and are exposed to more and more examples. Through this process, our experience grows into a collection of uniform observations, things we learn to count on. If experience has shown that a certain class of phenomena results from intelligent cause and then we encounter something new but similar, we conclude its origin also to be from an intelligent cause." (Pandas, pg. viii-ix)
There it is. That's it. That's how intelligent design is inferred, according to the authors of Pandas. There is clearly no reference to creation ex nihilo, and many of the examples of intelligent design given include intelligent agents arranging pre-existent matter into some shape or form. Here it is in 2 simple steps: (1) Observe the products of intelligent agency
(2) Look for those same products in nature. William Dembski and Michael Behe have later taken this sort of logic and ran with it so as to clearly elucidate the type of informational complexity which experience teaches we normally recognize to be the result of intelligent design. Behe called it "irreducible complexity," and then Dembski elaborated upon Behe's notions to develop "specified complexity" as a rigorous and reliable indicator of intelligent agency.
The basic rationale in Pandas for detecting is wholly experience, and observation-based, and rooted in the scientific method. It is not "inherently religious" but rather "inherently scientific." According to authorities in mainstream science, this would seem to qualify their argument as eminently scientific: Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not a part of science…The statements of science are those that emerge from the application of human intelligence to data obtained from observation and experiment. (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) The rationale offered in Pandas is to observe the natural world to understand the products of intelligent agency. Experiment can then be performed upon natural objects to determine if those products are present. Here is an example of Pandas' rationale for detecting design applied: "It has been discovered that the structure of information in living systems is mathematically identical to that of written language. Since both written language and DNA have that telltale property of information carried along by specific sequences of 'words,' and since intelligence is known to produce written language, is it not reasonable to identify the cause of the DNA's information as an intelligence too? ... [T]he experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes." (Pandas, pg. 57-58). In this example, the authors use a clear methodology: first they discuss observations of intelligent agents at work. This leads to an understanding of the type of information intelligent agents tend to produce, often manifested as a language-based code. Experiments on living cells then found a very similar form of a code embedded with meaning--a "language"--in our DNA). Thus, the authors of Pandas argue that this provides a good indication that the DNA machinery was designed. This observation + experiment methodology is exactly what the National Academy of Sciences ("NAS") states is at the heart of science. Furthermore, there are no religious premises in this argument. You may disagree with their conclusions, but there is no disagreeing that their methodology is fundamentally scientific and non-religious in nature.
The NAS has stated that a primary goal of science is to understand nature, where "understanding" means "relating one natural phenomena to another and recognizing the causes and effects of phenomena." (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) Progress in science consists of the development of better explanations for the causes of natural phenomena. (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) Intelligent design theory as it is posed in Pandas simply offers a cause for the natural phenomena of language in the cell, through another phenomena we understand by observations of the natural world--intelligence.
To conclude with a quote from Pandas: "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause." (Pandas, pg. 7, emphasis added) There is nothing "inherently religious" about this argument. There appears to be nothing to the claim that the argument for design as it is made in Pandas is "inherently religious."
Firstly, it should be noted that as far as post-Pandas mainstream ID-theory is concerned, many ID-proponents accept common descent of the species, but simply question if Darwinian evolution was the mechanism of that descent. Leading ID theorist Michael Behe is a prime example of a scientist with such a viewpoint, as he writes: [Eugenie] Scott refers to me as an intelligent design “creationist,” even though I clearly write in my book “Darwin's Black Box” (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think evolution occurred, but was guided by God. (Michael J. Behe, “Intelligent Design Is Not Creationism,” Science, Published E-Letter Responses for Scott, 288 (5467):813-815 (July 30, 2000), sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/288/5467/813#165 (last visited October 9, 2004)) Behe goes to great lengths in his book Darwin's Black Box to argue that establishing common descent is very different from establishing that non-intelligent forces created all biological structures. Behe envisions that a designer could work within common descent to design various biological structures. Modern ID proponents go out-of-their-way to explicitly not define the theory as the rejection of common descent. This argument thus bears little relevance to modern ID theory.
Nonetheless, it is true that at many places the authors of Pandas question common descent, and an analysis should be made to determine if the concepts in Pandas regarding the origin of species are somehow unconstitutional to teach.
To reiterate, the reason ACLU wants people to view intelligent design as a new breed of creationism because creationism is viewed by many as having been declared unconstitutional to teach by the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. Assuming that Pandas does reject common descent (which it does), the question then becomes, is rejecting common descent relevant to the question of whether or not intelligent design is creationism, and unconstitutional?
As it turns out the phraseology of "abrupt appearance in complex form" is directly out of Edwards v. Aguillard: "The affidavits define creation science as 'origin through abrupt appearance in complex form' and allege that such a viewpoint constitutes a true scientific theory." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 595). It is thus clear that the ACLU is again attempting to imply intelligent design is comparable to the creationism of Edwards v. Aguillard. As far as constitutional analysis is concerned, this comparison is only relevant insofar as the Supreme Court declared that teaching "abrupt appearance in complex form" was unconstitutional. But when the Supreme Court found that creationism was a religious viewpoint, their reasons had nothing to do with "abrupt appearance in complex form." Rather, the Court stated: "The legislative history therefore reveals that the term 'creation science,' as contemplated by the legislature that adopted this Act, embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 591-592) In a footnote, Supreme Court observed that the experts for creation science had explicitly characterized creation science as requiring a supernatural creator, stating that "Creation ... requires the direct involvement of a supernatural intelligence" and "everything was created by some intelligence or power external to the universe." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 592, footnote 12). Creation scientists may have defined their own theory as the "abrupt appearance in complex form" but when the Supreme Court analyzed what had been done, they apparently only cared about the fact that so many of the experts on creation - science had specifically stated that it required a "supernatural" being. The Supreme Court didn't seem care at all about "abrupt appearance in complex form" in their constitutional analysis.
In the present case, with regards to constitutional analysis, the key component of whether or not the theory proposes something "supernatural" what matters most. The ACLU can compare creation - science to intelligent design theory all it wants. The observance that species appear abruptly is nothing new--even to evolutionist paleontologists (all emphases on the word "abrupt" are added): "Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group. Thus, it has seldom been possible to piece together ancestor-dependent sequences from the fossil record that show gradual, smooth transitions between species."
(Hickman, C.P. [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington], L.S. Roberts [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Texas Tech University], and F.M. Hickman. 1988. Integrated Principles of Zoology. Times Mirror/Moseby College Publishing, St. Louis, MO. 939 pp.; (pg. 866))
"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism ... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."
(Mayr, E., 1991, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, p. 138)
"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change. All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."
(Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, 86, June-July, 1977, pp. 22, 24.)
"The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt."
(Wesson, R., 1991, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45)
"Phyla appear abruptly in the fossil record without intermediates to link them to their putative ancestors. This pattern presumably reflects derivation of most or all phyla from small, soft-bodied ancestors that had virtually no potential for fossilization. However, most classes and orders of durably skeletonized marine animals also appear abruptly, without obvious linkage to their durably skeletonized antecedents (although see Paul and Smith [1984])."
(Erwin D.H., Valentine J.W. & Sepkoski J.J., "A Comparative Study of Diversification Events: The Early Paleozoic Versus the Mesozoic," Evolution, Vol. 41, No. 6, p1178) Of course these authors are all evolutionists, and most would probably understand the "abrupt" appearance of species as the result of the fact that the evolution of the species took place in a relatively small population over a relatively short geological timescale where the chances of the "intermediate" stages being preserved as a fossil was simply too small to record the actual transition as it took place. Thus, punctuated equilibria theory where evolution proceeds by oft-unfossilized speciation events remains a common explanation for the apparent "abrupt" appearance of species. Nonetheless, they have a scientific rationale for why the species appear "abruptly"--because they originated during a speciation event. Similarly, intelligent design proponents have a non-religious rationale for why some species originate abruptly: because an intelligent agent manipulated the genetic code to produce a new species. Observing that "species originated through abrupt appearance in complex form" is surely not a religious claim, and it is not even altogether inconsistent with the sort of observations made by evolutionist paleontologists.
But what exactly does Pandas say with regards to the origin of species in the fossil record? Do their explanations of how the fossil record speaks to the origin of species make any statements which might establish religion? Here's an excellent representative quote from Pandas on their interpretation of the fossil record: "The intelligent design hypothesis is in agreement with the face value interpretation and accepts the taps as a generally true reflection of biology and natural history. A growing number of scientists who study the fossil record are concluding that the structural differences between the major types of organisms reflect life as it was for that era. This view proposes that only the long-held expectations of Darwinian theory cause us to refer to the in-between areas as gaps. If this is so, the major different types of living organisms do not have a common ancestry. Such a conclusions is more consistent with currently known fossil data than any of the evolutionary models."
(Pandas, pg. 98) The authors of Pandas are simply asserting that when there are transitionless jumps between species, the jump is not just an artifact of the fossil record, or the result of some otherwise hidden or cryptic speciation event, but rather the jumps can be taken at face value: they indicate that there never really was a string of organisms transitioning from one form into another. Pandas thus finds that this could be evidence where an intelligent agent rapidly designed some new taxa. In any case, there is nothing religious about this argument--it uses normal cause-and-effect logic to determine what the best cause for these "gaps" might be.
Regardless, the brand of intelligent design theory found in Pandas might fit well with a definition stating that "species originated through abrupt appearance in complex form" but as far as constitutional concerns are concerned, this is irrelevant. The U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard was confronted with this very definition of creation - science and the Court majority completely ignored this characteristic of creation - science in its analysis of whether or not creationism was religion. What the Court cared about most (and almost singularly) was whether or not the theory taught that there was a supernatural designer, because that is a religious concept. The Court did not care about "abrupt appearance." Indeed, given the fact that many mainstream evolutionist scientists agree that species tend to appear abruptly, it appears that this aspect of intelligent design would contribute little, if anything, to a court's analysis of intelligent design.
What the ACLU wants people to think is that intelligent design is a form of creation ex nihilo, but again, there is no indication of such from Pandas and modern ID proponents specifically have explained why ID is not necessarily creation ex nihilo.
It should be reiterated that Pandas explicitly states that "the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, pg. 161) It is thus difficult to characterize intelligent design as implying that "God" created man when the book explicitly disclaims that this is the necessary implication of intelligent design.
Nonetheless, this statement from the ACLU gets at the question of motives--why did the authors of Pandas write the book and why are they interested in intelligent design? Are the authors simply trying to provide epistemological support for their worldview? We could argue all day about why the authors wrote the book and perhaps, short of a mind probe, never know for sure. However, there is a solution, because in science, it is evidence that matters--not motives. Attacking motives makes a nice rhetorical tactic that scores short term gains, but at the end of the day it is science that wins out. The mark of a true scientist is one who can follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of one's personal preferences or biases. If the evidence leads to design, then it matters not if some scientists like it, and some don't. Indeed, noted atheist Anthony Flew recently found that the evidence leads towards design, but few would argue that he believes as such because he is trying to prove the religious view that God created humans. Indeed, Flew apparently remains a religious agnostic after himself becoming convinced that intelligent design is the best explanation for life.
However, if motives are to be attacked, it should be noted that Darwinian evolution itself does not have such a spotless history. Cornelius Hunter recognizes that Darwin himself proposed his theory because he wanted to support the religious view that God did not create the natural evil found in the world: Darwin constructed his theory of evolution to explain the quandaries of the natural world. He believed that God could not be responsible for nature's carnage and inefficiency, so he proposed a purely naturalistic explanation. (Cornelius Hunter, Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, pg. 173) In this quote from Darwin himself, Hunter finds that Darwin found natural selection to be the perfect solution for why a benevolent God would permit natural suffering: "A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient. It revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one, and the abundant presence of suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have developed through variation and natural selection." (Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company), pg. 90 as quoted in Cornelius Hunter's Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, pg. 18) This quote from Darwin makes it clear that he thinks that suffering provides the theological imperative that some natural force (i.e. natural selection)--not God's divine creation--was responsible for life. Darwin's motive in expounding his theory thus came from an internal desire to explain that God was NOT directly responsible for the natural suffering he saw in the world. If this does not constitute a theological motive, what does? Yet few modern evolutionists today trouble themselves with Darwin's philosophical and theological motivations, because, after all, they believe the evidence confirmed his theory. And this is rightly so, because at the end of the day, in science, evidence is all that matters--not motivations. Motivations just make nice talking points when you're on TV.
Where motives do matter is with regards to the actions of the Dover school board, and whether they can pass the "purpose" prong of the Lemon test which requires that "statute must have a secular legislative purpose" (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. at 612-13.) This is of course a question of fact which the judge (and perhaps subsequent appellate courts) will have to decide in this case. But the motives of the Dover School Board have nothing to do necessarily with the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design theory in general or even necessarily with teaching out of Pandas. This same sort of reasoning is what led Eugenie Scott to note that Edwards v. Aguillard may not have ruled that teaching creationism was unconstitutional, because the U.S. Supreme Court merely ruled that the Louisiana legislators lacked a secular purpose in teaching it. (See Eugenie C. Scott, “Creationism Lives,” Nature 329:282, Sept. 24, 1987. -- Nonetheless, many lower courts have effectively intepreted Edwards as stating that creationism was religion and unconstitutional to teach.)
Back to the ACLU ID FAQ Response Main Navigation Menu
Note:
This musing is merely a commentary on the "ACLU's 'Intelligent Design' FAQ" as found on the ACLU website. While the ACLU ID FAQ mentions the current case over teaching intelligent design theory in Dover, Pennsylvania, I am not a lawyer and this commentary is not intended to be legal advice for anyone. This is simply my thoughts about the claims made by the ACLU in its ID FAQ on their website. Some of their claims, and thus some of my commentary relates to case law, but much of this discussion is also completely unrelated to legal issues. A full legal discussion about whether or not it is constitutional to teach intelligent design would go into much more depth than the commentary made here. This is not intended to fully or adequately discuss the general question of whether or not it is constitutional to teach intelligent design theory. My purpose here is simply to respond to the various sorts of claims made by the ACLU in its ID FAQ. If readers have further questions about the author's opinion, they are invited to contact the author at [email protected].
Response:
| FAQ 1A. "'Intelligent design' purports to be a scientific hypothesis that 'life owes its origins to a master intellect' - an intelligent, supernatural designer." |
The ACLU is correct to state here that intelligent design does indeed purport to be a scientific hypothesis. The important question is, has the ACLU accurately characterized the hypothesis?
The ACLU characterizes intelligent design theory as the sum of 2 primary claims:
Analysis of Part (a): "life owes its origins to a master intellect"
Any legal writer knows that you put your most incriminating points at the very beginning (and perhaps also at the very end) of a document where people might remember them most. Thus, the ACLU thinks they've got something big with this phrase "master intellect." The ACLU's statement that "life owes its origins to a master intellect" is likely derived from a quote out of Pandas which uses very similar phraseology to state that "life itself owes its origin to a master intellect" (pg. 58, 85). Before working on this FAQ, I've never seen any phrase like "master intellect" in any book by ID proponents which attempted to exposit the science of ID theory. It seems a bit odd to me that in its first statement about intelligent design, the ACLU would use a statement that appears only twice in a relatively obscure and out-dated book about intelligent design. So let's explore why the ACLU care about so much about Pandas and this particularly obscure phrase.
Pandas is a supplemental textbook intended for use by biology students that provides extra detail as they study the topic of biological origins. The book takes a pro-intelligent design stance. Pandas is not intended as a primary biology textbook for students as it mostly deals only with issues related to biological origins. The ACLU cares about Pandas because it was recently sanctioned for use by students in Dover, Pennsylvania, which spawned a much publicized lawsuit filed by the ACLU. I want to note that my purpose here is not to defend the science of Pandas, but rather to assess any claims that might be made that teaching from it would establish religion. I am not claiming that Pandas has no scientific problems. (Indeed, I do believe it gets much of its science correct, but I do recall that the first time I read it, an error jumped out out at me on pg. 37-38 where it incorrectly characterizes predictions from evolutionary biology for the evolution of cytochrome C.)
Those who follow ID literature closely may have never even read or seen Pandas, much less own a copy. Why is that? The first edition of the book was published in 1989, and the second edition in 1993.
Though Pandas was indeed one of the first major works to mention "intelligent design," that title must be read in its context: Pandas predates all of the seminal and widely known books of the intelligent design movement which have specifically formulated the design hypothesis. To demonstrate how out-of-date Pandas is, the book contains neither the term "irreducible complexity" nor any hint of Dembski's famous explanatory filter for detecting design--both of which are fundamental concepts in current intelligent design theory. Many see the first true ID book as Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe. The first edition of Pandas was published 7 years before the publication of Darwin's Black Box. Others may see the seminal book in design detection as William Dembski's The Design Inference. The first edition of Pandas was published 9 years before The Design Inference and 12 years before its sequel, No Free Lunch. A timeline comparing the publication date of Pandas with these and other major ID books is summarized in table 1.
To be sure, Pandas is one of the first major works to elaborate on intelligent design theory. Despite this fact, it has not historically played a major role in the development of intelligent design theory. The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, perhaps the largest organization funding intelligent design research, does not list Pandas in its online list of "Essential Readings" on intelligent design. The reason many have probably never even read Pandas is because it's basically out-dated and predates nearly all widely-known ID scholarship which has played a significant role in formulating current intelligent design theory.
| Table 1. Publication Dates of Seminal Books on ID (only major ID books which actually contain the phrase "intelligent design" will be examined) | |||
| Book |
Year of publication |
Years Since Pandas 1st ed. |
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed. |
| Of Pandas and People (1st Ed.) | 1989 | 0 | -4 |
| Of Pandas and People (2nd Ed.) | 1993 | 4 | 0 |
| Darwin's Black Box | 1996 | 7 | 3 |
| The Design Inference | 1998 | 9 | 5 |
| Signs of Intelligence | 1999 | 10 | 6 |
| Intelligent Design | 1999 | 10 | 6 |
| No Free Lunch | 2001 | 12 | 8 |
| The Design Revolution | 2004 | 15 | 11 |
| Darwinism, Design, and Public Education | 2004 | 15 | 11 |
| What's the point of this table? Pandas was originally penned nearly a decade before most of the seminal books on intelligent design theory and is clearly out-dated with regards to adequately representing current thought in intelligent design. The most poignant examples of its primordial nature is that it contains neither the phrase "irreducible complexity" nor the concept of Dembski's explanatory filter. | |||
This table should clearly indicate that Pandas is somewhat out-dated with respect to the current mainstream ID movement. In my personal experience, I have rarely (if ever) seen Pandas relied upon by ID scholars as a source for discussing intelligent design theory. I do not think that ID proponents see it as an authority on intelligent design theory. Before writing this response, I personally had never used Pandas in any context other than reading a few assigned pages for a course I took at Scripps Institution for Oceanography in 1999. I had to go to the library to check out Pandas for the class.
Thus, regardless of whether or not teaching out of Pandas is constitutional, it seems very possible that conclusions about the general constitutionality of teaching ID based upon the treatment of ID in Pandas would not necessarily apply to teaching ID theory in general, such as in future textbooks presenting intelligent design.
To provide a little perspective on Pandas, legal scholar Jay Wexler, who believes that the version of intelligent design theory taught in Pandas is unconstitutional, is still able to concede the following points: "The book contains no mention of the word 'God' or 'Creator.' There is also no mention of any specifically biblical account of the origin of life. The book does not preach, and it consistently suggests that there are two competing, at least somewhat reasonable, interpretations of the biological data. The book does, however, strongly advocate the idea that life was created by an intelligent agent, not simply evolution. For the most part, the authors of the book are engaged in a familiar project. Like most creationists before them, they concern themselves primarily with raising doubts about Darwinian evolution. The book is unique only insofar as it postulates that an unnamed intelligent agent, rather than a particularly Christian God, created the world and its creatures. Even the claim that the belief in a creator is scientifically warranted derives from traditional creationism. The creation science movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which culminated in Edwards, was based almost exclusively on the tenet that the events of the Bible could be supported by scientific investigation. Pandas breaks new ground not in its methodology but only in its conclusion that some intelligent agent, not necessarily God, created the world." (Jay D. Wexler, "Of Pandas, People, and the First Amendment: The Constitutionality of Teaching Intelligent Design in the Public Schools," 49 Stan. L. Rev. 439, 453-454 (January, 1997) (citations omitted)). While I would object to many of Wexleter's characterizations in this quote, it remains important that he concedes that the book does not talk about God, does not preach, and presents evidence two theories about origins: one that life evolved by Darwinian processes and the other that it was designed by an unidentified intelligence. As discussed later in more detail, Wexler's argument is that teaching out of Pandas would cause an unconstitutional establishment of religion. However, Pandas needs to be understood in its whole context before we can make any firm conclusions about whether or not using it in public schools would be is unconstitutional.
When the ACLU quotes the phrase that "life owes its origins to a master intellect," it wants you to think that in saying "master intellect," that the authors of Pandas must have been implying that life owes its existence to some kind of a mind that holds power over all life on earth--the key word being "master." The ACLU probably wants this quote to be read with all kinds of religious overtones, such as that saying a "master intellect" means an intellect which is actually our master. But what does the quote really mean?
The ACLU probably wants you to believe that when the authors say the word "master" they are trying to imply some kind of a ruler who deserves some kind of response, akin to religious devotion. If this is the case, then clearly teaching as such would be unconstitutional in public schools. The ACLU probably would hinge their bet that teaching intelligent design out of Pandas is unconstitutional upon their hope that such is the proper interpretation of the word "master."
According to Webster's Encylcopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word "master" can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb. Most of the entries given for "master" can be broken down into those which (a) imply some relationship to another being or (b)those which describe a being's abilities. To help illustrate this point, let's break up some of the entries for "master" out of Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language ("WEUDEL") (1996):
| Table 2. Entries for the word "master" in WEUDEL can generally be broken up into 2 basic categories. Some entries have been omitted because they are totally irrelevant or duplicative. | |
| Entries related to the abilities of a being | Entries implying a relationship superior to some other being |
|
|
|
| What's the point of this table? The word "master" can have many definitions, many of which have nothing to do with implying that one is dealing with an entity that is superior or deserves any measure of religious devotion. The definition that fits most closely with how the word "master" is used in Pandas is the definition of "master" as an adjective, as in 29: "being a master of some occupation, art, etc.; eminently skilled a master diplomat; a master pianist." | |
To state that life was designed by an "intellect" seems to be a central claim of ID theory. The writings of ID proponents make it clear that intelligent design theory implies that life owes its origin to some kind of an "intellect" (i.e. a mind). But what does it mean to say that intellect is a "master." To understand the meaning of this word, one has to return to the original context of the quote. Here are the two paragraphs in full that contain the phraseology: "On the other hand, the experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes. This parallel suggests that life itself origin to a master intellect." (Pandas, pg. 58)
"The experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes. This strong analogy leads to the conclusion that life itself owes its origin to a master intellect. One can talk about adding innumerable random mutations, but proponents of intelligent design still wonder: How were such impressive gains in functional information consolidated? It is a fair and crucial question." (Pandas, pg. 85) In the context of both of these quotes, the "master intellect" is discussed in the context of theh ability of the intelligent designer to create sophisticated biological informational molecules such as DNA or proteins. This clearly corresponds to the intellectual abilities of the being. There is nothing in the text implying a definition of "master" where the "master" somehow is supposed to have a relationship of superiority to anything else. By discussing the abilities of the designer to design complex molecules, the likely response would be to understand the creative knowledge necessary on the part of the designer to create the molecules in question. This would probably evoke in the minds of readers definitions akin to numbers 1, 5, or 29: n. 1. a person with the ability or power to use, control, or dispose of something; a master of six languages; to be master of one's fate.
n. 5. a person eminently skilled in something, as an occupation, art, or science: the great masters of the Impressionist period.
adj. 29. being a master of some occupation, art, etc.; eminently skilled a master diplomat; a master pianist. The definition which poses the most likely candidate is probably number 29, where the examples given are a "master diplomat" or a "master pianist"--this is similar to the phraseology "master intellect." Pandas contains nothing in the context implying we are to take the word "master" as if it is discussing the relationship of this "intellect" to humans, but the word "master" simply implies that the being is "eminently skilled." The designer has the "skill," "ability," or "power" to "control" the genetic code. All of this could be true without there being any need for inferring some kind of a religious devotion or unconstitutional establishment of religion.
The context of where the quote appears reveals that in each case the authors are calling the intelligent agent a "master" after talking about the complex informational structure of the genetic code which that intelligent agent designed. The authors are simply talking about some intellect that designed the fundamental nature of the information carrying molecules common to all life on earth. Calling such a being a "master" could simply a skill in manipulating genetic material. Such flowery descriptions could describe an intelligent agent capable of inventing the working of the DNA genetic code, without needing to invoke any kind of religious overtones. Thus, Pandas clearly does not intend to imply any religious content in calling the designer a "master intellect."
Despite the fact that this phraseology need not be religious, it should be admitted that it probably does not belong in a science textbook. Textbook authors often use flowery language to make the text more interesting, but in doing so can stray from keeping students honed in the spirit of pure scientific inquiry. That appears to be the very case here: scientific inquiry does not require discussing whether or not the intelligent agent was skillful or good at designing functional genetic sequences and proteins. This is an inappropriate statement for a science textbook even if it does not establish religion. Nonetheless, when the question of constitutionality is at stake, there is no doubt that the word "master" was not intended to imply any particular religious response to the designer, which becomes strikingly clear when the greater context of many other statements in the book is considered. And context is key in constitutional analysis.
While a strong argument can be made that the phrase "master intellect" has no religious implications and would not establish religion, what really matters is how courts would look at this issue. Just how do courts determine if teaching something in schools is unconstitutional? Teachers may be asked to cease teaching something if it constitutes the establishment of religion. Since its creation in 1971, the three-pronged “Lemon test” has been the primary judicial vehicle for determining if the government has established religion: First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971) (internal citations and quotations omitted).) Despite Lemon’s significance, many cases dealing with the constitutionality of individual teacher expression of religious devotion have employed Justice O’Connor’s “endorsement test.” Justice O’Connor explains how the endorsement test meshes with the Lemon test: "The purpose prong of the Lemon test asks whether government's actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion. The effect prong asks whether, irrespective of government's actual purpose, the practice under review in fact conveys a message of endorsement or disapproval. An affirmative answer to either question should render the challenged practice invalid." (Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring).) O'Connor's endorsement test also employs an objective component to determine the effect the government action will have upon those in the community. This essentially asks whether a reasonable observer would take the actions of the government to establish religion. "The meaning of a statement to its audience depends both on the intention of the speaker and on the "objective" meaning of the statement in the community. Some listeners need not rely solely on the words themselves in discerning the speaker's intent: they can judge the intent by, for example, examining the context of the statement or asking questions of the speaker." (Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (emphasis added).) It is clear that the immediate context of the phrase "master intellect" does not contain any religious implications. However, to understand why a reasonable observer would not objectively think this book endorses religion, one has to look at the larger context of the statements in the book, as is elaborated in the following discussion:
Analysis of Part (b): the designer was "intelligent" and "supernatural"
The ACLU's statement that the designer was "intelligent" is right on the money. Were it not for the fact that the designer was "intelligent," it would be impossible to detect when an intelligent agent was at work. The very property of intelligence tells us about how that agent operated, and gives us clues as to what sort of informational patterns might help us to detect the past action of that agent.
What about the claim that the designer was "supernatural?" Is this something which intelligent design proponents, and Pandas, claim about ID? The claim that intelligent design theory proposes a supernatural designer appears to a pure fabrication on the part of the ACLU. Not only is there is nothing in Pandas claiming that the designer is supernatural, but there is firm evidence exactly to the contrary. Quotations from both Pandas and many writings from leading scholars in the ID research community clearly indicate that intelligent design theory does not allow one to identify the designer as natural or supernatural, and also consistently give the same reason why that is the case.
Since the textbook at issue here is Pandas, let's start there. It's quite easy to find quotes from post-Pandas ID scholars stating that the scientific method does not permit intelligent design theory to identify the designer as natural, supernatural, or whatever. However, despite the fact that Pandas was written first over half-a-decade before the primary ID theorists published their seminal works, let's look at some long passages from Pandas to see what they say about the nature of the designer: "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause. But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. But that should not prevent science from acknowledging evidences for an intelligent cause origin wherever they may exist. This is no different, really, than if we discovered life did result from natural causes. We still would not know, from science, if the natural cause was all that was involved, or if the ultimate explanation was beyond nature, and using the natural cause." (Pandas, pg. 7, emphasis added)
"Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the progress of science. For example, the place of intelligent design in science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (Pandas, pg. 126-127, emphasis added)
"The idea that life had an intelligent source is hardly unique to Christian fundamentalism. Advocates of design have included not only Christians and other religious theists, but pantheists, Greek and Enlightenment philosophers and now include many modern scientists who describe themselves as religiously agnostic. Moreover, the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, pg. 161) In each of these quotes, it seems clear Pandas is telling students that intelligent design theory cannot tell us anything about the nature of the designer, and cannot determine if the designer was natural or supernatural. The fact that they explicitly disclaim a connection to Christian fundamentalism or creationism would imply, given the explicit context, that they are explicitly not trying to endorse fundamentalist Christianity or creationism. The reason for this is clear: there are limits on what science can tell us, and science is not capable of studying the evidence to tell us if the designer was supernatural or natural. Science can only discover what is found in the observable realm. We cannot access the supernatural, and thus inteligent design proponents make it clear that all their theory can do is tell if a natural object bears the hallmarks of having been designed--it cannot tell you anything about the designer, much less that it was a supernatural deity. Science can indeed tell us if aspects of biology were designed, but it turns out to be silent on the question on the nature of the designer. These statements create a context where a student reading Pandas would be unlikely to infer that other statements such as "master intellect" ought to be interpreted in such a manner so as to imply religious devotion to any particular deity or other being. The text seems clear that the books is not advocating any particular viewpoint about the identity or nature of the designer: "But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. ... We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science ... Moreover, the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, using quotes taken from pages 7, 127, and 161.) The intent of the authors of Pandas is clearly for students to not take their book as advocating beliefs which go beyond science, as the introduction states that the book's intent is to focus on scientific answers and to go no further: "This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins. We don't propose to give final answers, nor to unveil The Truth. Our purpose, rather, is to help readers understand origins better, and to see why the data may be viewed in more than one way." (Pandas, pg. viii) The authors clearly intend for students to understand the book as advocating scientific answers only. Thus, their disclaimer that specifically religious answers regarding origins may be beyond science would thus mean that specifically religious answers would also be beyond the scope of what they intend for students to see them as advocating in the book.
Significantly, post-Pandas ID scholars have said nearly exactly the same thing about the inability of intelligent design theory to identify the designer: "Although intelligent design fits comfortably with a belief in God, it doesn't require it, because the scientific theory doesn't tell you who the designer is. While most people - including myself - will think the designer is God, some people might think that the designer was a space alien or something odd like that." (Michael Behe, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 02/08/01).
"One of the worries about intelligent design is that it will jettison much of what is accepted in science, and that an “ID-based curriculum” will look very different from current science curricula. Although intelligent design has radical implications for science, I submit that it does not have nearly as radical implications for science education. First off, intelligent design is not a form of anti-evolutionism. Intelligent design does not claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation." (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 314, emphasis added)
"The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all the firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer." (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pg. 197)
"Intelligent design is modest in what it attributes to the designing intelligence responsible for the specified complexity in nature. For instance, design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the competence of science and must be left to religion and philosophy." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42)
"The most obvious difference is that scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not. ... Intelligent design ... has no prior religious commitments and interprets the data of science on generally accepted scientific principles. In particular, intelligent design does not depend on the biblical account of creation." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 40)
"Intelligent design begins with data that scientists observe in the laboratory and nature, identifies in them patterns known to signal intelligent causes and thereby ascertains whether a phenomenon was designed. For design theorists, the conclusion of design constitutes an inference from data, not a deduction from religious authority." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42-43)
"Natural causes are too stupid to keep pace with intelligent causes. Intelligent design theory provides a rigorous scientific demonstration of this long-standing intuition. Let me stress, the complexity-specification criterion is not a principle that comes to us demanding our unexamined acceptance--it is not an article of faith. Rather it is the outcome of a careful and sustained argument about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design." (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 223)
"ID is not an interventionist theory. Its only commitment is that the design in the world be empirically detectable. All the design could therefore have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang. What's more, the designer need not be a deity. It could be an extraterrestrial or a telic process inherent in the universe. ID has no doctrine of creation. Scott and Branch at best could argue that many of the ID proponents are religious believers in a deity, but that has no bearing on the content of the theory. As for being “vague” about what happened and when, that is utterly misleading. ID claims that many naturalistic evolutionary scenarios (like the origin of life) are unsupported by evidence and that we simply do not know the answer at this time to what happened. This is not a matter of being vague but rather of not pretending to knowledge that we don't have."(William Dembski, Commentary on Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch's "Guest Viewpoint: 'Intelligent design' Not Accepted by Most Scientists, emphasis added) These are all quotes that the ACLU does not want you to read because they show that (1) ID theory does not identify the designer as supernatural or otherwise and (2) there is a very simple and clear rationale for why ID theory does not identify the designer: science is limited in what it can investigate--it can identify the past action of an intelligent agent but it cannot tell you who the designer was or anything else about "metaphysical" nature of that designer. ID theory thus remains simply silent about the identity of the designer, for science simply cannot speak to that question. ID seems to be a concept which respects the empirical and epistemological boundaries of science and does not make unscientific claims which might establish religion.
It seems undoubtedly clear that ID theory does not identify the designer, and much more so that ID theory does not claim the designer was supernatural. If the ACLU is to claim that intelligent design theory teaches that a supernatural designer designed life, then they should explain why so many ID proponents consistently state the exact opposite, and they should also provide their own rationale for how we could determine that the designer was supernatural based upon the observable, empirical data alone.
Why does the ACLU care so much to characterize (wrongly) ID as teaching the designer was supernatural?
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in Edwards v. Aguillard that the creationist viewpoint that a supernatural creator had created life was religion, and thus was unconstitutional to teach. In the case, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's "balanced-treatment" law on the grounds that it had no secular purpose, but it did make the following important statement regarding teaching creationism: "The legislative history therefore reveals that the term 'creation science,' as contemplated by the legislature that adopted this Act, embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 591-592 (1987).) The Court seems to have indicated that teaching that a supernatural designer created life is a religious viewpoint which is unconstitutional to teach. The benchmark seems to be that one teaches that something "supernatural" created life. In order to have teaching intelligent design declared unconstitutional, the ACLU must force-fit intelligent design theory into the box of unconstitutionality created by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.
(Some Darwinists, including NCSE director Eugenie Scott, have previously interpreted Edwards as not prohibiting the teaching of creationism. In Edwards, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's "equal time" law because it purportedly was not enacted under a secular purpose. Thus, the Court did not reach the second prong of the Lemon test which presumably would have reached the question of whether or not teaching creationism actually had the effect of establishing religion. Dr. Scott interpreted Edwards as such, and wrote that "[r]eports of the death of ‘scientific creationism’, however, are premature. The Supreme Court decision says only that the Louisiana law violates constitutional separation of church and state; it does not say that no one can teach scientific creationism—and unfortunately many individual teachers do.” (Eugenie C. Scott, “Creationism Lives,” Nature 329:282, Sept. 24, 1987.))
ID clearly doesn't fit in the ACLU's box of a holding that a supernatural designer designed life. Despite the fact that Pandas was written years before the bulk of ID theory was constructed, Pandas' treatment of the designer's identity as a question beyond science is perfectly consistent with how "modern" ID proponents have treated the subject.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this first sentence of the ACLU ID FAQ it's this: when the facts don't help your case, change them! If the ACLU was really interested in accurately representing how intelligent design theory is portrayed in Pandas (and by most other major ID proponents), then the ACLU could have simply quoted the definition of intelligent design in the glossary: "In biology, the theory that biological organisms owe their origins to a preexistent intelligence." But of course this definition may not get them very far in their suit to have ID declared unconstitutional to teach.
There could be one last clue as to how the ACLU will make its claim that the designer is supernatural. The aforementioned legal scholar Jay Wexler constructed an argument that Pandas teaches a supernatural designer in his 1997 law review article: "Although the authors do not use the word 'supernatural,' by placing the theory of intelligent cause in counterdistinction to natural causes and by arguing that an intelligent designer can do things that could not be accomplished through natural causes, they clearly imply a supernatural designer." (Wexler (1997), note 146.) This is quite interesting, because, as noted in previous quotes, Pandas makes it explicitly clear that it is impossible for science to positively identify the designer as supernatural: "[S]cientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. ... We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (Pandas, pg. 126-127)
"But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy." (Pandas, pg. 7)
"A final misconception you may encounter is that intelligent design is simply sectarian religion. According to this view, intelligent design is merely fundamentalism with a new twist; teaching it in public schools allegedly violates the separation of church and state. This view is wide of the mark. The idea that life had an intelligent source is hardly unique to Christian fundamentalism. Advocates of intelligent design have included not only Christians and other religious theists, but pantheists, Greek and enlightenment philosophers and now include many modern scientists who describe themselves as religiously agnostic. Moreover, the concept of intelligent design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (A Note to Teachers, by Mark D. Hartwig and Stephen C. Meyer in Pandas, pgs. 160-161) If Wexler is correct, then when the authors explicitly say that the designer cannot be identified as supernatural, they really mean that implicitly, the designer was supernatural. Wexler's basis for his claim is that Pandas contrasts the cause of "intelligence" with "natural," and thus Wexler would argue that since "supernatural" is the opposite of "natural," the contrast of "intelligent" with "natural" must imply that "intelligent" is to be equated with "supernatural." This argument employs equivocation with regards to the word "natural" when Pandas clearly uses the word "natural" in only one sense.
On the first order, Wexler's explanation requires that Pandas authors are meaning the exact opposite of what they explicitly say in the quotes above, where the authors explicitly disclaim that intelligent design implies a supernatural designer, and specifically when they state that science cannot study the realm beyond the natural world: "We still would not know, from science, if the natural cause was all that was involved, or if the ultimate explanation was beyond nature, and using the natural cause." (Pandas, pg. 7) The authors are exceedingly clear in this and the aforementioned passages that the designer cannot be identified as supernatural by scientific methods. To claim that when the authors contrast "intelligent" with "natural" that the authors really meant "intelligent" to mean "supernatural" would contradict their plain statements. In fact, there exist a completely reasonable explanation for how the authors contrast "natural" with "intelligent" without trying to imply that "intelligent" means "supernatural."
Simply put, the authors of Pandas make it exceedingly clear that when they say "intelligent" they don't necessarily mean supernatural. A nearly-identical passage is twice in the book emphasizing how the authors characterize intelligent causes as "intelligent" but not necessarily "supernatural": "In the world around us we observe two classes of things: natural objects, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, such as houses and computers. To put this in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two fundamentally different causes: natural and intelligent. (Pandas, pg. viii)
"In the world around us, we see two classes of things: natural objects, like rivers and mountains, and man-made structures, like houses and computers. To put it in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two kinds of causes: natural and intelligent." (Pandas, pg. 6) In these key paragraphs, the authors make their typical contrast of "natural" versus "intelligent." According to Wexler (and presumably, the ACLU), when they say "intelligent," they must therefore mean "supernatural." Yet when they speak of intelligently designed objects, they list houses and computers! These are not objects created by supernatural agents--they are designed by "natural" agents--humans! As will be seen, the root of confusion here is that "natural" can have multiple definitions, and thus it has antonyms with very different definitions. Furthermore, as can be seen in Table 3, when they give examples of intelligent causes (which, as it turns out, are often contrasted with "natural" causes), they give many examples of non-supernatural intelligent agents. Let's explore how the authors contrast intelligent causes with natural causes:
| Table 3. Some examples of Naturally Caused Objects, Natural Causes, and Intelligently-Caused Objects, and Intelligent Causes as listed in Pandas (with page number). | |||
| (1) Naturally-Caused Objects | (2) Natural Causes | (3) Intelligently-Caused Objects | (4) Intelligent Causes |
|
stars (pg. viii) mountains (pg. viii, 6) clouds (pg. ix, 7) regular pattern of ripples in the sand (pg. ix) rivers (pg. 6) |
chance and law (pg. vii) water vapor affected by wind and temperature (pg. ix, 7) wave action (pg. ix, 7) interaction of grains of sand (pg. 7) natural selection (pg. 8) random gene mutations (pg. 69) blind, chance forces of nature (pg. 72) spontaneous generation (pg. 91) |
manufactured objects (pg. vii) houses (pg. viii, 6, 14) computers (pg. viii, 6) the words "'John loves Mary' etched into the sand" (pg. ix, 7, 144) "a cloud that spells out the words 'Vote for Smedley'" (pg. 7) complex message coded into the nucleus of a cell (pg. 7) painting (pg. 7 [on a canvas], 32) ancient inscription on stone (pg. 7) the briefest message (pg. 7) a blueprint (pg. 14) a palace (pg. 14) cars (pg. 32, 56-57 [pickup truck]) carpenter's tools (pg. 32) human artifacts (pg. 32) screwdriver (pg. 32) car engine (pg. 33, 57) huts (pg. 56) drum (pg. 56) levers (pg. 56) fulcrums (pg. 56) small animal traps (pg. 56) robotic tools (pg. 57) automobile factory (pg. 57) creation by the gods (pg. 77) |
humans (pg. viii, 6) visible human artist (pg. ix, 7) a human named "John" (pg. ix, 7) a human named "Mary" (pg. ix, 7) a human skywriter (pg. 7) human car manufacturers (pg. 56) human carpenter (pg. 32) primitive human tribespeople (pg. 56-57) human engineer or team of engineers making a car engine (pg. 57) an engineer (pg. 125) extraterrestrial intelligence (pg. 126) supernatural designer (pg. 127) |
| What's the point of this table? The ACLU might have us believe that because "natural" is contrasted with "intelligent," that intelligent could thus be equated with "supernatural," which is one possible antonym of "natural." This interpretation is soundly defeated by the numerous instances in Pandas where examples given of intelligent causes are clearly causes which are not supernatural. The inescapable conclusion is that when Pandas equates "intelligent" causes with non-"natural" causes, they must intend "natural" to be taken as defined something other than the antonym of "supernatural." The answer to what they mean by "natural" comes in the Teachers Note at the end of the book when Michael Ruse's definition as "unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws)" (Pandas, pg. 157) is cited. This makes sense because this would imply the opposite of an intelligent cause, which seeks to cause a break in the normal, unintelligent, purposeless processes of nature. "Intelligent" thus need not have any intonations of implying the "supernatural" in Pandas. Note: At first glance, there could potentially be concern over the last items in columns (3) and (4), where an intelligently caused object is some "creation by the gods" (pg. 77) and an intelligent cause is a "supernatural" cause "outside the universe." (pg. 127) In the former case, the authors are simply discussing historical fact that some "ancient cultures" employed these explanations which we now understand as "ancient creation myths [which] were personifications of nature." (pg. 77). As for the latter example of a "supernatural designer," the context here is one where the authors explicitly disclaim that a supernatural designer could be the conclusion of the scientific investigation in their book. The full context is familiar and speaks for itself as to why this statement could not imply that the designer actually was supernatural: "Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the progress of science. For example, the place of intelligent design in science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (Pandas, pg. 126-127, emphasis added) The authors thus explicitly make it clear when talking about a "supernatural cause," belief in such must be done "without the help of science." Given that their book is making a purely scientific treatment, it seems clear that a reasonable reader would not take a "supernatural designer" as a suggestion the book is making: "This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins. We don't propose to give final answers, nor to unveil The Truth. Our purpose, rather, is to help readers understand origins better, and to see why the data may be viewed in more than one way." (Pandas, pg. viii) | |||
This table is probably not exhaustive, but the importance of this table should not be overlooked The fact that when Pandas give examples of intelligent causes, that they are essentially always non-supernatural, shows that when the authors speak of "intelligent causes" they are not implying to students that there is a "supernatural designer." These causes are given as hypothetical examples of types of intelligent causes which help explain intelligent design theory--they are not offered as the specific causes behind life. But clearly, when they contrast "natural" with "intelligent" that are not implying that "intelligent" necessarily means "supernatural." The fact that many examples of intelligent causes are not supernatural indicates that under intelligent design theory, intelligent does not necessarily equate with supernatural. This means that Pandas does not fail the test given in Edwards v. Aguillard of proposing a "supernatural" designer.
Most examples they give of intelligently designed objects are clearly not designed by supernatural beings, but are made by non-supernatural humans. Viewing the examples the authors give of intelligent causes and intelligently designed objects, it is utterly clear that when they say "intelligent" they do not necessarily mean "supernatural." The contrast between "intelligent" and natural" must be understood in light of the many non-supernatural examples they give of intelligent causes and intelligently designed objects.
The crux of the problem is that the word "natural" can have different meanings, such that when look for the antonym of "natural," you might end up with different words. On the one hand "natural" can mean "". The antonym of this might be intelligent. But such definition of natural is very different from "within the physical realm." Thus, we must not equivocate on the meaning of "natural" such that "intelligent" is equated with "supernatural."
Most of the intelligent causes given by the authors are "natural" in the sense that they exist within the universe and do not require a supernatural realm beyond the universe. But when the authors use the word "natural" they mean it in a different sense. "Intelligent" is clearly not contrasted with "natural" to imply "supernatural." Rather, intelligent is constantly contrasted with "natural" to represent a break the normal progression of the unguided physical processes of nature.
The distinction the authors are making is not "natural" vs. "supernatural" but "unguided events we see happening around us in nature without the aid of intelligence" vs. "guided events we see happening around us as the result of intelligence." Things that don't require intelligence are said to be "natural"--they are unguided events that happen in nature. In this sense, something which is "non-natural" requires a break in the normal way the universe operates when it is unguided by intelligence. Here, "non-natural" takes on a meaning that implies nothing about the "supernatural." In essence, "natural" means something which happens normally in nature when the laws of nature are allowed to progress without any influence from an intelligent agent. There is nothing supernatural about engineers designing a car engine, but few would argue that car engines do not appear as a result of "natural" processes. Here we must read natural to mean the unguided, unbroken, lawlike processes of nature.
To crystallize this explanation "natural" is properly contrasted with "intelligent" and not with "supernatural", consider the fact that there are instances in Pandas where the authors substitute the word "natural" with "nonintelligent:" "As we have seen, many of the most important assumptions underlying the idea that life originated by nonintelligent processes do not correspond to the facts of science..." (Pandas, pg. 58, emphasis added). This comes at the end of a chapter which the authors began by noting "Many who accept intelligent design as the best theory of life origins also believe that observations show natural processes are inadequate to account for the appearance of major types of living things..." (Pandas, pg. 42, emphasis added). This implies that "natural" can be equated with "nonintelligent" and is not properly equated with supernatural.
Another clue as to what the authors mean by "intelligent" causes comes from a quote regarding archaeology: "Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes." (Pandas, pg. 127) Archaeology is typically seen as the study of human-made objects. Archaeologists around the globe look for artifacts, edifices, and tools made by past civilizations of humans. The science of archaeology is the study of human civilization. And in this very quote, the authors indicate that archaeology is used to detect intelligent causes. This unequivocally indicates that the authors believe that intelligent causes need not be supernatural. There is no equating "intelligent" with "supernatural" in this quote, unless archaeologists believe that supernatural beings created the ruins of civilizations they now study.
Finally, some explicit clarity is brought at the end of the book in the "Note to Teachers" authored by Mark Hartwig and Stephen Meyer. In this note, Hartwig and Meyer shed some light on the meaning of "natural" and how under their understanding of the word, it can be properly contrasted with an "intelligent" cause: [S]ome scientists and philosophers assert that the concept of intelligent design inherently non-scientific. According to this view, science must explain things by using natural laws--not by invoking the special action of an intelligent agent. Thus, we no longer explain the orbit of a planet by saying that an angel pushes it through the heavens. We explain it through Newton's law of universal gravitation.
In the same way, design is ruled out-of-court because it invokes an intelligent agent rather than natural laws. Philosopher of science Michael Ruse, for example, has said: Science attempts to understand this empirical world. What is the basis for this understanding? Surveying science and the history of science today, one thing that stands out: Science involves the search for order. More specifically, science looks for unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws). Things in the world do not happen in just any old way. They follow set paths, and science tries to capture this fact. There are serious problems with this view, however. One problem is that it ignores areas of scientific investigation where intelligent design is a necessarily explanatory concept. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is one example. At the time of this writing, radio telescopes are scanning the heavens, looking for artificial radio signals that differ from the random signals generated by natural objects in space. If we were to limit science to the search for "unbroken, blind, natural regulatories (laws)" we would have to say that SETI is unscientific, by definition.
Archaeology would meet the same fate. Archaeologists routinely distinguish manufactured objects (e.g. arrowheads, potsherds) from natural ones (e.g., stones), even when the differences between them are very subtle. These manufacturers objects then become important clues in reconstructing past ways of life. But if we arbitrarily assert that science explains solely by reference to natural laws, if archaeologists are prohibited from invoking an intelligent manufacturer, the whole archaeological enterprise comes to a grinding halt.
(Pandas, pg. 157) In this quote it is clear that when the authors speak of "natural" they mean exactly what Darwinist philosopher of science Michael Ruse meant: "unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws)" or thing which "follow set paths." This definition of "natural" implies processes which are continuously happening in nature, unaltered by any intelligent agent. When an intelligent agent steps in (regardless of whether that agent exists in the natural world or is "supernatural"), then there is a break in the natural process (making it not "unbroken"), there is purpose (making it not "blind"), and there is no longer a lawlike regularity at work. This is why archaeology and SETI can be properly contrasted with Ruse's sort of "natural" explanation: both represent attempts to recognize instances where an intelligent agent did something that the regular lawlike processes of nature couldn't. Intelligent design theory operates in exactly the same way: it seeks to find where natural (i.e. unbroken, "blind, natural regularities (laws)") were not at work, but intelligent causes were. There's no necessary implication that intelligent design seeks supernatural explanations any more than archaeologists or SETI researchers seek "supernatural explanations." All ID proponents seek are where the blind, natural processes of nature have stopped working, and some intelligent agent broke the chain and committed some act in the natural world. According to ID proponents, biology is full of examples of such instances where unbroken, lawlike natural processes are not the best explanation. Thus, when the contrast "natural" with "intelligent" they are not talking about the "supernatural" but rather are talking about where there hasn't been "unbroken, blind, natural regularities" because an intelligent agent has caused something to happen which normally wouldn't happen during the normal processes of nature. Pandas merely puts forth that we can identify where an agent has intervened and broken these natural processes. And there's nothing supernatural, unscientific, or unconstitutional about that.
The crux of the confusion here is that Wexler's argument fails to recognize that the word "natural" can have multiple definitions, and thus can have antonyms with very different definitions. Only by equivocating on the definition of "natural" could Wexler equate "intelligent" with "supernatural." To use Wexler's forarguments to claim that contrasting "natural" with intelligent mandates that "intelligent" means "supernatural" requires intellectual slight of hand. If you don't watch carefully, you'll fall prey to the same trick: The opposite of easy is hard.
The opposite of hard is soft.
The opposite of soft is rough.
The opposite of rough is calm.
The opposite of calm is excited.
The opposite of excited is depressed.
The opposite of depressed is happy.
The opposite of happy is sad.
Thus, it follows things which are easy are sad, but things which are hard are happy. This ludicrous logic shows how many terms can have multiple meanings, and that comparisons don't make sense unless one keeps the meaning consistent throughout the argument. If "natural cause" can mean either (1) "an unguided and unbroken cause" or a (2) "a cause within the physical universe" but then "natural causes" are being contrasted against "intelligent causes" within the physical universe, then it is clear that the proper meaning of natural in this context is option (1) "an unguided and unbroken cause." Otherwise, the opposite of a natural cause within the physical universe is an intelligent cause within the physical universe. Such an absurd result indicates that option (2) is the improper meaning of natural. Finally, the fact that many intelligent causes named in Pandas are not supernatural indicates unequivocally that intelligent should not be equated with supernatural.
| FAQ 1B. "In reality, it is an inherently religious argument or assertion made in opposition to the scientific theory of evolution." |
What does the ACLU mean when it says that ID is an "inherently religious argument?" The ACLU's precise meaning here is difficult to discern, but we can take a guess. Once again, constitutional law critic Jay Wexler's arguments may lend a hint as to what they mean: "[T]he idea that a designer created the universe in an intelligent fashion is such a central aspect of these traditional religions that it itself should be considered an inherently religious idea for constitutional purposes, regardless of whether it is accompanied by other characteristics of a traditional religion. It is true that simply acknowledging the existence of a creator does not necessarily imply that human beings have any obligations towards that creator or that the creator's existence has any ethical or other implications for human behavior. But the absence of these ancillary features does not negate the essentially religious nature of the belief in the creator in the first instance. Indeed, the idea that the universe was created by a designer is the central animating idea of the major Western theistic religious traditions." (Jay Wexler, :Darwin, Design, and Disestablishment: Teaching the Evolution Controversy in Public Schools," 56 Vand. L. Rev. 751, 817 (April, 2003))Incidentally, if Wexler is correct, then another commonly taught scientific theory--the Big Bang theory--must also be unconstitutional. The Big Bang has been held by many scientists as implying the universe had a beginning, a creation event. This is also a fundamental tenet, or animating characteristic, of many religions, and the notion of a creation event is also an inherently religious idea.
In his article, Wexler had just previously discussed a definition of religion given by Judge Adams in a 3rd Circuit case, Malnak v. Yogi. Judge Adams' analysis of the Big Bang theory in Malnak found that the theory provided answered various religious questions, but yet was an “astronomical interpretation of the universe,” implying that the scientific method it used to make its claims trumped its minimal religious significance. Similarly, ID theory might answer a question often relegated to the realm of religion, but it finds its answers is through the scientific method. Both ID and the Big Bang arrive at conclusions about profound (and often religious) questions via the scientific method, solely depending upon the scientific method. If we follow Wexler’s method to define religion by propositions which are a “core tenet of a familiar and traditional religious belief system,” neither the Big Bang nor ID theory may be taught in schools as scientific theories. The fact that ID may have “religious implications” is immaterial. If the Big Bang, an established theory of cosmology and astrophysics cannot be taught in science classes, a test such as Wexler’s leads to unacceptable results.
If the ACLU has arguments in mind akin to those of Wexler, then the "inherently religious idea" test must fail as a model for determining what should be taught about origins because it clearly leads to unacceptable results.
It is also possible that the ACLU derived its "inherently religious" language from McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education: "The idea of sudden creation from nothing, or creation ex nihilo, is an inherently religious concept." (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1266 (W.D. Ark. 1982) (also cited in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 600, n2 (Justices Powell and O'Connor, concurring)) However, it is clear that creation ex nihilo is not the mandate nor even the trend in modern intelligent design theory. William Dembski writes: "Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation. A doctrine of creation presupposes not only a designer that in some manner is responsible for organizing the structure of the universe and its various parts but also a creator that is the source of being of the universe. A doctrine of creation thus invariably entails metaphysical and theological claims about a creator and the creation. Intelligent design, on the other hand, merely concerns itself with features of natural objects that reliably signal the action of an intelligence, whatever that intelligence might be. More significantly for the education curriculum, however, is that intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form. To be sure, intelligent design leaves that as a possibility. But intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as 'common descent.' (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 314)
"Intelligent design, as a scientific theory, is distinct from a theological doctrine of creation. Creation presupposes a creator who originates the world and all its materials. Intelligent design only attempts to explain the arrangement of materials within an already given world. Design theorists argue that certain arrangements of matter, especially in biological systems, clearly signal a designing intelligence.” (Dembski, The Design Revolution, pgs. 42-43) Clearly modern intelligent design does not mandate that species came into existence in their present form, much less that they were created "ex nihilo." Rather, intelligent design takes the matter in the world as a given and there is no need to invoke miraculous "creation out of nothing." Intelligent design thus simply seeks to understand where objects in nature were designed. There is never any need to invoke "creation out of nothing."
While it is tough to tell exactly what the ACLU means by "inherently religious," it is not difficult to show that ID is not easily characterized as an "inherently religious" argument. Dembski explains in plain terms how intelligent design is based upon scientific data, and does not have religious premises: "Intelligent design begins with data that scientists observe in the laboratory and nature, identifies in them patterns known to signal intelligent causes and thereby ascertains whether a phenomenon was designed. For design theorists, the conclusion of design constitutes an inference from data, not a deduction from religious authority." (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 42-43) Dembski's statement here would an assertion were it not for the fact that he has made extremely detailed purely scientific arguments which had absolutely no religious premises to back up this statement. Exhibit A might be his 1998 Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference where he lays out a detailed argument by which we may detect design. This technical book contains no religious arguments whatsoever, and it has formed the basis for how we may detect design when we find unlikely and specified structures in biology. But what about Pandas? When Pandas urges us to make the design inference, does it use religious arguments or scientific arguments? The best way to know is to look at Pandas itself and find out how it makes the design inference:
Pandas proclaims that it has the singular goal of presenting data which one can either interpret as supporting intelligent design and Darwinian evolution: "This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins ... From these six areas of science, we will present interpretations of the data proposed by those today who hold alternative concepts; those with a Darwinian frame of reference and those who adhere to intelligent design. We will concentrate, however, on explaining what few other textbooks do: the scientific rationale for the second concept." (Pandas, pg. viii). The question is, what is the "rationale" the authors provide? If it is based upon observations of empirical evidence, using the scientific method, then it must be judged, as they claim a "scientific rationale." But if it requires faith or divine revelation, then it must be judged an "inherently religious" rationale. "In the world around us we observe two classes of things: natural objects, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, like stars and mountains, and man-made creations, such as houses and computers. To put this in the context of origins, we see things resulting from two fundamentally different causes: natural and intelligent.
"If we didn't see it occur, how do we decide whether something resulted from natural or from intelligent causes? ...
"Walking along a beach you may be impressed by the regular pattern of ripples in the sand. The scene may be artistic but it isn't likely you would like around for an artist who might be responsible. A natural cause, you rightly conclude. But if you come across the words "John loves Mary" etched into the sand, you would know that no wave action was responsible for that. Nor would you be likely to imagine that, given enough time, grains of sand would spontaneously organize themselves so uniquely. Rather, you would look around for an intelligent cause: John...perhaps even Mary.
"What do these examples suggest? The way we decide whether a given phenomenon arises from natural or intelligent causes is from experience, refined as we mature and are exposed to more and more examples. Through this process, our experience grows into a collection of uniform observations, things we learn to count on. If experience has shown that a certain class of phenomena results from intelligent cause and then we encounter something new but similar, we conclude its origin also to be from an intelligent cause." (Pandas, pg. viii-ix)
There it is. That's it. That's how intelligent design is inferred, according to the authors of Pandas. There is clearly no reference to creation ex nihilo, and many of the examples of intelligent design given include intelligent agents arranging pre-existent matter into some shape or form. Here it is in 2 simple steps: (1) Observe the products of intelligent agency
(2) Look for those same products in nature. William Dembski and Michael Behe have later taken this sort of logic and ran with it so as to clearly elucidate the type of informational complexity which experience teaches we normally recognize to be the result of intelligent design. Behe called it "irreducible complexity," and then Dembski elaborated upon Behe's notions to develop "specified complexity" as a rigorous and reliable indicator of intelligent agency.
The basic rationale in Pandas for detecting is wholly experience, and observation-based, and rooted in the scientific method. It is not "inherently religious" but rather "inherently scientific." According to authorities in mainstream science, this would seem to qualify their argument as eminently scientific: Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not a part of science…The statements of science are those that emerge from the application of human intelligence to data obtained from observation and experiment. (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) The rationale offered in Pandas is to observe the natural world to understand the products of intelligent agency. Experiment can then be performed upon natural objects to determine if those products are present. Here is an example of Pandas' rationale for detecting design applied: "It has been discovered that the structure of information in living systems is mathematically identical to that of written language. Since both written language and DNA have that telltale property of information carried along by specific sequences of 'words,' and since intelligence is known to produce written language, is it not reasonable to identify the cause of the DNA's information as an intelligence too? ... [T]he experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes." (Pandas, pg. 57-58). In this example, the authors use a clear methodology: first they discuss observations of intelligent agents at work. This leads to an understanding of the type of information intelligent agents tend to produce, often manifested as a language-based code. Experiments on living cells then found a very similar form of a code embedded with meaning--a "language"--in our DNA). Thus, the authors of Pandas argue that this provides a good indication that the DNA machinery was designed. This observation + experiment methodology is exactly what the National Academy of Sciences ("NAS") states is at the heart of science. Furthermore, there are no religious premises in this argument. You may disagree with their conclusions, but there is no disagreeing that their methodology is fundamentally scientific and non-religious in nature.
The NAS has stated that a primary goal of science is to understand nature, where "understanding" means "relating one natural phenomena to another and recognizing the causes and effects of phenomena." (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) Progress in science consists of the development of better explanations for the causes of natural phenomena. (Teaching About Evolution And The Nature of Science (National Academy of Press, 1998)) Intelligent design theory as it is posed in Pandas simply offers a cause for the natural phenomena of language in the cell, through another phenomena we understand by observations of the natural world--intelligence.
To conclude with a quote from Pandas: "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause." (Pandas, pg. 7, emphasis added) There is nothing "inherently religious" about this argument. There appears to be nothing to the claim that the argument for design as it is made in Pandas is "inherently religious."
| FAQ 1C. "It is a variant of so-called creation science, which maintains that species originated through abrupt appearance in complex form." |
Firstly, it should be noted that as far as post-Pandas mainstream ID-theory is concerned, many ID-proponents accept common descent of the species, but simply question if Darwinian evolution was the mechanism of that descent. Leading ID theorist Michael Behe is a prime example of a scientist with such a viewpoint, as he writes: [Eugenie] Scott refers to me as an intelligent design “creationist,” even though I clearly write in my book “Darwin's Black Box” (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think evolution occurred, but was guided by God. (Michael J. Behe, “Intelligent Design Is Not Creationism,” Science, Published E-Letter Responses for Scott, 288 (5467):813-815 (July 30, 2000), sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/288/5467/813#165 (last visited October 9, 2004)) Behe goes to great lengths in his book Darwin's Black Box to argue that establishing common descent is very different from establishing that non-intelligent forces created all biological structures. Behe envisions that a designer could work within common descent to design various biological structures. Modern ID proponents go out-of-their-way to explicitly not define the theory as the rejection of common descent. This argument thus bears little relevance to modern ID theory.
Nonetheless, it is true that at many places the authors of Pandas question common descent, and an analysis should be made to determine if the concepts in Pandas regarding the origin of species are somehow unconstitutional to teach.
To reiterate, the reason ACLU wants people to view intelligent design as a new breed of creationism because creationism is viewed by many as having been declared unconstitutional to teach by the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. Assuming that Pandas does reject common descent (which it does), the question then becomes, is rejecting common descent relevant to the question of whether or not intelligent design is creationism, and unconstitutional?
As it turns out the phraseology of "abrupt appearance in complex form" is directly out of Edwards v. Aguillard: "The affidavits define creation science as 'origin through abrupt appearance in complex form' and allege that such a viewpoint constitutes a true scientific theory." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 595). It is thus clear that the ACLU is again attempting to imply intelligent design is comparable to the creationism of Edwards v. Aguillard. As far as constitutional analysis is concerned, this comparison is only relevant insofar as the Supreme Court declared that teaching "abrupt appearance in complex form" was unconstitutional. But when the Supreme Court found that creationism was a religious viewpoint, their reasons had nothing to do with "abrupt appearance in complex form." Rather, the Court stated: "The legislative history therefore reveals that the term 'creation science,' as contemplated by the legislature that adopted this Act, embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 591-592) In a footnote, Supreme Court observed that the experts for creation science had explicitly characterized creation science as requiring a supernatural creator, stating that "Creation ... requires the direct involvement of a supernatural intelligence" and "everything was created by some intelligence or power external to the universe." (Edwards, 482 U.S. at 592, footnote 12). Creation scientists may have defined their own theory as the "abrupt appearance in complex form" but when the Supreme Court analyzed what had been done, they apparently only cared about the fact that so many of the experts on creation - science had specifically stated that it required a "supernatural" being. The Supreme Court didn't seem care at all about "abrupt appearance in complex form" in their constitutional analysis.
In the present case, with regards to constitutional analysis, the key component of whether or not the theory proposes something "supernatural" what matters most. The ACLU can compare creation - science to intelligent design theory all it wants. The observance that species appear abruptly is nothing new--even to evolutionist paleontologists (all emphases on the word "abrupt" are added): "Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group. Thus, it has seldom been possible to piece together ancestor-dependent sequences from the fossil record that show gradual, smooth transitions between species."
(Hickman, C.P. [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington], L.S. Roberts [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Texas Tech University], and F.M. Hickman. 1988. Integrated Principles of Zoology. Times Mirror/Moseby College Publishing, St. Louis, MO. 939 pp.; (pg. 866))
"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism ... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."
(Mayr, E., 1991, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, p. 138)
"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change. All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."
(Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, 86, June-July, 1977, pp. 22, 24.)
"The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt."
(Wesson, R., 1991, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45)
"Phyla appear abruptly in the fossil record without intermediates to link them to their putative ancestors. This pattern presumably reflects derivation of most or all phyla from small, soft-bodied ancestors that had virtually no potential for fossilization. However, most classes and orders of durably skeletonized marine animals also appear abruptly, without obvious linkage to their durably skeletonized antecedents (although see Paul and Smith [1984])."
(Erwin D.H., Valentine J.W. & Sepkoski J.J., "A Comparative Study of Diversification Events: The Early Paleozoic Versus the Mesozoic," Evolution, Vol. 41, No. 6, p1178) Of course these authors are all evolutionists, and most would probably understand the "abrupt" appearance of species as the result of the fact that the evolution of the species took place in a relatively small population over a relatively short geological timescale where the chances of the "intermediate" stages being preserved as a fossil was simply too small to record the actual transition as it took place. Thus, punctuated equilibria theory where evolution proceeds by oft-unfossilized speciation events remains a common explanation for the apparent "abrupt" appearance of species. Nonetheless, they have a scientific rationale for why the species appear "abruptly"--because they originated during a speciation event. Similarly, intelligent design proponents have a non-religious rationale for why some species originate abruptly: because an intelligent agent manipulated the genetic code to produce a new species. Observing that "species originated through abrupt appearance in complex form" is surely not a religious claim, and it is not even altogether inconsistent with the sort of observations made by evolutionist paleontologists.
But what exactly does Pandas say with regards to the origin of species in the fossil record? Do their explanations of how the fossil record speaks to the origin of species make any statements which might establish religion? Here's an excellent representative quote from Pandas on their interpretation of the fossil record: "The intelligent design hypothesis is in agreement with the face value interpretation and accepts the taps as a generally true reflection of biology and natural history. A growing number of scientists who study the fossil record are concluding that the structural differences between the major types of organisms reflect life as it was for that era. This view proposes that only the long-held expectations of Darwinian theory cause us to refer to the in-between areas as gaps. If this is so, the major different types of living organisms do not have a common ancestry. Such a conclusions is more consistent with currently known fossil data than any of the evolutionary models."
(Pandas, pg. 98) The authors of Pandas are simply asserting that when there are transitionless jumps between species, the jump is not just an artifact of the fossil record, or the result of some otherwise hidden or cryptic speciation event, but rather the jumps can be taken at face value: they indicate that there never really was a string of organisms transitioning from one form into another. Pandas thus finds that this could be evidence where an intelligent agent rapidly designed some new taxa. In any case, there is nothing religious about this argument--it uses normal cause-and-effect logic to determine what the best cause for these "gaps" might be.
Regardless, the brand of intelligent design theory found in Pandas might fit well with a definition stating that "species originated through abrupt appearance in complex form" but as far as constitutional concerns are concerned, this is irrelevant. The U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard was confronted with this very definition of creation - science and the Court majority completely ignored this characteristic of creation - science in its analysis of whether or not creationism was religion. What the Court cared about most (and almost singularly) was whether or not the theory taught that there was a supernatural designer, because that is a religious concept. The Court did not care about "abrupt appearance." Indeed, given the fact that many mainstream evolutionist scientists agree that species tend to appear abruptly, it appears that this aspect of intelligent design would contribute little, if anything, to a court's analysis of intelligent design.
What the ACLU wants people to think is that intelligent design is a form of creation ex nihilo, but again, there is no indication of such from Pandas and modern ID proponents specifically have explained why ID is not necessarily creation ex nihilo.
| FAQ 1D. "Like creation science, the concept of intelligent design was advanced to provide support for the religious view known as creationism -- that man and other species were specially created by God and did not evolve from lower life forms." |
It should be reiterated that Pandas explicitly states that "the concept of design implies absolutely nothing about beliefs and normally associated with Christian fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of the Christian God. All it implies is that life had an intelligent source." (Pandas, pg. 161) It is thus difficult to characterize intelligent design as implying that "God" created man when the book explicitly disclaims that this is the necessary implication of intelligent design.
Nonetheless, this statement from the ACLU gets at the question of motives--why did the authors of Pandas write the book and why are they interested in intelligent design? Are the authors simply trying to provide epistemological support for their worldview? We could argue all day about why the authors wrote the book and perhaps, short of a mind probe, never know for sure. However, there is a solution, because in science, it is evidence that matters--not motives. Attacking motives makes a nice rhetorical tactic that scores short term gains, but at the end of the day it is science that wins out. The mark of a true scientist is one who can follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of one's personal preferences or biases. If the evidence leads to design, then it matters not if some scientists like it, and some don't. Indeed, noted atheist Anthony Flew recently found that the evidence leads towards design, but few would argue that he believes as such because he is trying to prove the religious view that God created humans. Indeed, Flew apparently remains a religious agnostic after himself becoming convinced that intelligent design is the best explanation for life.
However, if motives are to be attacked, it should be noted that Darwinian evolution itself does not have such a spotless history. Cornelius Hunter recognizes that Darwin himself proposed his theory because he wanted to support the religious view that God did not create the natural evil found in the world: Darwin constructed his theory of evolution to explain the quandaries of the natural world. He believed that God could not be responsible for nature's carnage and inefficiency, so he proposed a purely naturalistic explanation. (Cornelius Hunter, Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, pg. 173) In this quote from Darwin himself, Hunter finds that Darwin found natural selection to be the perfect solution for why a benevolent God would permit natural suffering: "A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient. It revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one, and the abundant presence of suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have developed through variation and natural selection." (Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company), pg. 90 as quoted in Cornelius Hunter's Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, pg. 18) This quote from Darwin makes it clear that he thinks that suffering provides the theological imperative that some natural force (i.e. natural selection)--not God's divine creation--was responsible for life. Darwin's motive in expounding his theory thus came from an internal desire to explain that God was NOT directly responsible for the natural suffering he saw in the world. If this does not constitute a theological motive, what does? Yet few modern evolutionists today trouble themselves with Darwin's philosophical and theological motivations, because, after all, they believe the evidence confirmed his theory. And this is rightly so, because at the end of the day, in science, evidence is all that matters--not motivations. Motivations just make nice talking points when you're on TV.
Where motives do matter is with regards to the actions of the Dover school board, and whether they can pass the "purpose" prong of the Lemon test which requires that "statute must have a secular legislative purpose" (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. at 612-13.) This is of course a question of fact which the judge (and perhaps subsequent appellate courts) will have to decide in this case. But the motives of the Dover School Board have nothing to do necessarily with the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design theory in general or even necessarily with teaching out of Pandas. This same sort of reasoning is what led Eugenie Scott to note that Edwards v. Aguillard may not have ruled that teaching creationism was unconstitutional, because the U.S. Supreme Court merely ruled that the Louisiana legislators lacked a secular purpose in teaching it. (See Eugenie C. Scott, “Creationism Lives,” Nature 329:282, Sept. 24, 1987. -- Nonetheless, many lower courts have effectively intepreted Edwards as stating that creationism was religion and unconstitutional to teach.)
Back to the ACLU ID FAQ Response Main Navigation Menu
Note:
This musing is merely a commentary on the "ACLU's 'Intelligent Design' FAQ" as found on the ACLU website. While the ACLU ID FAQ mentions the current case over teaching intelligent design theory in Dover, Pennsylvania, I am not a lawyer and this commentary is not intended to be legal advice for anyone. This is simply my thoughts about the claims made by the ACLU in its ID FAQ on their website. Some of their claims, and thus some of my commentary relates to case law, but much of this discussion is also completely unrelated to legal issues. A full legal discussion about whether or not it is constitutional to teach intelligent design would go into much more depth than the commentary made here. This is not intended to fully or adequately discuss the general question of whether or not it is constitutional to teach intelligent design theory. My purpose here is simply to respond to the various sorts of claims made by the ACLU in its ID FAQ. If readers have further questions about the author's opinion, they are invited to contact the author at [email protected].
