Eric Ryan Telfer, "Who Designed the Designer?: Some Comments regarding Christianity and Various Theories of Intelligent Design"

Who Designed the Designer?: Some Comments regarding Christianity and Various Theories of Intelligent Design

by Eric Ryan Telfer

A common question of non-design advocates and atheists alike is: "Who Designed the Designer?" or "Who created the Creator?" Here I make some basic comments on these questions, first with respect to Christianity and then with respect to what I shall call basic ID, which has been popularized by Dembski and Behe recently. What I mean by basic ID will become clear in the essay.

With respect to Christianity, note that such questions are usually put forth as though there is a logical problem or an evidentiary problem. But rarely do people state what the problem is, and the question itself certainly does not.

The first thing to do in such conversation is to flush out the implications. The best way to do this is to force the individual to make a positive argument or submit him to the Socratic method. If the Socratic method is not able to ‘pin his position down’, then one will simply have to force him to give a positive argument before moving too far into the conversation.

This needs to be done because we need to find out exactly what the problem is that he is trying to get at. Does he have a problem with an uncaused cause? An uncreated Creator? An undesigned designer? If so, what is it? Is it a logical problem? Is it an ontological problem? What type of problem is he getting at with the question. The question in itself does not do any work for him. He thinks he has a conundrum for us or a riddle or an unresolvable puzzle, but the question is not any of these.

The answer to the question is that no one created the creator. The Creator is uncaused and uncreated. Does he have a problem with this? What is it?

The most substantial place this question can go, when supported with other arguments, is to the question of whether God or the universe is the best candidate for a brute fact, with the opposition trying to get leverage from the principle of parsimony or economy. If it goes in this direction, he has given up on there being a problem with an uncaused cause because he generally has already admitted that the universe is an uncaused cause. So, we simply have one uncaused cause against another and must determine which fills the office best. At this level, it is not clear that the principle of parsimony is the only principle that matters. Adequacy of the cause for an effect must be kept in mind, for example.  But even if it were the only principle, it still does not follow that the atheist would have any advantage here: the Christian offers one more level to reality, and in that sense, the Christian explanation may not be as economical, but that extra level is actually simpler than the universe taken as a whole. So, which theory really fits best with Ockham's razor, aside from other considerations? And does Ockham's razor really trump these other considerations? A discussion at this level is important. I will not enter into it here further. 

For now, we can say that the "Who created the Creator" question is, in and of itself, not doing any real work against Christian truth claims. It has to be combined with other comments to count against Christianity. So, Christians should not be concerned about this question in and of itself. It is not even a conundrum or an unresolvable problem or an insoluble problem as it stands. And it is certainly not a logical problem, though this is generally the implication.

Things are little bit different with respect to limited forms of ID, or basic ID. For basic ID is basic. It just entails intelligent causation and whatever is necessarily entailed by intelligent causation and nothing more. For example, basic ID does not speak to whether the intelligent cause is super-natural or a First Cause or a transcendent cause or uncaused cause. Basic ID stops before getting into such issues. Because of this, materialism could still be the cause of the intelligent designer *if certain things were the case*.  Basic ID, without appealing to arguments for super-natural causes or transcendent causes or to a First Cause or to an uncaused cause or to other notions of relevance is not in opposition to materialism per se. To be in opposition to materialism basic ID would have to say something more, though not much more.

However, we have to be careful here. For it also depends on how we define materialism. When we say that basic ID is not in opposition to materialism we cannot have in mind some sort of materialism which makes no room for intelligent causes *at all,* ever. For basic ID posits an intelligent agent or an intelligent cause as being responsible for certain things in the universe, including things which were thought to come into existence prior to the universe having biological life present.

But ID is not necessarily in opposition to a materialism which makes some room for intelligent agents. For instance, say there is no God and that non-intelligent forces gave rise to an intelligent agent who then created and designed biological life or some other aspect of the universe. Basic ID would be right in saying that biological life or some other aspect of the universe was created and designed by an intelligent agent. But, obviously, materialism would still be true on this account as well. For the intelligent agent was himself created by non-intelligent forces. Both basic ID and materialism, in this example, would be true at the same time, but in different respects, i.e., materialism with respect to the first intelligent agent, and intelligent design with respect to biological life as we know it.

So one has to be careful about how one speaks about such matters. And one can see that the “Who designed the designer?” question does have some relevance with respect to a limited form of ID like basic ID. There is still room for that question and the question is still appropriate so long as basic ID does not add something more to its theory.

It is important to note that other forms of the intelligent design argument may not be open to this question for they may add the extra element that is missing from the more limited intelligent design arguments like basic ID. In as much as they add one or more of these additional elements, they are not examples of basic ID (or a basic theory of ID or basic IDT). They are something more.

Also note that the 'Who designed the designer?" question does not seem to count against basic ID. It might imply that there is an infinite regress issue. But this is not a problem for basic ID per se, any more than it is a problem for any theory. A person can always ask a question about a deeper level until one hits the uncaused cause. Simply putting the question to the intelligent design theorist does not seem to do much work in and of itself, though, as we have noted, it may be appropriate as a way of pointing out that only some forms of intelligent design are opposed to materialism. Materialism, defined properly, is compatible with basic ID. And vice versa. If more is intended by the “Who designed the designer?” question, then more will have to be spelled out by the person putting the question on the table. As it stands, it does not present a special problem for basic ID, if a problem at all.