Mary Wakefield, "This is a fight the Designers have to lose" (2005)

This is a fight the Designers have to lose
> <span class="storyby">By Mary Wakefield<span>
> <span class="filed">(Filed: 2310/2005)

All over the world, even in the parts that consider themselves the most civilised, people love a punch-up over God. What gets us going in the West, propels us from our armchairs in search of headed stationery, is whether the Bible or Darwin tells the most convincing story about the origin of mankind. Since September, readers of this newspaper have been arguing the case for evolution, to and fro. And deep in rural America, in a tiny town in Pennsylvania, the same battle has been taking place with a little more at stake.

For nearly a month now, the teachers and parents of pupils at Dover high school have been in court arguing whether it's proper to teach children that Darwinism is deficient and put the case for a creator, or "Intelligent Designer" of the universe. Yes, say the teachers: Darwin's theory is full of holes, the children should be told. The parents say No. For them, the idea of an Intelligent Designer is tantamount to creationism and they're suing the school for violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Dover is a very small place. I've been there: one drug store, a bar and a meeting room with frosted glass windows for the Loyal Order of the Moose, but what happens there will affect the whole of America. It's a landmark case, the first legal test of the increasingly popular Intelligent Design or ID movement.

If the teachers lose, the ID lobby will fade away. If they win, it will mean a walk-on part for God in science classes nationwide. And although I'm all for God and church-going children, in the Dover case, I'm rooting for Darwin because a victory for Intelligent Design will, I'm quite sure, be disastrous for everybody, Christians and atheists alike.

At first glance, Intelligent Design seems to make a lot of sense. Unlike creationists, it's supporters don't think the world was created in six days, nor do they have any problem with the idea that species adapt over time to suit their environments. Their beef is with Darwin's "general theory" or macro-evolution: that men, mice and microbes all share a common ancestor.

Their attack has two parts. First is the argument from irreducible complexity which a biochemist, Michael Behe, put to the Dover judge last Wednesday. Behe's theory is that certain cellular structures (in particular flagella, the mini molecular motors that allow bacteria to swim) are so precisely engineered that if you were to remove or alter a single part, the whole thing would fail to function. If to remove one increment makes the whole organism useless, then how, asks Behe, can it have evolved incrementally?

The second argument focuses on the failure of the fossil record. We never find the bones of transitional species. ID supporters ask why not. And why is there a sudden wealth of fossils during the Cambrian era, around 530 million years ago? Maybe, they say, that's when the Creator placed them on earth.

Maybe. And maybe not. I see that it's exciting for Christians to think that for once God might have science on his side, but I think the teachers of Dover county and Michael Behe are playing a dangerous game. The Darwinists may not yet have all the answers, but they're getting there. The lack of fossil evidence can be halfway explained by the fact that before the Cambrian "explosion" there were far fewer predators, so no jawbones or tiny teeth to survive. The complexity argument falters a little when Darwinists point out that the component parts of a complex organism are often adaptable. They're not necessarily just suited to one specific, perfectly designed organism, but instead can be quite easily co-opted for use in other, different systems.

And here's why it seems to me that if the ID proponents win in Dover, they will at the same time shoot themselves in the foot. If you've squeezed your Intelligent Designer into the gap in the fossil record, what happens when the scientists close the gap?

Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University has just given evidence in court on behalf of the Dover parents. "Those who ask from science a final argument, an ultimate proof, an unassailable position from which the issue of God may be decided will always be disappointed," he said. Professor Miller is a Christian, but he sees that far from defending God against the secular Darwinists, the supporters of Intelligent Design are more likely to disprove Him altogether.