Evolution vs Intelligent Design

I've always been interested in this argument.  I suppose this is mostly since I've never really understood how, in the light of Mendel's peas, Darwin's finches, Peppered moths, and the thousands of experiments done each year with Drosophila (fruit flies) in high school and college courses demonstrating the mechanisms of evolution, a rational human being can deny this and say, "we were put on Earth 6,000 years ago and things haven't changed since."  I recently learned that someone whom I respect does not believe evolution is an open and shut case, as I always have.  I was eager to jump at the opportunity to learn about an intelligent design argument without traveling to the ridiculous (see below)

I got a pair of very good sources from this person, one written by William A Dembski (who has himself written several books on the merits of intelligent design), and another by Dr. Caroline Crocker, as recounted in the Washington Post (Dr. Crocker is a former university professor who taught intelligent design as an alternative to evolution and was featured in the documentary Expelled).

First I want to clear the air, because there's a lot of confusion (on both sides) on exactly what intelligent design is.  There are four distinctive camps when in comes to the origin of life.  First, there's the creationists who insist on using the Bible as a literal source of information.  I call them "Creationists." What makes them distinctive is their refusal to admit material evidence into their decision making process.  Next up, there are the Evolutionists, who refuse to admit any non-material evidence into their decision making process.  When I was a practicing Catholic, I belonged to a third camp, where God (or your divine being of choice) worked through evolution.  "Basically," I thought, "evolution is brilliant.  If I were God, I'd have totally designed evolution!"

Lastly, there's the intelligent design group.  This group really has much more merit than most people give them credit for.  They really are trying to use science to prove the divine (however counterintuitive that may seem).  In any case, let me sum up what design theorists do and what they believe

• Design theorists investigate biological and ecological systems for "signs of intelligence"
• EX: Wouldn't Mt. Rushmore look clearly "designed" if investigated by an alien species??
• A sign of intelligence must have a complexity with the following conditions:
• The complexity is contingent, and thus not necessary.
• Not readily repeatable by chance.*
• It exhibits and independently given pattern.
• It is argued that "irreducibly complex" systems are a sign of intelligence
• The Human Eye needs rods, cones, a lens, and many other parts in order to function properly.  Removal of one of these components renders it largely useless.  Keep in mind that each component is itself very complex.  (further research has shown more primitive versions of eyes, called eye spots, on single cell organisms).
• Microevolution and natural selection, in general, is NOT argued against by design theorists.
• Macroevolution and speciation IS argued against by design theorists.

Throughout all my my sources, it astounded me how few biological analogies there were to help explain the points being made.  In her lecture, Dr. Crocker explains that you can't get a new book by making a few spelling mistakes, as an analogy to help make her point that you can't get a new species by making a few errors in the DNA.  That is, "No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in the laboratory." Out of many analogies made, I'd like to address this one because it gets right down to this idea of macroevolution.

Back when books were manuscripts, they were copied, word for word, by scribes when a second copy of the manuscript was needed.  Inevitably, these scribes misspelled words or omitted passages, resulting in different versions of the same book.  There are, currently, 80 different versions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales because of this phenomenon.  Furthermore, we've found through the various genome projects that chimp DNA and human DNA are 96-99% the same.  That means that you're not really looking for a new book.  Relatively simple changes in a book can have vast changes in the story.  Think about "Harry Potter died" versus "Harry Potter lived."  This makes a huge change, and in the right spot, it can completely change the tone of the book.

The crux of this argument, at least for me, is what is taught to children in high school and college.  As those who take design theorists seriously repeatedly refute arguments, those same design theorists will come up with new arguments, floundering to find some foothold.  This means that we need to ask the question, "what belongs in a science classroom?"  Well, science, clearly.  What is science?  In latin, science is knowledge.  In the Mariam-Webster dictionary, science spans several fields, not just the familiar "a body of knowledge which has been tested using the scientific method."  So what is science?

I struggled with this question for a while before I remembered a video which I had seen this past month.  This is Simon Sinek's TED talk (which is very interesting...you should watch it):

In it, he describes his Golden Circle.  Most people approach a task in a What-How-Why fashion.  The most successful of us reorder this, and approach a task in a Why-How-What fashion.  I was asking the wrong question.  The question is not, "What is science?"  The question is, "Why do we science?"  I believe I have the answer.

The best scientists science because they want to ask questions.  The best science experiments have led us on an incredible journey of question after question after question, and always leave us with more questions than answers.  Yes, what science does is answers questions, but we do it so we can ask more questions.  Would we really be content, as a species, if we knew all the answers and had no more questions to ask?  Let's examine what a design theorist and a biologist would do if given a design schematic for a flagellum:

Design Theorist: Hmmm, very interesting diagram.  What would happen if I took out one of these parts?  It wouldn't work!  GOD DESIGNED THE FLAGELLUM.

Biologist:  Hmmm, very interesting diagram.  What would happen if I took out one of these parts?  <experiment>  It didn't work very well.  What else does this part do?  Have I seen it before?  Which gene expresses this protein?  Is there an enzyme used to make it?  Where did the enzyme come from?  Does the enzyme have any other parts?  Hey look!  Here's another bacterium which has a flagellum too!  I wonder if these parts are similar.  How would the bacteria function without the flagellum.....

Do you see the difference?  Both people are going to answer "What is a flagellum?"  They've both done the "What" of science.  But the Design Theorist hasn't done the "Why."  He stops questioning!  He's depriving us of the spirit of science that makes it such an intriguing field.  It hurts.  It pains me to think that we would stop seeking knowledge because we "know" everything.

Right now, we've stopped.  Biology touched a tricky question: "How did we get here?"  We found an answer, an answer that is supported by data and repeatable experiments.  An answer which biologists are confident enough in to say that we've answered the question.  And in the true spirit of science, the biologists have moved on to ask more questions.  Yes it's true, new hypotheses should be rigorously tested and analyzed.  But this one has been, and it has passed the tests.  Please.  Let us inspire a new generation to ask even more questions.  Let us continue our journey as a species, rise to new challenges, and find those juicy answers which give rise to the greatest questions of all.