The theory of intelligent design is controversial in the scientific community, claiming that life is the result of an intelligent designer rather than chance. Scientists criticize it as unprovable and contrary to positivism, but intelligent design offers the possibility of expanding the frontiers of science with new approaches that go beyond naturalism.
In his book Intelligent Design, Dembski argues that the emergence of life is not the result of chance, but rather the intentional result of an intelligent designer. He criticizes the scientific community for rejecting theology in favor of intelligent design, which he characterizes as a science distinct from creationism. He argues that intelligent design can answer many of the questions that science is currently unable to answer, and that it offers a new window into the world.
Intelligent design can be off-putting to the average person accustomed to scientific thinking. It sounds irrational and unscientific to claim that everything is the will of God. However, if you approach intelligent design in a favorable light by weakening its arguments, you can see its essence. For example, if we assume that factor X, which is critical to the creation of life, came from intelligent alien life, then the creation of life on Earth is the result of intelligent design, not naturalistic evolution.
Unfortunately, scientists do not recognize intelligent design as science. They are unconcerned that the empirical evidence of evolution does not provide a direct explanation for the origin of life. They caricature the theory of intelligent design by claiming that it can be easily refuted by a normally educated person. The exclusionary attitude of scientists has prevented intelligent design from being discussed in academic circles and has led to its indiscriminate dissemination to the public, where it has become the center of social confusion. This confusing situation is largely due to the rigid thinking and opaque communication in the scientific community. Science is constantly evolving and growing with new theories and hypotheses, but sometimes it seems to be stuck in the old paradigm and rejects new approaches. This attitude can undermine the very purpose of science.
Scientists criticize intelligent design as not being science because it cannot be proven or disproved. They argue that the hypothesis that “element X of life came from extraterrestrial life” cannot be proven or disproven, and therefore cannot be a scientific fact. This argument, which echoes Karl Popper’s position, sounds convincing at first glance, but it is not a meaningful criticism. In the modern world, science has already gone beyond what can be defined as disprovability. The current mainstream theories in physics, such as superstring theory and the multiverse theory, cannot be observed, proven, or disproved. The only thing that supports superstring theory is the belief that its mathematical expressions in 11 dimensions are beautiful and therefore close to the truth. If scientists were to reject intelligent design on the grounds of unprovability, they would have to reject much of metaphysical modern science by the same standard.
Some scientists argue that intelligent design is unacceptable because of its negative social and educational implications. The implication is that publicizing and teaching intelligent design as part of science would cause a lot of social and educational disruption. However, this argument is overly extreme. They are overly fearful of what will happen if intelligent design is discussed. Freud’s revelations about the unconscious could negate or threaten reason itself, the foundation of modern civilization. Yet we study Freud in school, and to date, we have not heard of any theories that modern civilization has been threatened by Freud. Examples of this can be found in the scientific community as well. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle set fundamental limits to observation, which dealt a blow to the traditional scientific community based on rigorous observation. However, science remains the mainstream foundation of modern society, and we have never heard of science neglecting or rejecting observation because of the uncertainty principle. On the contrary, quantum mechanics has enriched the outer reaches of science in places where conventional science has not.
Scientists believe that intelligent design theory does nothing to advance science because it denies naturalism, the basic paradigm of science. They believe that underlying all science is the universal, common-sense philosophy of naturalism. But this is not correct. Science never evolved by looking for causes or answers in nature. Rather, science has assumed idealized situations or created concepts that don’t exist in order to simplify difficult-to-interpret phenomena and enrich discussions. The tachyon, a hypothetical faster-than-light particle, and the phonon, a hypothetical medium between particles, were never conceived from a naturalistic perspective. The classic classical mechanics of force and energy were also not established by naturalism. In his study of energy, Newton did not think it was conserved, but rather dissipated by friction, and he believed that God took care of lost energy. Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, was ironically not a naturalist.
Scientists criticize intelligent design based on positivistic evidence. They argue that life arose naturally based on the empirical facts that many forms of life have survived and died in the past, that fossils from older strata show simpler forms of life, and that many forms of life are still evolving today. However, this complacent response has helped intelligent design gain traction with the public. Intelligent designers, including Dembski, criticize that current evolution cannot provide any evidence for the spontaneous emergence of life in the past, and how to explain the impossible odds of human evolution, which are in the hundreds of millions of parts per billion. Scientists tend to relegate their criticisms to religion and philosophy. Empirical results from experimental evidence can certainly be a good source of evidence, but they are not conclusive. A classic example of positivism is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen interpretation convinced scientists with empirical evidence and pushed their various contradictions into the realm of philosophy, becoming the mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics. However, it has remained an “interpretation” that resolves nothing more than that, and quantum mechanics has become a metaphysical and complex discipline with many different interpretations.
The debate over intelligent design is ultimately connected to the question of what science is. There is a lot of debate about what the scope of science can be when approached from a philosophy of science perspective. But there’s no need to be uncomfortable with controversy. Science can go beyond simple deductive reasoning and encompass more than we realize. One of two things can happen to intelligent design once it is accepted into the realm of science. Either it will be rejected as a scientific theory and die out, or it will be accepted as part of science and contribute to the broader definition of science. Either way, there is no reason for the discipline of science to suffer. It would be far wiser for scientists to keep intelligent design under their control than to leave it to the judgment of the public.
