Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

One of the big debates about evolution concerns the debate about evolution and intelligent design or ID. Evolution and ID are competing ideas how the Cosmos (including this earth) was created. The short answer is that I believe evolution is based on science while ID is based on religious belief. My understanding of ID is that it does not refer to "god". It refers to an intelligence that created the Cosmos. However, the parallels between a god and the intelligence are so great, I think that many people would say that ID involves a god. I believe that evolution is the best explanation that science can currently give. ID is a reasonable religious explanation, but it isn't a scientific explanation. Now, let's look at the long answer to the debate.

The Scientific Method

Wikipedia gives the following explanation of the Scientific Method.

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of obtaining knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses via predictions which can be derived from them. These steps must be repeatable, to guard against mistake or confusion in any particular experimenter. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. Theories, in turn, may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible, to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

The Nature of Intelligence Design

The following information about ID is taken from the ID website.

Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago..

Intelligence Design is not Scientific

Proponents of ID claim that ID is scientific. The following information is from the ID website, in answer to the question, "Is Intelligent Design a scientific theory?"

Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

Notice that that statement implies that only intelligent agents produce complex information. That implication is false. In another part of this discussion of evolution, I show that evolution can create complex information. In addition, information which is given below about the eye shows that the eye is a product of evolution and was not created as a complex organ.

Also notice that ID claims the identification of CSI is scientific, but nothing is mentioned about the use of the scientific method to determine the existence of an intelligent agent. Proponents of evolution do not deny that complex information exists in nature. They do claim that such information evolved from simpler forms. They key characteristic of ID is that intelligent agents exist, not that complexity exists in nature. I have found nothing in the ID website that shows the scientific method has found the existence of intelligent agents. Because of this, I do not believe ID is scientific.

School Curriculum

One aspect of the debate between evolution and ID is whether ID should be taught in school science classes. The answer is, to me, a straight-forward "No". I have just shown that ID does not follow the scientific method to show the existence of an intelligent agent and that ID is not science. Whether ID should be taught in school as a religious philosophy is a question individual school boards will have to answer.

The Eye

People who support creationism say the eye is a good example that supports ID. The eye is probably the most complex organ in the human and animal bodies, and proponents of ID say evolution couldn't create such a complex organ. However, in 2008, a researcher in Australia published a paper saying that fossil evidence shows the eye has evolved.

The palaeobiologist discovered that unlike all living vertebrate animals – which includes everything from the jawless lamprey fish to humans – placoderms had a different arrangement of muscles and nerves supporting the eyeball – evidence of an “intermediate stage” between the evolution of jawless and jawed vertebrates.

The researcher (Dr. Young) went on to say that

“Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don’t tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle insertions inside the eye socket are preserved – the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ.

“These extinct placoderms had the eyeball still connected to the braincase by cartilage, as in modern sharks, and a primitive eye muscle arrangement as in living jawless fish.” Dr Young said that this anatomical arrangement is different from all modern vertebrates, in which there is a consistent pattern of tiny muscles for rotating each eyeball."

This, it seems, is evidence that the eye has evolved and wasn't created as the complex organ we have today.

Future Study

Wikipedia is a good starting place for study about evolution. The article contains many links that will enable you to study various aspects of evolution. The blog, LDS Science Review, is maintained by Jared, a LDS biologist, and contains a number of articles about evolution and ID, as well as other aspects of science that parallel Mormon doctrine. Another blog that discusses evolution and ID is The Mormon Organon. That blog is maintained by Steve, a BYU biology professor.

Wikipedia is also a good starting place for study about ID and for an introduction to the Discovery Institute. In addition, there is a web site for ID.

One of the key factors in the debate about evolution and ID is DNA. Future research by scientists should give more information about this.