Intelligent Design Part II

Not so surprisingly, my recent article on intelligent design theory has been one of this blog's most controversial posts. Several readers have emailed me to disagree, and most of them have included a recent Charles Krauthammer column in defense of their positions.

I certainly respect Mr. Krauthammer's views, and fully agree with him on many other issues, but like many other opponents of I.D., he too dismisses the theory not on scientific grounds but because of implications.

Says Mr. Krauthammer in the crux of his argument:

Let's be clear. "Intelligent design'' may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory'' whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory'' that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species, but that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today.'' A "theory'' that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force'' that holds the atom together?

My response, however, is that despite his claims of attacking I.D.'s scientific validity, Krauthammer really only argues against the implication of divine involvement. Intelligent design is not just a filler for gaps in scientific knowledge as he claims; rather, it's a well supported theory backed by mountains of scientific evidence in fields as diverse as chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. (See my previous post on I.D. for more on this.)

Krauthammer clearly implies that scientific knowledge alone will ultimately explain everything in the universe, but this is a monumental assumption that is as self enclosed as he claims intelligent design to be. There is no set limitation on what scientific knowledge can or cannot lead to, and if the leading evidence points to a non-scientific outcome (such as anything supernatural), then so be it. Of course this is not empirically disprovable, but neither is Darwinian evolution or anything else theorized to have occurred prior to human civilization. We cannot technically prove or disprove either theory (or any other theory) of human origins; we can only examine the evidence for each position and determine the most likely possibility. Viewed within these appropriate parameters (which rightly leave out implications), intelligent design's scientific merit becomes quite apparent.