Katskee caricatures Intelligent Design
When I decided on Monday to attend Richard Katskee’s Intelligent Design lecture, I had hopes of considering some concrete reasons that ID does not fit the definition of science (and reasons that evolution does). You can imagine my disappointment when the lecturer mounted an equivocal, almost entirely ad hominem attack on ID, equating its adherents with right-wing fundamentalists who believe global warming should be encouraged as part of God’s plan for Armageddon. It would seem that its proponents are also in the regular business of burning crosses into the arms of students. As an ID sympathizer who also happens to be gay, Christian and relatively liberal, I must confess that I haven’t used a branding iron lately.
I do not believe these caricatures are helpful — and they certainly do not contribute to the real debate. Katskee described ID primarily as a position that throws up the sponge on difficult naturalistic explanations and invokes a “god of the gaps”: “We don’t get it, so God must’ve done it.” ID is not falsifiable, he says, and is therefore not science. Let there be no doubt, this argument from ignorance has cropped up often in the history of science, frequently hindering its progress. But many have an interest in ID that begins with what we do know: In light of what we observe about genetic information and design, are there criteria by which we can evaluate biological systems to detect design? This question seems especially relevant in light of developments in genomics, a field of which Darwin could not have dreamed. It is possible we could find positive evidence of design, and that is exciting.
It would make no sense to avoid this question. We’ve screened space signals for hallmarks of design in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Project, and design recognition is a concept inherent in archaeology, forensics and signal processing. As Cornelius Hunter asks, what is so special about carbon-based life-forms (as opposed to inorganic machines) that exempts them from this interesting possibility? I suspect that the real reason lies in metaphysics, not science. Instead of requiring theories to be likely, it would seem that evolutionary biologists require merely that they are naturalistic.
If it’s falsifiability Katskee wants (and it is), I fail to see how evolution is any better off. Take the example of human “junk DNA,” which he posited as suggestive of evolution. Indeed, this concept has been widely used to support evolution since its birth in the early 1970s. But the dogma of junk DNA has been largely overturned. Geneticist John S. Mattick calls its history “a classic story of orthodoxy derailing objective analysis of the facts … [possibly] one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.” A myriad of papers now suggest that much of the human genome is functional. Yet no one seems to be questioning evolution over the matter — instead, the ever-amorphous theory has accommodated the paradigm shift quite easily.
This is not an isolated example. The figure placed on human/chimp DNA similarity fluctuates wildly in the literature (despite the unwavering 99 percent figure stated in the textbooks) — and as one observes the figure change over the years, one wonders what would be required to reject the evolutionary explanation. (Not to mention that similarity-based arguments rely on the assumption that, if DNA were designed, it could not be shared between organisms.) Then consider the unearthing of widespread molecular convergences — similarities between organisms that cannot be explained by common ancestry, wreaking havoc on phylogenetic trees. Evolution has found a solution: Just invoke “horizontal gene transfer” or “convergent evolution.” Darwinism also survived Kimura’s neutral theory somehow. Nothing, it would seem, can falsify it.
I am reminded of philosopher James Robert Brown’s suggestive anecdote: “We all know the story about a scientist who was asked by an assistant how the theory explained some puzzling data. ‘That’s easy,’ the scientist said, and proceeded to give an account. Later the assistant rushed anxiously back in and reported that the actual data were quite contrary to the earlier report. ‘Oh,’ said the scientist, ‘That’s even easier to explain.’”
I came to Oberlin seeking openness where my sexuality would be accepted. Now I am being marginalized in a different way. My hope for Oberlin is that it will embrace the ID question as one worthy of consideration. We are so open in so many ways; let us progress further by encouraging thoughtful — and above all, respectful — dialogue in these matters.
Originally published in The Oberlin Review.