Anonymous - Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe

WETHERSFIELD INSTITUTE

Proceedings, 1999

SCIENCE AND EVIDENCE FOR
DESIGN IN THE UNIVERSE

Papers Presented at a Conference
Sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute
New York City, September 25, 1999

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

Cover image: Ring around a galaxy
Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScl/NASA)

2000 Homeland Foundation
All rights reserved
Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
ISBN 978-0-89870-809-7
Library of Congress control number 00-102374
Printed in the United States of America

WETHERSFIELD INSTITUTE
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The purpose of the Wethersfield Institute is to promote a clear understanding of Catholic teaching and practice and to explore the cultural and intellectual dimensions of the Catholic Faith. The Institute does so in practical ways that include seminars, colloquies and conferences especially as they pursue our goals on a scientific and scholarly level. The Institute publishes its proceedings.

It is also interested in projects that advance those subjects. The Institute usually sponsors them directly, but also joins with accredited agencies that share our interests.

: The Third Mode of Explanation: Detecting Evidence of Intelligent Design in the Sciences

: Evidence for Design in Physic: and Biology: From the Origin of the Universe to the Origin of Life

: Evidence for Design at the Foundation of Life

: Answering Scientific Criticisms of Intelligent Design

: The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories

: Fruitful Interchange or Polite Chitchat?
The Dialogue Between Science and Theology

MICHAEL J. BEHE received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (1978) and is Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a fellow of the Discovery Institute. His book, Darwins Black Box (The Free Press, 1996), discusses the implications for evolutionary theory of what he calls irreducibly complex biochemical systems.

WILLIAM A. DEMBSKI holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His most recent publications include the books Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 1999) and The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He is director of the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University and is a fellow of the Discovery Institute.

STEPHEN C. MEYER received his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 1991 for a dissertation on origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. He is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College and the director of the Discovery Institutes Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. He has contributed to a number of books and is currently writing a book developing a scientific theory of biological design.

For more than two thousand yearsmany leading western thinkers, from Plato to Aquinas to Newtonargued that the natural world manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligencea Creator. Yet during the late nineteenth century many scientists began to reject this idea. Charles Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection, and other materialistic theories of the origin of life, the solar system, and the universe, portrayed nature as a self-creating and self-existent machineone that does not show any evidence of design by a directing agency or intelligence.

Of course, even Darwinists have long acknowledged that biological organisms do appear to be designed. As Richard Dawkins, a leading Darwinian spokesman, has said, Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Nevertheless, Darwinists have insisted that this appearance is illusory, since the mechanism of natural selection can explain the observed complexity of living things. Thus, for most of the twentieth century, science seemed to undermine the design argument and to provide little if any support for classical theistic belief.

This situation has begun to change. Over the last fifty years, discoveries, not only in biology, but also in physics, astronomy, and cosmology, suggest that life and the universe manifest signs of real, not just apparent, design. Further, many evolutionary biologists have acknowledged fundamental problems with the Darwinian mechanism as an explanation for the complexity and apparent design of living organisms. As a result of both these developments, an increasing number of scientists have rejected the idea that life and the universe merely appear designed. Instead, many scientists and philosophers now think the universe and life appear designed because they really were.

Many of these scientists advocate an alternative theory of biological and cosmological origins known as the theory of intelligent design , or, simply, design theory. Though this theory has a rich intellectual tradition, its advocates have staked out a fresh and distinctive position within the contemporary origins debate. Unlike neo-Darwinists and other evolutionary theorists, design theorists hold that intelligent causes rather than undirected natural causes best explain many features of life and the universe. Unlike many creationists, design theorists do not necessarily believe that the earth is young, neither do they base their theories upon scriptural texts. Unlike many theistic evolutionists who think design can only be seen through the eyes of faith, design theorists believe that scientific evidence actually points to intelligent designthat intelligent design is, in their words, empirically detectable.

In September of 1999, the Wethersfield Institute invited three leading proponentsWilliam Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Michael Beheof the contemporary theory of intelligent design to Manhattan to present their case before a conference entitled Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe. This volume makes public the essays upon which their presentations were based. An appendix includes three other essays by these same authors. These essays explore other aspects of the debate about intelligent design and respond to various scientific and philosophical criticisms of their theory.

The first essay by mathematician and probability theorist William A. Dembski provides readers with a general theory of intelligent design detection. Dembski notes, first, that good reasoning often leads people to infer the activity of intelligent agents from the effects that they leave behind. He uses a variety of examplesfrom archeology, cryptography, and fraud detectionto show that humans routinely infer that intelligence played a role in the origin of certain kinds of artifacts or events. Dembskis work shows why by making explicit the criteria that we use to make such inferences. He argues that whenever we observe events that are highly improbable (i.e., complex) and specified, we make (well justified) design inferences. His work in effect establishes a scientific method of detecting the activity of intelligence.

In chapter two, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer uses Dembskis method to examine evidence from the natural world. He first examines the so-called fine-tuning of the laws of physics. He shows that this feature of the universe exemplifies Dembskis criteria of design. For this and other reasons, he argues that intelligent design best explains the origin of the fine-tuning evidence. He then makes a similar argument about the origin of the information necessary to build a living cell. He notes that studies of the genetic molecule DNA reveal that it functions in much the same way as a computer code or written text. Accordingly, he shows that DNA possesses both the complexity and specificity of function that, according to Dembskis theory, indicate intelligent design. He concludes that the information content of DNAlike the information in a computer program or an ancient scrollhad an intelligent source.