1. What Is Intelligent Design?
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
All truth passes through three stages:
1. Ridicule
2. Violent opposition
3. Self-evident acceptance.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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2. Chance, Necessity or Design?
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3. What Is Intelligent Design (ID)?
Evolution, Creationism, ID
History of “Intelligent Design”
Key Movers and Shakers
Irreducible Complexity
Specified Complexity
Testing for Complexity
Dembski’s Explanatory Filter
Arguments for a Designer
More examples of Design
Intelligent Design Summary
Charles Darwin
Henry Morris
Phillip Johnson
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4. The Meaning of Evolution
Artificial Selection
Plant and animal breeding
Change
Evolution of a coastline (random)
Evolution of a car (designed)
Micro-Evolution
Small variation within prescribed limits of complexity
e.g., finch beaks by mutation and natural selection
Macro-Evolution
Particles -> people
Molecular Evolution
Origin of life – assumes a mutating replicator
Only 1, 2 and 3
have been observed
4 never observed!
5 is impossible!
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5. Evolution Propositions
Claims about living organisms:
Related through common ancestry
Arose through mutations and natural selection
By means of random chance processes of nature
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6. Scientific Creationism Propositions
A sudden creation of the universe, energy and life from nothing
Mutations and natural selection lack ability to develop all living kinds from a single organism
Changes of the originally created kinds of plants and animals occur only within fixed limits
There is a separate ancestry for humans and apes
Earth’s geology can be explained by catastrophism, primarily by the occurrence of a worldwide flood
Earth and living kinds had a relatively recent beginning
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7. Intelligent Design (ID)
"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."
Source: The Discovery Institute
The leaders in the ID movement purposely do not equate the intelligent cause with God; moreover, they are agnostic on the issue of the age of the earth and of the universe
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8. Intelligent Design Propositions
Specified complexity and irreducible complexity are reliable indications of design
Biological systems exhibit specified complexity and use irreducibly complex subsystems
Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain origin of complexity
Intelligent Design constitutes the best explanation for the origin of specified complexity and irreducible complexity in biological systems
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9. Evidence for Design
Cosmology: evidence suggests the universe--including all matter, space, time, and energy--came suddenly into existence a finite time ago, contradicting the picture of an eternal and self-existing material cosmos
Physics: evidence has shown that the universe is "finely-tuned" for the existence of life, suggesting the work, as Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle puts it, "of a super-intellect”
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10. More Evidence for Design
Biology: the presence of complex and functionally integrated machines has cast doubt on Darwinian mechanisms of self-assembly
Molecular biology: the presence of information encoded along the DNA molecule has suggested the activity of a prior designing intelligence
Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin urges scientists to embrace a "materialism [that] is absolute" and to stick with "material explanations, no matter how counter intuitive."
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11. History of Intelligent Design
Greek philosophers a few 100 years before Christ
Some early church fathers in 3rd/4th centuries
William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
Watch is the product of intelligence (watchmaker), not the result of undirected natural processes
Organisms (e.g. the eye) are the product of intelligence
Purposeful design -> purposeful designer
Important sign of design is complexity
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12. Modern Intelligent Design (ID)
Began with the work of Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Michael Denton, Dean Kenyon and Phillip Johnson
Scientifically, Darwinism is an inadequate framework for biology
Philosophically, Darwinism is hopelessly entangled with naturalism
Michael Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells
Proposed positive research program wherein intelligent causes become key for understanding the diversity and complexity of life
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13. Some Influential ID Books
The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Charles Thaxton et. al. in 1984
A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton in 1986
Darwin on Trial, Phillip Johnson in 1991
Creation Hypothesis, Dean Kenyon in 1994
Reason in the Balance, Phillip Johnson in 1995
Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe in 1996
The Design Inference, William Dembski in 1999
Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells in 2000
The Design Revolution, William Dembski in 2004
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14. Can Evolution be Proved in a Courtroom?
A Lawyer’s Perspective
Phillip E. Johnson
Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law School of Law University of California, Berkeley
Published in 1991
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15. Johnson’s Critique Spreads
This 1994 collection of philosophers, physicists, astronomers, chemists, biologists, and linguists critiqued Darwinism and promoted Intelligent Design
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16. Johnson’s Influence Leads to 1996 Conference
This conference at Biola University brought scholars from around the world
The world learns of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
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17. Darwin’s Black Box
Lehigh U. biochemistry professor, Mike Behe’s 1996 book was reviewed in mainline science journals.
For the first time Darwinists only argued with his conclusions, not his facts.
CT’s 1996 Book of the Year.
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18. Irreducible Complexity
Mike Behe introduced the concept of irreducible complexity in his book, Darwin’s Black Box
Something is irreducibly complex if it is composed of two or more necessary parts
Remove one part and function is not just impaired but destroyed
A mousetrap is irreducibly complex
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19. The Mousetrap A mousetrap cannot be built by natural selection
A mousetrap is composed of five integral parts; the platform to which everything is attached, the hammer which does the dirty work, the spring which provides the force, the holding bar to keep the hammer in tension, and finally the catch to keep the holding bar in tenuous position.
Remove any one of these parts and the mousetrap is not just less efficient, it cease to function at all. All five parts are necessary. You can’t build a mousetrap by natural selection by adding one piece at a time because it has no function to select until all five parts are together.
A mousetrap cannot be built by natural selection
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20. “Irreducible Complexity”
“By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning
An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly... by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional”
Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. 39.
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21. William Dembski
Bill Dembski publishes The Design Inference in 1999 with the prestigious Cambridge University Press.
Bill has earned doctorates in philosophy and mathematics and an M.Div. from Princeton.
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22. Year 2000 Dembski publishes Intelligent Design
Major conferences at Baylor, Concordia College in Wisconsin, and Yale
Media and scientific community focus even more attention on Kansas
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23. Year 2000
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24. Intelligent Design Theory
Living organisms are too complicated to be the result of natural processes working independently
Based largely on the theories underlying Information Theory
Concerned with measuring the complexity of structures/information contained in structures
Generally concerned with two main concepts:
Irreducible complexity
Specified complexity
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25. Specified Complexity “fjbn ghtur ieiod ofjkgjbn mfkritj”
The following strings of characters illustrate the concept of Specified Complexity.
Consider the following:
Complex but unspecified:
“fjbn ghtur ieiod ofjkgjbn mfkritj”
Complex and specified:
“The state of education in America”
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26. Intelligent Design
“Intelligent Design” (ID) takes intelligence to be a separate principle, not reducible to chance and necessity
Targets evolution: life exhibits a special kind of order, not like that of a snowflake but like that of a meaningful message
Sophisticated anti-evolution
No Bible-thumping
Philosophical
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27. ID: A Separate Principle
Chance
Design
Necessity
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28. “Irreducible Complexity”
1996: Michael Behe, Lehigh biochemist. Leading ID biologist. Catholic.
Common descent OK––against Darwinian mechanism. Can’t get “irreducible complexity.”
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29. “Specified Complexity”
1998-now: William Dembski, mathematician and philosopher. Leading theorist of ID.
ID irreducible form of explanation, distinct from chance & necessity.
ID is a revolution.
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30. Books, Books, More Books Dembski has 3 books, 4+ edited books on ID
Not just biology but physics, AI, theology, morality, law, …
Broad, “information-theoretic” objections to naturalistic evolution
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31. Dembski’s claims
Both designed artifacts and organisms exhibit special order: specified complexity
Chance and necessity cannot generate Specified Complexity, or information
Intelligence is a separate principle
Blind mechanisms (like those of Darwinian evolution) cannot explain life
Artificial Intelligence is impossible
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32. How To Detect Specified Complexity
Contingency: No physical constraint; all sorts of strings can appear on the paper
Complexity: Improbable to obtain by pure chance
Specification: Can’t read it, but fits properties of a language, priorly known
DNA also a code…
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33. Testing for Design
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34. William Dembski’s Explanatory Filter
Start
William Dembski’s Explanatory Filter
Highly
probable?
Law
Yes No
Intermediate
probability?
Yes
Chance No
Specified/
Small probability?
Yes
Design No
Chance
From Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design. William A. Dembski Ed. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, P99.
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35. Is The Pattern Random Or Designed?
Probability:
=2-256
=8.6 x 10-78 =
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36. Is The Pattern Random Or Designed?
Probability:
=2-256
=8.6 x 10-78 =
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37. Arguments for a Designer
Organisms look designed for at least three reasons:
Redundancy - A Designer can engineer redundancy into a system, but chance is unlikely to do this. An example of this is the presence of degeneracy in the genetic code and other features that minimize or negate the effects of many point mutations
Excess potential - Organisms have potential that may never be used. For example, Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection, pointed out that primitive people have the capacity to do calculus when trained. Natural selection is unlikely to select for capacity that is not used
Complexity - Life exhibits a kind of complexity that it is hard to produce by processes involving chance
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38. The Likely and the Unlikely
Arguments for a Designer frequently revolve around probability. Meaningful complexity is unlikely to result from random events. Organisms are meaningfully complex. Some claim that natural selection overcomes much of this problem as, while change may be random, selection is not
Science is about predicting what is likely and what is unlikely. Everyone is in agreement that the events leading to production of living organisms are unlikely
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39. In a Long Time and Big Universe
It has been argued that given massive lengths of time and a universe to work in, the unlikely becomes likely:
“Given infinite time, or infinite opportunities, anything is possible. The large numbers proverbially furnished by astronomy, and the large time spans characteristic of geology, combine to turn topsy-turvy our everyday estimates of what is expected and what is miraculous.” Richard Dawkins (1989) The Blind Watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design. W. W. Norton and Co. New York. p139.
Dawkins says that while life looks designed, the designer was not God, but massive chance coupled with natural selection. Nature was the designer
In The Panda’s Thumb, Stephen J. Gould argues that life does not look designed
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40. More Examples of Design
Necessity/law/order
Snowflake
Crystal
Design – irreducible/specified complexity
Animal cell
Molecular motors
Human eye
Bombardier beetle
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41. Molecular Machines
Behe showed that the cell, Darwin’s Black Box, is filled with irreducibly complex molecular machines that could not be built by natural selection
David Hume criticized Paley’s watchmaker argument because it was not an exact enough analogy
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42. Molecular Machines (cont’d)
Over 100 molecular motors are now known to exist inside the cell with very specific analogies to human designed motors.
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43. Behe’s Insight
Michael Behe contends that when we look at the protein machines that run cells, there is a point at which no parts can be removed and still have a functioning machine. He called these machines “irreducibly complex” (IC)
We encounter irreducibly complex devices in everyday life. A simple mouse trap is an example of an irreducibly complex device:
Board
Spring
Staple
Hammer
Trigger
Cheese
Bait holder
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44. Evolution of Complex Organs
The Origin of Species Chapter VI "Difficulties of the Theory"
Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correcting of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
There are at least 10 types of human satellite DNA. Typically they make up % of mammals genomes. It is satelite DNA that is used in one type of DNA finger printing.
Short Interspersed Elements (SINEs) - These approximately 300 bp units of DNA are found distributed throughout the genome. An example is the human Alu sequence which occurs about 500,000 times making up 5 % of the genome in the human genome. One of the interesting properties of SINEs is that they may move about in the genome.
Long Interspersed Elements (LINEs) - are longer than SINEs (up to 7,000 bp). There are approximately 50,000 copies of the most common LINE family, L1, so this group makes up 5 % of the human genome.
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45. Evolution of the Eye
To go from nothing to an eye would be a very big jump
Darwin proposed a series of what appeared to be relatively small steps (they are still gigantic leaps) that might be able to produce an eye
Pseudogenes usually have mutations that would produce stop codons within what would normally be the coding region, thus only fragments of the protein they seem to code for would be produced if they were expressed. It is not known if pseudogenes are expressed in any way.
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46. Intelligent Design (ID)
Uses an “explanatory filter”
Necessity – did it have to happen?
Chance – did it happen by accident?
Design – did an intelligent agent cause it to happen?
ID theory focuses on what is designed without answering the questions of who, when, why and how
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47. Some ID Observations
ID confronts naturalistic philosophical underpinnings of evolutionary thinking
ID identifies presuppositions of naturalism
ID is supported by science
ID does not assume young universe
ID is not Creationism
ID does not mention the Fall
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48. Issues with Intelligent Design
ID does not attempt to explain all designs
Only certain features are designed
Does not rule out evolutionary processes
ID does not oppose an old age for the earth
ID does not acknowledge God as redeemer
ID distances itself from the problem of evil
ID movement does not identify Designer/Creator
ID divorces the Creator from creation
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49. Closing Thoughts on ID Alternative theory to Darwinian Evolution?
Alternative to Creationism?
Should it be taught in public schools?
Critical thinking is needed
Presuppositions must be stated
Church-state issue?
Academic freedom is at stake
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50. @ Dr. Heinz Lycklama

51. Thank you for your attention!
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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52. Creation Organizations
ICR – Institute for Creation Research
Books by Henry Morris (founder), e.g.
The Genesis Flood
The Genesis Record
The Modern Creation Trilogy
Acts and Facts articles on Creation
Answers in Genesis
Founded by Ken Ham
Books, seminars, articles on Creation
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53. Creation Organizations - 2
Creation Evidence Museum
Dinosaurs and human tracks
Creation Moments
Radio spots
Creation Research Society
Publication of peer-reviewed creation articles
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54. Creation Organizations - 3
Center For Scientific Creation
“In The Beginning” Book by Walt Brown, Ph.D.
Creation Science Evangelism
Videos, seminars
Discovery Institute
Intelligent Design “Think Tank”
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55. Important Books The Genesis Record, Dr. Henry Morris
The Genesis Flood, Dr. John Whitcomb & Dr. Henry Morris
The Collapse of Evolution, Scott Huse
The Lie: Evolution, Ken Ham
Refuting Evolution, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati
Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!, Dr. Duane Gish
Scientific Creationism, Dr. Henry Morris
Dinosaurs by Design, Dr. Duane Gish
Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, Dr. J.C. Sanford
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56. More Important Books The Young Earth, Dr. John Morris
Science and the Bible, Dr. Henry Morris
Tornado in a Junkyard, James Perloff
In The Beginning, Dr. Walt Brown
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton
Darwin on Trial, Dr. Phillip Johnson
Darwin’s Black Box, Dr. Michael Behe
Design Inference, Dr. William Dembski
Icons of Evolution, Dr. Jonathan Wells
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57. Yet More Important Books
The Battle for the Beginning, Dr. John MacArthur
Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey
The Design Revolution, Dr. William Demski
The Origin of Species Revisited, W. R. Bird
It Matters What We Believe, Mike Riddle
The Evolution of a Creationist, Jobe Martin
Grand Canyon (A Different View), Tom Vail
In Six Days, Dr. John Ashton
Starlight and Time, Dr. Russell Humphreys
Starlight, Time and the New Physics, Dr. John Hartnett
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