Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution

Intelligent Design advances the idea that only intelligent causes adequately account for the complex and diverse nature of life on Earth and that such complexity and diversity could not have occurred by the naturalistic mechanisms associated with Darwinian Evolution. Darwinian Evolution, on the other hand, holds that the life on Earth is the result of random events involving the mechanisms of natural selection and gene mutation, building up from the simple to the complex over great periods of time. It is the currently accepted theory of the origin and diversity of life. A judge in the USA has ruled that evolution is science because it could be tested whereas ID is not science because it is not subject to test. Like Dr James, I am uncomfortable with this declaration.

The basic hypothesis of evolution that life developed from non-living matter and evolved from simple cells to complex organisms by natural selection and gene mutation (genetic mistakes) has been extensively tested by many scientists in thousands of experiments. Despite this great effort, it is an undeniable fact that no major aspect of the evolution hypothesis involving increasing order has been experimentally verified. In particular the origin of life is still a profound mystery and in his book Evolution of Living Organisms, the world famous zoologist P Grass? declared, "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution." Even at the level of the non-living, random events do not in general increase order. Thus evolution may be science but it is so far failed science.

Consider now ID which holds that intelligence and not random events produced life in all its diversity. One level of testing of this idea is determining if there is a relationship between complexity and intelligence. It turns out that there is a direct relationship between the level of complexity of a system and the "intelligence" required to produce it so that as the system complexity increases, so too does the required "intelligence." This has in fact been demonstrated on numerous occasions over the full spectrum of human activity.

For example a team of secondary school students recently completed a system that enables the electronic detection of vehicles approaching a traffic light, a project of moderate complexity.

Primary school students will probably not have the required "intelligence" to accomplish this. As another example, the successful launching of a space mission, a project of extreme complexity, requires hundreds of highly skilled engineers and scientists. The best university engineering students are unlikely to be able to accomplish this. This direct correlation between complexity and "intelligence" where increasing complexity requires increasing "intelligence" has been observed over virtually the entire course of recorded human history.

It is therefore a very reasonable scientific deduction from this that unimaginably complex systems such as living organisms require (super) intelligence for their creation as Intelligent Design contends.

Scientific truths are not absolute truths and this is why scientific ideas must be continuously evaluated, particularly in the light of new information. I am therefore a strong advocate of exposing our high school and university students to the many contemporary scientific issues, including both Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design (see "The Design Revolution" by William Dembski), and encouraging them to engage in healthy discussion and debate. This will add greater interest to the learning process, sharpen thinking and analytical skills and generally better prepare them to contribute in modern society.

PROFESSOR STEPHAN GIFT

Faculty of Engineering, UWI

St Augustine