Intelligent Design v Intelligent Education

Reg Morrison

 

The acquisition of knowledge is a three-stage process.

The three stages consist of:

• IDEAS & DATA
• HYPOTHESES
• THEORIES

 

 

1. IDEAS and DATA

The raw material of 'knowledge'.

 

 

2. HYPOTHESES

Hypotheses are systematised collections of ideas that have not yet been fully tested, or are inherently untestable.

They are therefore not falsifiable and consequently have little value as current ‘knowledge’.

 

Some perennial examples:

Astrology

Sustainable Economic Growth

Witchcraft and voodoo

Intelligent Design

Creationism (and all other faith-based dogma)

 

 

3. THEORIES

A theory is: "a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment and is accepted as accounting for known facts" (Shorter Oxford Dictionary).

 

Examples:

Plate tectonics

Global warming

Evolution*

 

*A general definition of Evolution:

”The continuous genetic adaptation of organisms to the environment by the integrating agencies of selection, hybridisation, inbreeding and mutation”. (Macquarie Dictionary).

To this list of agencies we should now add: Conjugation (direct gene exchange between bacteria), and Symbiogenesis (the acquisition of other genomes).

 

 

It therefore follows that ideas may compete with ideas, hypotheses may compete with hypotheses, and theories may compete with other theories, but being in different categories, ideas, hypotheses and theories cannot compete with each other. Comparing a hypothesis with a theory is like comparing a drawing of an orange with a real orange: it is an unproductive waste of time.

 

Like witchcraft and astrology, 'Intelligent Design' is not underpinned by testable data. All three belief systems are therefore unfalsifiable, non-predictive and based on nothing more substantial than imagination and wishful thinking. They might entertain, but they don't feed brains that seek reliable information.

 

Conversely, Plate Tectonics, Global Warming, and the general theory of evolution are the very real fruits of a century of painstaking experimentation, assiduous data collection and continual re-testing.

 

To summarise the distinctions:

Science pivots upon data that is testable, falsifiable and predictive.

Intelligent Design hinges upon the many gaps that exist in the currently accepted evolutionary narrative, both Darwinian and genetic.

 

Examples:

1. We now know a good deal about the workings of a normal human brain. We know far less about the nature and origin of dysfunction in an incompetent or ‘diseased’ brain.

According to ID reasoning therefore, divine intelligence is best expressed in mental derangement.

 

2. Intelligent Design assumes that biological complexity represents evolutionary ‘Progress’. In fact, complexity represents increased energy requirements and a greater vulnerability to environmental change. When the next comet hits this planet, the only survivors may be ‘lower’ life such as insects and a few marine invertebrates, or perhaps only bacteria.

Complexity is NOT Progress, its just a sign of life’s middle-age spread on this incomparably fertile planet.

 

The idea that evolution Progresses is one of our species’ oldest and most dangerous delusions.

 

3. Intelligent Design also assumes that existing life forms and their biological structures represent an ‘irreducible complexity’ of such perfection that it points to the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

The facts tell a very different story.

A favourite ID argument for ‘divine design’ and ‘irreducible complexity’ is the human eye, yet it is sadly inefficient when compared to an octopus eye. All the light-sensitive cells (rods and cones) that form our retina face away from the incoming light, meanwhile our retinal blood vessels and optical nerves emerge within the eye cavity, traverse the backward-facing rods and cones, and then exit through a single, relatively large ‘blind spot’ near the centre of the retina.

 

In an octopus eye, the light receptors face the incoming light and all nerves and blood vessels exit directly through the back of the retina, so they enjoy perfect vision, with no blind spots.

In other words, the two types of eye represent similar sensory assets that have been derived from two very different evolutionary starting points. They thereby display convergent evolution.

 

Similarly, design weaknesses inherent in the human backbone contribute to such ailments as sciatica, hernias and the prolapsed uterus. Most structural engineers could build a far more practical spine if they could redesign it from the coccyx up. This clearly points to the fact that evolution is without intent and simply ‘makes do’ with whatever evolutionary equipment is readily available at the time.

 

Flawed designs like the human eye and spine reappear throughout the biota. If indeed they were divinely conceived, then their designer is a bumbling amateur.

 

The rotary motor of a bacterial flagellum is usually offered as the ultimate example of ‘irreducible complexity’. According to the standard ID argument the design of a flagellar motor, used by bacteria to swim is unique and irreducibly complex and must therefore have been intentionally designed by a ‘super-natural intelligence’. Remove any part of any component and it loses all operational validity, the argument runs. Therefore the motor cannot have evolved in stages and must have been designed and assembled during a single divine intervention.

 

As is usual with ID argument, this too, is founded on ignorance.

 

The flagellar motor of Salmonella typhimurium.

 

ABOVE: Each part of the apparatus is represented in a specific colour, with labels indicating the specific protein components it contains. The “C-ring”, the major part of rotary motor, and also the “protein export motor”, required for assembly of the structure is embedded in the cytoplasm and inner membrane. The curved purple section is the hook or “universal joint” and the yellow curved portion is the “filament”, which acts as the propellar. Hydrogen ions flow through the outer membrane and then through a channel in the inner membrane proteins FliF and FliG. This turns the C-ring turn and leads to rotation of the filament.

(Blocker et al., PNAS 2003.)

 

Very similar molecular structures do in fact exist and serve useful purposes in other bacteria. One of these, the Type III secretion system, allows some Gram negative bacteria to interact with their eukaryotic host cells in plants, humans and other animals. As shown below, this structure shares many components with bacterial flagella. It has lost (or never had) the flagellar motor, but uses the protein export system to inject proteins into host cells during direct physical contact between the two cells types.

 

Type III secretion apparatus of Shigella flexneri.

 

ABOVE: Genetic, functional and structural features that are shared with with the bacterial flagellar motor are shown by similar colouring. The apparatus is almost identical up to the termination of the needle and its tip complex. This latter structure is equivalent to the hook-filament junction proteins in the flagellum but serves here for host-cell sensing and protein injection.

(Courtesy of the Blocker laboratory, University of Bristol, UK).

 

In short, the ‘Irriducible Complexity’ argument displays the same level of ignorance and error that characterises all Intelligent Design propositons. Like Creationism, its parent proposition, ID is just another untestable hypothesis stitched together by the wishful thinking of religious extremists. Australia's youth should not be offered such mystical pap in place of real science.