Unintelligent Design

There are two pieces on the "cover" of Slate today on the battle over earth and life science curriculum in Kansas, and how that conflict is showing how Intelligent Design (ID) is taking creationism's place as the primary opposition to evolution.

As William Saletan outlines, ID is the lastest installment along the ironic "evolution" of creationism. First, creationism was the status quo that sought to stave off evolution. Then, creationists sought plurality: creationism alongside evolution in textbooks. Now, there is ID: a theory stating that the complexity of the earth and its life is the work of a vaguely defined "master designer," which could be a deity, a natural process, or organisms themselves.

ID proponents base their argument on gaps in the evolutionist record of earth and life history, but break from the literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 and some also support a few of evolutionists' broader claims, such as the age of the earth and even microevolution: the formation of new species through genetic mutation and natural selection.

ID, as a foe of evolution, is preferable to creationism in that it is actually based on scientific inquisition, and also avoids creationists' wilder claims, such as the earth is 6,000-some years old, fossils do not take a long time to form, the Grand Canyon was formed in hours or days, and dinosaurs co-existed with man. ID seeks to fill in what is left by evolution, and evolution, technically and perpetually a theory, is not sacrosanct, as other well-founded scientific theories have turned out to be entirely wrong (though evolution is unlikely to find this fate).

However, while there is nothing wrong with ID in form, there are serious flaws in its reasoning that for some reason go entirely unquestioned in its press coverage, even in opinion pages. The flaw lies in its central assumption that the complexity of life and the earth is evidence for some form of design: that life and earth forms and processes are far too elaborate and well-functioning to be arrived at by chance.

But aren't the complexities and detailed systems of life and the earth evidence for the opposite? What designer would have thought to put the little hairs in my nose to warm the air and catch debris? What designer would have thought of the shapes and colors of the Valley of Fire? It seems, to me at least, that the complexities of nature are evidence not of a designer, but of billions of years and countless incremental changes and trial-and-error.

UPDATE: Mikey briefly posts pro-ID. I hope he doesn't take my "Unintelligent Design" epigram personally.