A movement rather than a school of thought—their representatives come from very broad and diverse backgrounds—opposed to darwinism and argues for an intelligent agent (whether it is be identified with the Christian God or not is usually left unsaid) behind creation. Their starting point is that some organs, such as the eye or the flagellum (the tiny whip-like structures on protozoans that give them locomotion) are so "irreducibly complex" that they could not have been accomplished by chance mutation and natural selection. The most vocal proponents of ID include Michael Behe, Philip Johnson, William Dembski, Jonathan Swift, and John Lennox. Institutionally, The Discovery Institute in Seattle is their base.
The origin of the movement may be traced to the work of a group of scientists—Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen—who worked on the origin of the digital information encoded in the DNA in the late 1970s and early 80s, but did no have a public face until two publications were issued in the 1990s. The first was Darwin on Trial by an American lawyer, Philip Johnson, who apparently was driven to act when, during a stay in London, was confronted with the toxic writings of Richard Dawkins. The second was Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, in which he points out a number of biochemical structures and phenomena that display what he calls "irreducible complexity." This he defines as "a 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" (p39). Since then the idea of 'irreducible complexity' has been extended by others to many other biological systems. The conclusion that is drawn is that, since the origins of these systems cannot be accountable for by standard darwinian explanation, there must be intelligence behind their origins. In one sense, of course, the argument is not new. The complexity of the eye has long been an object of debate since Darwin's time.
The main 'problem' with ID, some critics say, is that it remains essentially a "gap" explanation, i.e., it argues on the basis of what science cannot now explain. The question is what if one day darwinistic researchers do find a way to explain these phenomena on a darwinistic basis? Many Christians are enthusiastic about ID, probably more are cautious and not a few dismissive of it, seeing it as simply a more sophisticated version of Paley's 'Divine Watchmaker' argument. Other critics simply shout it down claiming that it is not science but another version of "creationism" (specifically, eposodic creationism). The problem with something like ID is once it can be demonstated that the "irreducibly complexity" of the biological structures that they use as evidence for their theory is in fact not irreducible complex after all, the grounds under their feet give way some. That, unfortunately for them, is what has been happening. The flagellum, the clotting of blood and so on that have been so enthusiastically proffered as irreducibly complex has increasingly been shown to be explicable by simple darwinian mechanism.
In a sense what is irreducibly complex is relative. Most of what we now take for granted were once irreducible complex. The atom was once thought to be irreducibly complex; its very name means 'cannot be cut.' We now know that the atom is incredibly complex but it is not irreducibly so. Many of these things would have remained irreducibly complex had all of our human forebears remained content with comfortable but simplistic answers. That they are no longer so were due to those courageous and often exceptional men and women who strained themselves to finding new mental paths to understanding, paths perhaps never conceived of before. What they did is what science is really about.
Further Reading:
Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. New York: The Free Press, 2007.
William Dembski, The Design inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Mike Holderness, "Enemy at the Gates," New Scientist (8 October 2005) 47-49.
Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial. 2nd ed. Downers Grove: IVP, 1993.
Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009.
Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin's Doubt. The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. New York: HarperOne, 2013.
W. A. Dembski, ed., Darwin's Nemesis: Philip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006.
J. Kushiner and W. A. Dembski, eds., Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001.
Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution. Do We Have to Choose? Oxford/Grand Rapids: Monarch Books, 2008.
Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies. Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. See esp., pp.225-64.
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