Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

Darwin argued for this idea in The Origin of Species as well as in his letters.

unintelligent natural mechanism—

himself, because they think that purely mindless, materialistic processes such as natural selection and random mutations can produce the intricate designed-like structures in living organisms. In this view, natural selection and random mutation mimic the powers of a designing intelligence without themselves being intelligently directed or guided in any way.

Nor does the theory seek to insert into biology an extraneous religious concept. Intelligent design addresses a key scientific question that has long been part of evolutionary biology:

coupled with the inability of neo-Darwinian and other materialistic theories to account for salient appearances of design, would seem logically to reopen the possibility of actual (as opposed to apparent) design in the history of animal life.

Chemist Charles Thaxton (see Fig. 17.1) had recently published a book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin. His coauthors were polymer scientist and engineer Walter Bradley and geochemist Roger Olsen.

Their book received acclaim as a groundbreaking critique of current theories of chemical evolution.

There they suggested that the information-bearing properties of DNA might point to the activity of a designing intelligence—to the work of a mind, or an “intelligent cause” as they put it.8

Information does arise from minds.

paleontology often infer the occurrence of singular, nonrepeatable events and that the methods used to make such inferences could help scientists identify positive indicators of intelligent causes in the past as well.

Does it make intelligent design detectable?

characterized this mode of reasoning and distinguished it from two better-known forms, inductive and deductive reasoning.

in deductive reasoning, general rules are applied to particular facts in order to deduce specific outcomes.

In abductive reasoning, however, inferences are often made about past events or causes based ...

A1 is B. A2 is B. A3 is B. A4 is B. An is B. All A’s are B.

MAJOR PREMISE: If A has occurred, then B will follow as a matter of course.

CONCLUSION: Hence, B will follow as well.

Abductive argument:

the difference between deductive and abductive forms of inference.

MAJOR PREMISE: All men are mortal.

In an abductive argument, the minor premise affirms the consequent variable (“B”)

its conclusion infers the antecedent variable (“A”)—the variable referring to something that went before, either logically or temporally.

MAJOR PREMISE: If a mudslide occurred, we would expect to find felled trees.

MINOR PREMISE: FT.

minor premise

constitutes a formal fallacy—

This is precisely what abductive reasoning does. It provides a reason for considering that a hypothesis—and often a hypothesis about the past—might be true, even if one cannot affirm the hypothesis (or conclusion) with certainty.13

Chamberlain

developed a form of reasoning he called “the method of multiple working hypotheses.”14

He proposed that the continents had once been fused together as a single giant continent that he called “Pangea,” which later separated and drifted apart.

many geologists ridiculed Wegener’s idea.

They thought that—given the vast distances separating the continents—the matching shapes were most likely just a coincidence. Wegener’s critics dismissed his theory of continental drift as “delirious ra...

He noted that fossil forms discovered on the east coast of South America matched those on the west coast of Africa in corresponding places and sedimentary strata.

This fact seemed too coincidental to him to be explained away by chance alone. Nevertheless, other geologists attempted to explain matching fossil forms an ocean apart not as the result of the movement of the continents, but instead as the result of the migration of flora and fauna—either across oceans or over ancient land bridges.17 This introduced a third hypothesis into the mix, one that, in conjunction with the coincidence hypothesis, could explain each of the same facts that Wegener’s hypothesis could.

When ships towing sensitive magnetometers measured this “remanent magnetization,” scientists learned that the magnetization of the seafloor alternated between sections of “normal” and “reverse” polarity as the magnetometer was towed away from a mid-ocean ridge in each direction.

Peter Lipton have called this method of reasoning “inference to the best explanation.”20

Scientists often use this method when trying to explain the origin of an event or structure from the past. They compare various hypotheses to see which would, if true, best explain it.21 They then provisionally affirm the hypothesis that best explains the data as the one that is most likely to be true.

“The best explanation is the one that best explains the facts or that best explains the most facts,” begs an important question. What does it...

The most important of these criteria is “causal adequacy.” As a condition of formulating a successful explanation, historical scientists must identify causes that are known to have the power to produce the kind of effect, feature, or event in question.

Lyell argued that when scientists seek to explain events in the past, they should not invoke some unknown type of cause, the effects of which we have not observed. Instead, they should cite causes that are known from our uniform experience to have the power to produce the effect in question.22

According to Lyell, our present experience of cause and effect should guide our reasoning about the causes of past events. Darwin adopted this methodological principle as he sought to demonstrate that natural selection qualified as a vera causa, that is, a true, known, or actual cause of significant biological change.23 In other words, he sought to show that natural selection was “causally adequate” to produce the effects he was trying to explain.

THE ONLY KNOWN CAUSE

Both philosophers of science and leading historical scientists have emphasized causal adequacy as the key criterion by whi...

First,

Whether it is possible to reconstruct the past definitively or not depends upon whether there is a single cause or condition that gives rise to a present state or whether there are many possible past causes or conditions that give rise to a given present state. The diagram on the left portrays an information-destroying situation in which many past causes (or conditions) correspond to a given present state. The diagram on the right portrays an information-preserving situation in which only one past cause (or condition) corresponds to a present state. Adapted from Sober, Reconstructing the Past, 4.

Such an approach often allows historical scientists to pick out a piece of evidence (from some combination of effects) for which there is only one known (or theoretically plausible) cause, thus making it possible to establish a past cause decisively. Though this strategy involves looking at a wider class of facts than the first strategy, the logical status of the inferences involved is the same. In each case, the presence of a fact (either standing on its own or in combination with other facts) for which only one cause is known allows historical scientists to make a definitive inference about the causal history in question without committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Logically, if a postulated cause is known to be a necessary condition or cause of a given event or effect, then historical scientists can validly infer that condition or cause from the presence of the effect. If it’s true that where there is smoke there is always first fire, then the presence of smoke wafting up over a distant mountain range decisively indicates the prior presence of a fire on the other side of the ridge.

Only if the Cambrian event and animals exhibit features for which intelligent design is the only known cause may a historical scientist make a decisive inference to a past intelligent cause.

We are left with two crucial questions.

two forms: positive evidence, or indicators of what likely happened (e.g., .38 caliber shell casings on the ground and bullet wounds in a body) and negative evidence, or indicators of what could not have happened.