Refuting the "complexity requires a designer" argument

[gatorboymike]

By now it has become nauseatingly evident that Intelligent Design IS creationism, and that the endgame of ID institutions like the Discovery Institute is the undermining of the scientific method and the reinstatement of religious creationism in all areas of public education like we had up until the mid-20th century. And this is according to internal documents (like the Wedge Strategy) which were unintentionally leaked, and other evidence like the fact that the ID-containing science textbooks they created are identical, word for word (just replacing "creationism" with "Intelligent Design" and "God" with "an intelligent agent"), to the creationism-containing science textbooks they tried to force into public schools until "creation science" was struck down by the Supreme Court.

Of course, and possibly even to these people's credit, ID has been the only incarnation of creationism to attempt to incorporate science into itself, which is why it was able to deceive so many people into thinking it actually was a science. What differentiates ID from all other previous strains of creationism is that it has a pseudo-scientific basis rather than just "God says I'm right, now shut up and bend over." And that basis is the complexity argument. That is, "X is complex, so X could not have arisen by chance, therefore X must have been constructed all at once, in its present form, by someone or something that knew what it was doing." Michael Behe, the Chuck Darwin of creationism, applied this to various structures in biology, such as the bacterial flagellum, the camera-like eye and the blood-clotting system. To these he applied the term "irreducible complexity," which means that the structure requires multiple parts--all of which are useless on their own or in smaller subsets--to work, and if any of them were missing, the structure wouldn't work, therefore it must have popped into being all at once through the actions of a designer.

This sounds plausible enough to a layman, but the reason it is pseudo-scientific and not actually scientific is because it is a logical fallacy known as argument from incredulity. That is, "I don't personally understand how X could be true, so X must be false." This is the exact same argument that a lot of unenlightened creationists use when dismissing evolutionary theory: they don't understand it, so it must be wrong. And because the talking heads they listen to have consciously and deliberately constructed a false dichotomy that you can't be a Christian without believing in creationism, and you can't accept evolutionary theory without being an atheist, they assume creationism is the only alternative, and disproving the one proves the other (another logical fallacy). Of course, they don't understand creationism either. They don't understand how God supposedly created everything, what methods he used, what tools he used, etc. In fact, it would be impossible to understand such things because of their supernatural nature, and positing a supernatural explanation for natural phenomena is nothing but a way to stop people from thinking and asking questions.

Even in televised interviews, Behe can be heard using arguments from incredulity in regard to his supposed examples of irreducible complexity. He always says things like, "Look at this, there's no way it could have evolved!" Of course, every example of irreducible complexity ever presented has been disproven to the point where irreducible complexity now serves as more compelling evidence FOR evolution, including the brutal refutation of Behe's flagellum argument during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005, which made him look like the falsehood-mongering charlatan and pretender to knowledge that he truly is.

Complexity is a relative, unscientific term. Creationist Christians seem to have serious trouble understanding the difference between the everyday usage of a word and the scientific usage of the same word. This is why they frequently refer to evolution as "ONLY a theory," not understanding that while everyday usage of the word theory often does refer to a baseless guess (such as, "I have a theory that Steve stole my sandwich"), a scientific theory is a model of a process that is supported by a considerable base of evidence and facts. In other words, the theory of evolution explains the fact of evolution, the theory is greater than the fact, and even if the theory was disproven, it would not disprove the fact, and a new theory would have to be constructed to explain the fact. The same is true of the concept of complexity. You could say that an empty bucket is not complex, but at the molecular level, the bucket is made up of substances that are complex, and at the atomic level, there is a highly complex system of interactions between the atoms in those molecules, and at the subatomic level, there is an even more complex system of interactions between subatomic particles. You could say that the eye or the flagellum is complex, and speaking unscientifically, you would be right. But the entire human body is more complex than the eye, the sun is more complex than the human body, and the universe is more complex than the sun. There are very few things that cannot described as complex in this manner. But this manner has no scientific integrity. Of course, snowflakes are complex and each one is unique, but we are clearly able to identify natural processes that produce them. There are other examples we have seen in nature, but clearly, complex things can arise without outside direction.

To apply the complexity argument in a scientific manner, you would have to do the following things:
1. Define exactly, precisely and unambiguously what the term complexity means, including its units of measurement.
2. Define exactly, precisely and unambiguously how the complexity of something is measured, describing every step of the process in fine detail.
3. Define a constant value for the complexity of something such that any structure whose complexity equals or exceeds that value could not have arisen by natural means, but any structure whose complexity is less than that value could have arisen by natural means.
4. Using the process defined previously, measure the complexity of several disparate and unrelated biological structures. Explain what you do in exact, precise and unambiguous detail such that any biologist, anywhere, any time, could replicate your experiment and get the exact same results.
5. Demonstrate that at least some of these structures' complexity values exceed the design constant.
6. Document everything you have done and all your conclusions thus far, and submit the paper to several prestigious scientific journals.
7. If your paper survives review by experts to whom the journals submit it, address any issues and make any corrections they require. You may have to submit it several times to get it accepted.
8. If your paper is published, the scientific community will descend upon it like ravenous vultures eager to rip it to shreds. And before you start whining about persecution and free speech (truth is not a democracy, by the way) and pointy-headed elitists not wanting to be accountable for their actions, understand that this is what they do to EVERY paper, in every field, that is ever submitted. That's just how it works. You will not get special treatment because you don't deserve it. Every scientific theory that is widely accepted today has been through this process and come out stronger for it, including evolution. There have been more attempts made to disprove evolution than any other scientific theory in human history and they have all failed. If there are any holes whatsoever in your research, logic or methods, they will be found and your theory will be destroyed.
9. If peer review fails to find any significant errors in your findings, other scientists will see for themselves how correct you were by trying to duplicate your experiments. If results are obtained, consistently, that are consistent with your theory, you will win support slowly.
10. Once enough support has been built up within the scientific community, your theory will be a contender, and there will be a legitimate controversy between it and other theories attempting to explain the same thing. At this point, it will most likely have enough steam to get into science textbooks. There are legitimate controversies in the scientific community, such as String Theory vs. M-Theory, which get taught. Evolution vs. creationism is NOT a controversy, except in the minds of creationists. 95% of the scientific community in the US accepts the theory of evolution, and that includes sciences that have nothing to do with it, such as computer science and psychology. When considering the fields directly or indirectly concerned with evolution, such as biology, chemistry, phsyics, geology, anthropology, archaeology, etc., that percentage goes up to 99.8%. The percentage of scientists working in fields relevant to evolution who believe in creationism is approximately equal to the percentage who believe the earth is flat, and four times less than the percentage who deny the Holocaust.
11. As more knowledge is obtained and more facts documented that strengthen yours and weaken other theories competing with yours, yours may become the preeminent theory in the field. At this point, yours will be the only theory taught in textbooks and widely regarded as likely to be true. But no one will ever take your theory as gospel and people will continue to attempt to disprove it ad infinitum. This is the point that evolutionary theory is at today.

Have any attempts been made to put ID through this process? No. Not a single one, despite the fact that certain people seem so convinced of its veracity. The truth is that they know that ID is not science, they know it is wrong, but they don't care about truth. They continue to advance it, knowing it is wrong, because they want the money, power and influence that it brings. They want to use political pandering to short-circut the process described above because they know they would be shot down at the first attempt, and go straight from the pulpit to the classroom. "God says I'm right, now shut up and bend over."

[drtom2005]

You go man.