Illumination of a Few Fundamental Flaws in the Arguments for Apparent Design

On the view that many popularly used arguments have been utilized to proof God’s existence, I shall here attempt to illuminate some of the inherently fallacious grounds to which proponents of a super-designer commit when arguing for their position. Although most of these criticisms of Intelligent Design already exist, much remains absent due to the media’s inability to cover all this controversy – as this will be politically detrimental.

On the first fundamental flaw Intelligent Design advocates commit, that being the fallacy of Faulty Analogy, I shall reveal first its argument then explain its flaws. From the view of those advocates, organisms or structures within organisms operate just like machines, having motors, pumps, tubes and memory drives etc. Since the analogy is made between biological systems to mechanical systems, advocates then duly conclude that the natural evolution of such complex systems remains inexplicable. Apparently, they typically consider this analogy with respect to the orderliness and mechanics of the universe. However, what has been failed to grasp is that the universe, including the organisms living within it, represents an economy – more so for biological evolution. While machines are rigid, only performing tasks rendered favorable in the eyes of its designer(s), individual systems in an economy perform tasks that are favorable to the survival of the self. An economy evolves, changes through fluctuations, and does so through the so-called ‘random’ causes within each independent system. Take the analogy used here, as in a financial economy. When people buy and sell shares in an economy, they do so by critical analysis and informed decisions. A whole economy thus perpetuates itself due to supply and demand, and in a more minuscule manner by the complex relations between seller and customer. Such an economy may seem to have been designed by a Supreme Being or privileged group, but the contrary is true. The structure of today’s economy evolved through the complex relationship of supply and demand, and was not invented by some privileged individual or group some decade ago. This also applies to biological evolution, wherein biological creatures are prone to change and shall gradually differentiate into newer species from varieties through their relationship with the natural conditions they live in and the complex relations between creatures. Therefore, the inherent problem with the comparison of biological systems to mechanical systems is that this analogy does not take into account the susceptibility of biological systems to mutate and change over time.

Following from the same faulty analogy initially alluded to is the inherently flawed argument from ignorance. The argument goes like this. Suppose I were to find a rock or fountain. I would come to believe that it formed naturally, without the aid of a designer. Then, suppose I saw a watch while walking in that same forest (one must pretend that I have not seen such an object before). I too would come to believe that the watch formed naturally. The problem here is that this argument is valid only under an uneducated eye. The fact is, we can explain the formation of rocks or fountains with natural laws, and describe them with natural mechanisms. The watch, on the other hand, requires a designer. Remember that whenever each change occurs in a biological system, or organism, that change must be advantageous to its current state of being, not to its ends. For example, if a fish, through evolutionary time, began to be able to take short periods above water, and develop more complex respiratory systems, these changes are to be of survival value in that current state of being. Moreover, it is. A watch however, cannot have a wheel, and then another, forming two wheels, if no selective advantage exists to have that second wheel. In fact, the main difference is that machines do not reproduce and mutate, or become altered, while organic forms or beings can do them effectively, though not efficiently, in their current organic states.

However, the most outrageous flaw that proponents of design advocate is that mutations are random, not induced. Contrary to the other relatively weaker arguments, this is a strong and daring claim that they profess. Nothing but the contrary is true. Numerous accounts could be given, such as RH Schiestl, F Khogali, and N Carls’ article “Reversion of the mouse pink-eyed unstable mutation induced by low doses of x-rays”1 and Hwang CB, Shillitoe EJ.’s “DNA sequence of mutations induced in cells by herpes simplex virus type-1”2. Wherein mutations are induced by radiation, uncorrected errors in cell duplication, epigenetically exchanged DNA etc., it seems hard for one to say that mutations occur randomly, rather than by predictable natural causes. I shall here only point to one example, to illustrate the point about the natural causes for genetic mutations. From the scholarly article authored by Frank Feuerbach, Christian Godon and seven other authors, named as “Transgene-Induced Gene Silencing in Plants”3, mutations of the genome of plants are induced by the transfer of genetic material between loci of the individual plant itself. Here these scholars describe how such a transmission is done, and about how silencing of various genes can result from such transfers. Biologists have many a time asserted that there is research to show that mutations are induced by nature or organic beings, and that they need not necessarily be done so through the invisible hand of God(s).

Such boldness proponents of Intelligent Design have to proclaim such outrageous arguments and claims and pretend that such fallacious viewpoints are actually a potential alternative to materialistic evolution – evolution with no God(s) involved. For such statements are not grounded under logic and contemporary scientific knowledge, one has to wonder how and why the society of this age can be so easily conned by such outright liars.


Footnotes

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/266/5190/1573
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2167549&dopt=Citation
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1365-313x.1998.00337.x

Bibliography

Shanks N. (2006). God, the Devil, and Darwin: a Critique of Intelligent Design Theory. New York: Oxford University Press