Community Commentary -- David L. Rector

Gertrude Stein said, “The trouble with Oakland is there’s no there

there.” The same could be said for intelligent design, the hodgepodge of

objections to the theory of natural selection that Wendy Leece wants to

foist on Newport-Mesa biology classes (“Leece continues the intelligent

design crusade,” Jan. 14).

The intelligent design “theory” contains neither a theory of

intelligence nor a theory of design. Rather it is an attempt to present

phenomena in the evolution of life on Earth that proponents say could not

have been accounted for by natural selection and would therefore (it is

claimed) have required skyhooks -- interventions by outside forces (gods

or super-intelligent aliens), seeding by cosmic dust or comets or other

mechanisms we have not discovered. The theory as it exists today makes no

predictions and is untestable; it is not science.

Intelligent design theorists are resurrecting the old “Argument from

Design” of William Paley (“Natural Theology,” 1802). Consider the human

eye, a marvelously complicated and performant organ; surely it must have

been designed specifically for its task. Well, as a project in

Engineering 101, the eye rates a C- at best. The blood vessels that

nourish the retina are in front of the retina, and so is all the wiring,

requiring a hole for the optic nerve right in the middle of the retina.

All this degrades the performance of the eye and requires elaborate

muscular and neural kludges to make the illusion of a continuous field of

vision. Engineering idiocy.

With natural selection, all these kludges make perfect sense. Natural

selection is opportunistic, has no fixed purposes and works with whatever

is available; nothing is planned (see diagram and discussion at o7

biomed.brown.edu/Faculty/M/Miller/TR/Lifes-Design.htmlf7 ).

I have never understood the problem some people have accepting

evolution. When I was 10, I looked at my grandfather’s male workhorse one

day; the imposing equipment the horse had was so like in structure to the

small equipment I had that the thought of family resemblance occurred to

me spontaneously. I knew instantly the horse and I were cousins. I

belonged to a Christian family. The Bible said God created the horse and

God created me; it didn’t say how.

If God wanted to use some system involving common descent, that was

his business. I think the problem is some people want God to look like

themselves -- only bigger. They visualize God as a great wizard who waves

a magic wand like Harry Potter, no matter that the Bible and the Koran

tell them that God is immaterial and wasn’t like a man at all.

When I read Darwin, the mechanism of evolution was as obvious as the

fact. With what we now know of the mechanisms of genetics, evolution by

natural selection must happen; it cannot be stopped. It is God’s R&D;

laboratory, ever striving to invent a better mouse -- or bacterium or

human being.

Natural selection is a well-posed scientific theory that makes

detailed, easily testable, practical predictions. Consequently, the

theory has been rigorously tested in great detail in the last 140 years.

For instance, detailed studies have been done on birds in the wild --

such as Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches.

Rapidly reproducing organisms have been studied in the wild and in the

laboratory, and new forms of microorganisms have been born before the

eyes of microbiologists. Several creative mechanisms besides the simple

ones known to Darwin, none involving design, have been discovered.

Natural selection is now one of the most thoroughly tested theories in

science. Biology and medicine couldn’t be done without it. Wasting

students’ time on pseudoscience is absurd.

To read further: for design, see Michael Behe, “Darwin’s Black Box,”

(see review: o7 biomed.brown.edu/Faculty/M/Miller/Behe.htmlf7 );

against design, see Richard Dawkins, “The Blind Watchmaker.” A Web site

with many links for and against is

www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm, and

www.world-of-dawkins.com is great for evolution in general.

* DAVID L. RECTOR is an associate professor of mathematics at UC

Irvine and lives in Costa Mesa.