Debate draws evolution, intelligent design closer

Intelligent design and evolution advocates, who squared off at UC Irvine last week, found that the chasm between the two theories may not be so great.

UCI professors Walter Fitch, Gregory Weiss and Timothy Bradley argued in favor of evolution in nature without supernatural influences. Guest speakers Paul Nelson and Ralph Seelke argued for a designer in nature, although they conceded that minor forms of evolution can occur.

“I was surprised and pleased that the other participants arguing for intelligent design felt that the world is 6 billion years old, and that evolution occurred, and that our differences were much narrower than I expected,” Bradley said.

The Wednesday panel discussion hosted by iDesign at UCI, a student-run organization, invited intelligent design advocates and evolutionists to thrash out the two theories in front of a student audience.

Around 150 students and members of the public gathered in the stadium-style seating of a lecture hall to watch PowerPoint presentations, enjoy free soda and engage in philosophical and scientific debate.

Advocates of intelligent design adopt an analogy first proposed by 18th century theologian William Paley. If he found a watch in a field, Paley said, he would assume a watchmaker had made it. In the same way, one might assume that the complexities in nature also were intelligently constructed.

For Bradley, a professor of evolutionary biology, the difference between the two theories stems from what he sees as a need in the theory of intelligent design to use a supernatural being to fill the gaps that science, so far, has not explained.

“Basically, as I understood their argument, when you get to a point where you are unable to explain something, you turn to intelligent design,” Bradley said. “I was interested in mechanisms, so I was trying to get them to be more specific.”

Nelson, a philosopher of biology, argued that leaning toward a supernatural designer was logically evidenced within science, not outside of it.

“There is evidence that the world was built by an intelligent mind like our own but vastly more complex,” Nelson said after the panel discussion. “Intelligent design begins with biological evidence and asks, ‘Could this kind of entity be formed incrementally through natural selection?’ ”

Nelson said evolutionists are unable to explain an explosion of life occurring between 543 million and 490 million years ago, when most of the major groups of animals first appeared in the fossil record.

Seelke, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin, Superior, discussed his experiments with 40,000 generations of bacteria.

Seelke showed that for the bacteria to evolve and digest a certain type of food, two changes had to occur simultaneously within the bacteria’s genetic makeup. Without artificial stimulation, the two changes would not occur at the same time, and the bacteria would die.

“If evolution requires two or more independent events, nothing happens,” Seelke said. “I would say at this point we have no good natural process to explain that.”

Walter Fitch, professor of evolutionary biology at UCI, said supernatural and natural should not be discussed in the same terms.

“He did a really good job of laying out how religion and science are two spheres that are not mutually exclusive,” said panelist Gregory Weiss. “You can believe in God and still have a scientific version of how the universe came to be.”

Weiss enjoyed the exchange of views but felt that Nelson and Seelke never fully addressed intelligent design.

“I really expected them to bring out bigger guns,” Weiss said.

For Weiss, an assistant professor of molecular biology, the issue of a supernatural designer really entered the discussion during the question-and-answer session following the presentations.

“I was interested to hear from the audience,” he said. “They really deeply engaged in the material.”

Arthur Asuncio, a student at UCI and president of iDesign, decided to host the debate to encourage dialogue.

“Both evolution and intelligent design are powerful explanatory mechanisms, and should be investigated to full potential,” he said. “I find the elegance and complexity in nature to be compelling evidence for design. Intelligent design is simply a way of making these intuitions scientifically rigorous.”dpt.15-religion-1-CPhotoInfoIP1QUV5T20060515iz6dptncMARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Paul Nelson, a philosopher of biology, speaks about intelligent design during a panel discussion at UC Irvine on Wednesday.