PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for "Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Part Two"

« Back to Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Part Two main page

Transcript for:

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Part Two

Opening Billboard: Funding for this program is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg… In recent years Charles Darwin’s explanation of evolution through natural selection has been challenged by an alternative theory called Intelligent Design. A growing number of science teachers and school boards are struggling with how to present students with the facts. Even acknowledging the existence of an argument has become controversial. How should students learn the history of life on this planet? Are Christianity and other major religions incompatible with Darwinian evolution? Is there any evidence to support the new theory of intelligent design? Can ID and Darwin find common ground?
To find out, Think Tank is joined this week by Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and author of Darwinism, Design and Public Education.
…and by Dr. Michael Ruse, Director of the Program in the Philosophy of the History of Science at Florida State University and author of many books including Darwinism and Design and Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
The Topic Before the House: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Survival of the Fittest? Part Two This Week on Think Tank…

WATTENBERG: Stephen Meyer Michael Ruse,. Welcome back to Think Tank. Let’s continue what I found to be a fascinating discussion about intelligent design and evolution.
Steve, you wrote a very controversial paper for the Smithsonian Institute here in Washington, a biology journal which caused the editor to get into some hot water. What was so controversial about it and what happened?
STEVE: Well, the paper was one of the first peer reviewed papers to make it into a mainstream biology journal that was explicitly arguing for intelligent design as an explanation for biological phenomena. I made an argument which was about something called, an event in history called the Cambrian Explosion, where some forty separate body architectures, body plans come online very suddenly in the fossil record. Many people have recognized that there’s a problem for Darwinian evolution because it doesn’t match Darwin’s tree. But I raised another problem which was that if you -– to build all those animals, you need a lot of lines of genetic code. Just like a computer. You want to give a computer...
WATTENBERG: A genome.
STEVE: A genome. Exactly.
WATTENBERG: Is that actually what it looks like, or is that sort of a model of it?
STEVE: It’s our best understanding based on the double helix structure.
WATTENBERG: Double Helix. Watson and Crick.
STEVE: Watson and Crick, 1953. You got it. So you know, students under twenty five, you said you’ve got all these bright kids here working for you, but you ask them if you want to give you’re computer a new function what do you have to give it? And they know right away, code. Lines of code. Well turns out, the same thing in life. You want to build a new miniature machine, if you want to build a new type of animal all together, then a whole lot of new information is required to build those structures. So these events in the history of life, we have this sudden appearance of a great amount of new biological form and structure. New types of animals require a whole lot of new information. Some of these things happen so quickly that there’s not enough time for that –- for even random mutations to generate the amount of text let alone get it specifically arranged so that you can build these things. And the Cambrian Explosion is therefore a great mystery to Darwinian evolution. So I pointed that out and went further and argued that this infusion of information is actually evidence of design because what we know from our uniform and repeated experience which is the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past, is that it always takes an intelligent agent to produce new informations. So the new information that arose suddenly in the Cambrian, I argued was evidence of intelligent design. And then as you say, the editor –- the paper was published and a great furor ensued. The editor was denied access to his office, his keys, his samples. He was brought in and interrogated. He had colleagues who were interrogated or asked if he was secretly working for the Bush campaign. Or if he was a Catholic, or an Evangelical.
WATTENBERG: Heaven for fend.
STEVE: The office for special council investigated his case. Found that there was a consorted disinformation campaign that was being waged against him.
WATTENBERG: Aspects in our modern culture, in the university culture in Washington, a political correctness that is maddening. I gotta tell you. Where it just will not allow exploration into certain things. I mean, these are legitimate arguments. Legitimate points of view.
WATTENBERG: It was anti-intellectual freedom.
STEVE: It’s anti-intellectual. I mean, this editor is a man with two PhD.s in biology. Has published over forty peer reviewed papers himself. He was, by all measures, a very successful editor of this journal until this took place.
WATTENBERG: Michael, you buy that?
MICHAEL: Well, I don’t entirely.
WATTENBERG: You would muzzle a man with two PhDs?
MICHAEL: Of course I admire a man with two PhDs. But you know, I’ve got a PhD and a couple of honorary degrees and things thrown in and I’m not entirely sure that I want anybody to take me seriously simply because somebody says Oh well, Ruse has got a PhD or something like that. I would want to know much more about the actions and about all the details. And I agree with you about political correctness, per se. My God, come to Florida State some time if you want to see that in action and I agree with you. On the other hand, I think that there comes a time, both in science and in other areas where it’s appropriate to say, maybe the time has come to close discussion on theses sorts of things. We’re basically wasting our time now. For instance, if somebody came up to the NSF with a request for a great deal of money, let’s say, on UFOs, or something like that, and the committee simply said, no. UFOlogy is just a load of old cobbles. We’ve been down that path. We’re just not going to put anymore money into something like that.
STEVE: Michael is a very fair-minded guy and I know he doesn’t support academic freedom abridgements. So, that’s not the issue. But what he was saying was that sometimes it’s appropriate to close a discussion down when it’s been well aired out in academic journals. The point about publishing an article, making it a technical case for intelligent design is that this is a new argument. This is a new argument based on new discoveries that have taken place in the last 30 years in molecular biology, nano technology, information technology we’re discovering. And this editor I think specifically wanted to allow that to have some air time and air space to be published properly. It’s very interesting how the Smithsonian responded. They didn’t try to critique it or say that this argument had been refuted.
WATTENBERG: They said it’s off the table.
STEVE: They issued what amounted to a papal bull. A policy statement saying that the idea of intelligent design is inherently unscientific. They cited a statement by the triple A S (AAAS) to that effect. And they didn’t bring forward an evidential case against it. And by the way, the problem that I was addressing, the problem of the Cambrian Explosion and the origin of the information you need to build the animals is widely recognized in paleobiology. There are plenty of papers and books. James Valentine’s recent book on the origin of the phyla. Leading expert on the Cambrian thing that all evolutionary attempts to explain the origin of the Cambrian file have failed. So there’s nothing -– this isn’t an issue that’s been settled. This is an issue that’s wide open.
MICHAEL: It’s not a question of new hypotheses, this is the point. It’s a question of whether or not it’s going to be scientific or not. If you come along with say, another explanation of the Cambrian Explosion, I mean, for instance...
WATTENBERG: That allegedly occurred when?
MICHAEL: It occurred about 542 million years ago, I think. Well, if you want the exact answer...
WATTENBERG: Not 541, not 543...
MICHAEL: So if you want to offer a new explanation of the Cambrian Explosion for instance...
WATTENBERG: This is many new species coming on line at the same time.
MICHAEL: Yeah, but it was due to the evolution of the eye, for instance, is one hypothesis I read a book about a couple of years ago. Then I think it’s perfectly legitimate to put that forward, and for him, I hope he would have it refereed by people who know about the topic. But when push comes to shove, it’s the editor’s job to say, I’m going to go with this or not. And I would agree with you. But the point is, you’re not doing that. You’re pushing a position which says, science has failed, now let’s appeal to an intelligent designer who just so happens to be the god of the gospels. And that’s why this chap got into trouble. Now, I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of whether or not he was then treated appropriately. And if you can give me a case to say that he was badly treated, or whatever, I’m prepared to listen to that and if the case is made, I’m prepared to go along with that. But the fact that he got into trouble seems to be perfectly legitimate.
WATTENBERG: Is that the position of the civil libertarian? That there are things we cannot question?
MICHAEL: No. It’s not a question of things you cannot question. It’s things which are appropriate to do at certain times. If he’d said, “look, I’m really think we’ve got to the point where science can’t do this anymore, I think these people have made a case,” I think at the very least he should’ve spoken to his editorial board or others, and if they’d said, “we’re right with you,” then come hell or high water, publish and be damned. I ran a little journal, I published Phillip Johnson. I wasn’t sure about doing it. So what did I do? I went to my editorial board, including of all people, Richard Dawkins and they said, “we think it should be done.” Of course, I’m a philosophy journal. Not a science journal. So it’s different. So I think there are circumstances. Yes I really do. I don’t want to go to a doctor and him, in the interest of his freedom or whatever it is, he’s taken up with some esoteric new medicine and he thinks he’ll just wing it. I think, he shouldn’t do this.
STEVE: Can I respond to Michael on this? Because I think he’s partly misrepresenting my position. We’re not saying that science has failed to find an answer to this question. We’re saying that Darwinian evolution, a particular theory within the corpus of scientific thinking has failed to find an explanation. And we’re putting forward an alternative explanation which we think is scientific and which Michael, because of a definition of science that he holds, does not think is scientific. So part of the debate is actually about the definition of science.
STEVE: So the intelligent designer is part of science?
MICHAEL: Intelligence as a cause based on our understanding of the uniform and repeated experience that we have, is part of science. Yes.
MICHAEL: So you’re saying that God, therefore, is part of science.
STEVE: No. You just put words into my mouth. I was saying that the scientists in many fields -– you and I were talking about plagiarism before we came on the air -– it’s possible now with programs to detect papers that students turn in that have been plagiarized. Well that’s a form of inferring to design. Kind of sneaky malevolent design, but when you see a string of characters that match up from two different strings, highly improbable arrangement, that match, we call that a specification and you have improbability in specification, we design people say that indicates intelligence. Well, that’s a form of reasoning that is not only -- let me finish...
WATTENBERG: Let’s go seriatim as we say, one, two, three. I am a player also.
STEVE: Scientists make inferences to design when they’re doing cryptography, when they’re doing archaeology, ancient hieroglyphic, infer to an intelligence, that’s part of scientific reasoning. So why can’t...
WATTENBERG: The Rosetta Stone.
STEVE: Exactly. The Rosetta Stone is a perfect example. We’d be (loathed) to say that that was the result of wind and erosion because we’re applying Michael Ruse’s role of methodological materialism. We really want to be – and this is our point -– if we can infer design in those other fields, why aren’t we at least open to it in biology? When we have methods of detecting design. Where things like information rich systems are indicators of prior intelligence. You find out in the cell, design is almost a common sensical thing to consider. And so why prescribe it, why eliminate it? I made a case for it based on standard cannons of historical scientific reasoning.
MICHAEL: So I agree with Steve entirely that at times what, not only can we infer design, but that it’s appropriate to do so. I mean, the Rosetta Stone I looked at this summer with one of my kids in the British museum, it’s a wonderful thing to explain to my son why it is that people think that this is writing rather than just random marks. So I agree with you. But of course the point is, you want to take it one step further. You don’t want to say therefore, this suggests to me a grad student on Andromeda is doing this. You want to say, no, it’s obviously not a human intelligence which created the Cambrian Explosion, it’s another kind of intelligence, namely an unnatural intelligence. And at this point, I think you’re taking it out of science. So this, I think, is the radical break you’re making.
STEVE: Actually, we don’t say that. All we say, as a matter of science using these established methods of design detection is that an intelligence of some kind was the causal factor.
MICHAEL: Aww come on, Steve, you can’t leave it like that!
STEVE: Well you just made the demarcation between science and philosophy.
WATTENBERG: (Unintelligble) Quite Cordial… In so far as we can…
MICHAEL: I won’t call you a phony, but you’re starting to sound a little bit like one when you simply say to me, “we’re going to take it up to intelligent design, but hoo hoo folks, we’re not going to say any further about this, so don’t pin God on us.” Of course I’m going to pin God on you because you don’t think it was Ben or me, old as we are back at the beginning of the Cambrian (cranking) it.
WATTENBERG: I’m older than you are.
MICHAEL: I know, you’re older than I am. You’re pre-Cambrian. Okay. But we don’t think it was Ben there cranking it up and doing it. You’re pushing something completely different. Something very radical.
STEVE: Actually, this is, I think, becoming a kind of standard tactic in the argument, is to accuse us of dishonesty or hidden agenda as a way of avoiding the argument. I’ve been very clear. As a matter of the science, we think that you can tell that there is an intelligence. I’ve written an article, philosophical article in which I look at other lines of evidence from physics and cosmology. In which I make a case for theism. But I think when you look at the big bang, when you look at the fine tuning of the universe as a whole, you’re looking at design that could not be the product of an intelligence within the cosmos which is certainly a possibility when you’re looking at the evidence of design in biology, but you’re looking at evidence of design that effects the whole of the cosmos and therefore seems to point to a transcendent source. And by the way, Michael, just turn the tables a little bit on you and say, do you have an explanation for the origin of life? Or the origin, the information you need to build it? That’s a vexing question. Most evolutionary biologists acknowledge that there is no materialistic account of the origin of life and the information you need. So it’s not like we’re making up some question that isn’t on the table here. This is –- what do you say about the origin of the first..
MICHAEL: Okay, now we’re shifting from the beginning of the Cambrian to the beginning of life. We’re going back another three billion years.
STEVE: Well, what’s your explanation of the origin of the Cambrian?
MICHAEL: I think people like Jack Sokofsky (ph) has explained the beginning of the Cambrian perfectly adequately by showing that things just started to take off. That there were empty ecological niches and it sort of swung up in a sigmoidal (ph) curve just like that. So to a certain extent, the Cambrian I think, is an artifact of certain ecological factors. I find the Cambrian – I would agree with you. As far as the origin of life is concerned, I would agree with you. I don’t think anybody has got a full explanation yet. I’m not agreeing with you, I’m just simply saying what every scientist would say. On the other hand, it’s hardly the case that we are as ignorant even when Belerand what’s his name, Neri, did that experiment fifty years ago. Now we know a lot more about RNA world and the possibility of RNA being self-generating and self copying and things of this nature. So I don’t think the problem is solved. But I don’t think we’ve got to the point where we throw up our hands, say science stopper, intelligent design, don’t want to talk about God, but that’s the only option.
WATTENBERG: So, I generally believe in Darwinism. Makes a certain degree of sense. But I must say, and I’ve discussed it with, you know Robert (Wright) the author of Non-Zero, we’ve had a long discussion, email about it. There are parts of it that just baffle me. There’s one case, as I understand in the rain forest in South America, there is a species of insect that when it feels threatened by a predator, ten thousand of them swarm and form into a floral pattern to trick the predator into that they’re really a flower and they’re not prey. Now how can they communicate that information to each other? These are little bugs!
MICHAEL: What’s worrying me about your kind of argumentation, Ben, and I think I get a lot of this from Steve, is you want to pick on something and say, “There we are. We’ve got a problem for Darwinism, you know, creeeekkk!” And what I want to say is, why are you not prepared to say, Darwinism solves a huge amount of problems. Now we’ve got another problem. It’s more reasonable to think that a solution will be forthcoming than not only will we have to throw out Darwinism, but we’ll have to throw out the scientific approach and invoke the Christian God.
STEVE: There’s a whole lot of information right now about the way in which the development of organisms is controlled by something like an algorithm. And so when we’re arguing...
WATTENBERG: Whatever that means.
STEVE: Well, a computer software program. Okay, in biology now we’re talking about programmable adaptation. Preprogrammed adaptive response. Darwinism explains very well the adaptation within limits. But the origin of that programming is what we’re asking about. Where does that information come from? That algorithm come from? And we’re not punting or giving up on science when we ask that. It’s not an argument from ignorance as Michael said, “it’s an argument from what we know about the cause and effect structure of the world.” Whenever you find computer programming, whenever you find information, whenever you find complex functionally integrated machines or circuits and you trace the causal story back to the beginning, you find that an intelligence, a programmer, an engineer, a writer played a role. A mind, not a material processor is responsible. So our argument is based on something we know, not based on giving up on science or ignorance.
WATTENBERG: Michael, you wrote a book called, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? Can evolution and belief co-exist?
MICHAEL: Oh, yes. I think they certainly can. If I were a Christian and I don’t pretend to be one...
WATTENBERG: You were born a Christian?
MICHAEL: Yes. I certainly was. I see absolutely no reason why God shouldn’t work through unbroken law. In fact, I could see good theological reasons for this because it always seems to me, the biggest problem with intelligent design theorists is not really the science, but the theology. I mean, if God has to be invoked to do the very complex, why on earth didn’t God clean up the simple but awful? Some of those genetic diseases that people have which involve just one very small molecule being moved and yet it leads to a lifetime of pain? Why didn’t God get involved in that?
WATTENBERG: On the other hand you can say, look at all the great things he, she, or it has done. I mean, how ‘bout you? You would believe that God and Darwinism can coexist.
STEVE: Well, I believe in design and I believe in some of the meanings of evolution. That’s the key to it. I think you can be a theistic evolutionist. You can believe that God is guiding the process of change. But I don’t think you can be a theistic Darwinian because Darwinism asserts that the mechanism that produces all the change, all the appearance of design and history of life is purely unguided and undirected. You have to ask yourself a question. How can God guide an undirected process? It’s not so much a theological problem, it’s just a basic logical problem. So I think you can be a theistic evolutionist but not a theistic Darwinist and be logically consistent.
WATTENBERG: As you see it what is the future of this debate?
MICHAEL: I think it’s going to go on for a long while. Because I don’t think this is just a scientific debate, I don’t even think it’s just a religious debate. I think it’s a political debate as much as anything. And now of course, President Bush has got two extremely conservative new members to the Supreme Court with the possibility of at least one or two more before his time is finished.
WATTENBERG: And their names are?
MICHAEL: Well, there was Alito, and the other one is the head of the Supreme Court, Roberts.
WATTENBERG: Well, there are people who would argue about that, but that’s fair. Scalia was a colleague of mine for a couple years; you agree with him or disagree with him, this is a fertile mind.
MICHAEL: I don’t think anybody wants to deny that. It’s just like, I respect Steve’s mind. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.
WATTENBERG: And I think he feels...
MICHAEL: Anyway, before we go out on a flood of niceness, I think that this is much more a political debate now than a purely scientific debate. And I think until we see, or unless we see some major changes in American culture and a lot less division than we’ve got at the moment, I think we’re going to be living with it, certainly past my lifetime.
WATTENBERG: How do you see? What is the future of this debate?
STEVE: Well, I don’t think the courts are going to settle this. Nor should they. Nor can they. This is a debate that has larger philosophical implications, no question. But the debate, I think, is going to be settled by science, and especially by the next generation of scientists coming up. The younger scientists. Michael wants to make a lot out of this...
WATTENBERG: You think it’s going to be settled?
STEVE: Well, I think the contours are going to be shaped by the next generation. Michael wants to make a lot of this as a red state, blue state culture war issue, but I’m in the bluest county in the country, King County, Seattle. And we have in that county, Microsoft engineers, Boeing engineers and high tech people with Nintendo, and I’m talking to these people all the time on the soccer sidelines, and when I’m finding is there’s a tremendous interest in the scientific aspects that are driving this. A Microsoft engineer who’s now working with us at Discover Institute, he’s working with our molecular biologists, he came into my office recently. He’s retired from Microsoft. That means he’s 35.
WATTENBERG: Probably worth ten million dollars, or a hundred million dollars!
STEVE: He brings in a book to me called Design Patterns, which is a standard text for teaching software engineers how to design information processing systems. And he says, “As I’ve been learning more about molecular biology, I’m seeing these same design logic, these same strategies in the cell, and it gives me an eerie feeling that someone figured this out before we did.” He’s coming to the idea of intelligent design from his background.
MICHAEL: Pretty clever chap.
WATTENBERG: Michael Ruse, Steve Meyer, we thank you for a very informative if sometime rambunctious conversation. But thank you for joining us on Think Tank. And as ever, thank you for joining us and please do remember to send us your comments via email. We think it makes our program better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg.
Announcer: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 4455 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank.
Funding for Think Tank is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Back to top

Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc.

©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved.

Web development by Bean Creative.