Christian apologist (and former atheist) “Jim” Warner Wallace knows quite a lot about design, having earned a bachelor’s degree in design from California State University and a master’s degree in architecture from UCLA. Wallace also worked as a homicide detective for many years, in a job where he had to be able to distinguish deaths that were intentional from deaths that were not. Wallace writes well, and his Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (David C. Cook, 2013) is an apologetic masterpiece. So naturally, when I came across a post over at Evolution News and Views, featuring his views on Intelligent Design, I was very interested to hear what he had to say.
In his interview with Center for Science & Culture research coordinator Brian Miller, “Jim” Warner Wallace listed what he referred to as eight attributes of design. Wallace emphasized that a strong case could be made for saying that an object was designed, even on the basis of its possessing only a few of these attributes, but that when taken together, they constitute a case for design which is certain beyond all reasonable doubt. The cumulative nature of the case is what makes it so strong.
Without further ado, here are Wallace’s eight attributes of design:
1. Could random processes (i.e. chance alone) produce this object?
2. Does it resemble something that you know is designed?
3. Does it have a level of sophistication & intricacy best explained by design?
4. Is it informationally dependent – that is, does it require information to get it done?
5. Is there evidence of goal-direction?
6. Can natural law get it done?
7. Is there any evidence of irreducible complexity?
8. Is there evidence of decision, or choices, that were made along the way, that can’t be explained by chemistry and physics?
I’d like to offer my own brief comments on Wallace’s eight attributes:
1. Could random processes (i.e. chance alone) produce this object?
By itself, this attribute doesn’t yield the inference that an object was designed. It needs to be combined with attribute 6, which rules out natural law as an explanation for the object. But even if 1 and 6 are both true, it still doesn’t follow that law and chance working together could not produce an intricate object which neither of them could generate alone.
2. Does it resemble something that you know is designed?
Resemblance to a designed object does not justify the inference to design. Wallace’s attribute trades on an unfortunate ambiguity here, confusing (a) a resemblance in structure between an object known to be designed and one which looks designed, with (b) a resemblance in causal history between the former object and the latter. The point of Darwin’s argument in his Origin of Species was that resemblances of type (a) do not warrant justified design inferences, in and of themselves, and that two objects with wildly different causal histories may end up looking alike. Darwin’s theory of natural selection was intended to provide a causal history that was capable of generating objects that look designed, but which have no designer.
3. Does it have a level of sophistication & intricacy best explained by design?
I have to confess that emotionally, my sympathies are very much with Wallace here. Back in the 1980s, the breathtaking level of sophistication that can be found in even the simplest living cell made a vivid impression on biochemist Michael Denton, who wrote:
Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.(Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, 1986, p. 250.)
However, critics will object that the complexity of a city or a factory is not irreducible: cities, like factories, can be constructed one step at a time. That being the case, they say, there is no reason in principle why blind (or non-foresighted) processes are incapable of producing these complex structures.
Even so, I cannot help wondering whether the cell is in a special category of its own:
4. Is it informationally dependent – that is, does it require information to get it done?
The three tricky questions which leap to mind here are: (a) what kind of information; (b) how much information; and (c) how should the quantity of information be properly calculated, anyway?
5. Is there evidence of goal-direction?
Goal-direction, or teleology, is of two kinds: intrinsic (directed at the good of the entity itself) and extrinsic (designed purely for the benefit of some other entity). Teleology of the latter kind obviously implies design. However, in order to show that even intrinsic teleology indicates design, one needs to appeal to a philosophical argument rather than a scientific one. As philosopher Edward Feser has pointed out, Aristotle’s own view was that goal-directedness does not require a mind which consciously intends the goal. By contrast, the Scholastic philosophers argued, in the Middle Ages, that the very fact that unconscious things exist whose natures direct them towards certain goals can only be made sense of if there is a Divine Intelligence which orders the world. (Feser outlines the Scholastic argument in an essay titled, Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide, in Philosophia Christi, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2010. See also his blog article, Atheistic teleology?, July 5, 2012.)
At any rate, the point I wish to make here is that goal-direction, taken by itself, cannot be said to constitute scientific or forensic evidence for design, unless the goal is an external one.
6. Can natural law get it done?
See my remarks on attribute 1 above.
7. Is there any evidence of irreducible complexity?
It is worth noting that Professor Michael Behe has never said that irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve naturally; rather, his point is that their evolution by a roundabout route (exaptation), while theoretically possible, is practically impossible for any system containing a large number of parts.
In his interview, “Jim” Warner Wallace made much of Behe’s example of the bacterial flagellum. However, the following passage from an article in New Scientist magazine by Michael Le Page (16 April 2008) reveals the weakness of Wallace’s case:
The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a “designer” created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up.
What’s more, of these 23 proteins, it turns out that just two are unique to flagella. The others all closely resemble proteins that carry out other functions in the cell. This means that the vast majority of the components needed to make a flagellum might already have been present in bacteria before this structure appeared.
It has also been shown that some of the components that make up a typical flagellum – the motor, the machinery for extruding the “propeller” and a primitive directional control system – can perform other useful functions in the cell, such as exporting proteins.…
…[W]hat has been discovered so far – that flagella vary greatly and that at least some of the components and proteins of which they are made can carry out other useful functions in the cells – show that they are not “irreducibly complex”. (Emphases mine – VJT.)
Nick Matzke’s 2006 article, Flagellum evolution in Nature Reviews Microbiology, over at Panda’s Thumb, is also well worth reading. Intelligent Design advocates have often claimed that the bacterial flagellum contains a large number of unique components. As Matzke convincingly shows, they’re wrong, period.
Of course, this is not the end of the story, and Professor Behe discusses what he views as further evidence for the design of the bacterial flagellum in his book, The Edge of Evolution (The Free Press, New York, 2007, pp. 87-101) – namely, the intricacies of intra-flagellar transport and the precisely co-ordinated timing required for the construction of a single bacterial flagellum. However, the point I want to make here is that the assertion that irreducible complexity, in and of itself, constitutes evidence for design is factually mistaken, as Dr. Douglas Theobald’s elegantly written article on the subject at Talk Origins illustrates so aptly.
8. Is there evidence of decision, or choices, that were made along the way, that can’t be explained by chemistry and physics?
If there were any positive evidence for choices being made in the four-billion-year history of life, then I would certainly regard it as evidence for design. However, in order to infer the existence of a choice, it is not enough to rule out physics and chemistry as explanations; one must also rule out chance. Why, for instance, is life left-handed instead of right-handed? Is this a choice made by life’s Creator, or an accident? Who knows?
Conclusion
I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully of “Jim” Warner Wallace, as I have enjoyed reading his writings. His recent book, A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe, which I have not read yet, appears to have been favorably reviewed and looks intriguing. However, I have to say that Wallace’s eight attributes of design need a lot more work, in order to refine them.
What do readers think? And how would readers modify Wallace’s criteria for design? Over to you.
I was thinking of what I’d once read about the experiments that test Bell’s inequalities. But then I went back and I realized I’d been misinformed. The Bell inequalities seem to show that quantum mechanics is not compatible with local realism, but that leaves open whether one will reject locality (as Bohm does) or realism (as the Copenhagen interpretation does).
I simply don’t understand the other versions of QM will enough to comment.
The main thing I do know is that with various competing versions of quantum mechanics, none of which are consistent with general relativity, we don’t have a firm enough grasp of fundamental physics for us to have a theory to which everything else could be reduced — not even “in principle”.
Hi colewd,
When I wrote that “life might arise in an environment where there is energy allowing its constituents to assemble,” the operative word was “might.” I don’t claim to have evidence that this actually happened – in fact, I rather doubt that it did. My point was that whatever it is that makes abiogenesis improbable, it’s not energy as such. There’s no problem on that score. For a self-assembling car, on the other hand, energy would be a problem.
There are resemblances and there are resemblances that only resemble resemblances. From the former we can make inferences, from the latter we cannot.
vjtorley,
It doesn’t have to be a self assembling car, it just has to look like a car, for that energy is no problem. We know metal exists, so you have given no reason why a car can’t form naturally. Walto claims its because it has never happened before but how can he know this? Furthermore, we can’t use the excuse that just because something hasn’t happened before, it can’t or won’t happen.
What else do we know natural forces can not make? A trampoline? A bow and arrow? A slinky? Is everything that look like what it is, actually what it is? How do we decide that?
Where historical context is unknown, we make our best guess. Hopefully, that guess will entail something testable, to help build context.
Fortunately, we DO know all there is to know about the development and construction of the trampoline, bow and arrow, and slinky. But there are probably some highly abstract sculptures that look artificial to most people, but which MIGHT have resulted from the action of wind or water. Some sculptors attempt creations intended to imitate the actions of wind or water, and they can be quite convincing.
So we’re back into the issue of false positives and false negative.
Flint,
No we are not “back” into an issue of false positives and false negatives, that was never an issue. VJ said that resemblance does not infer design. So when you see a trampoline, you have zero ways of knowing if you are actually seeing a trampoline, or you are simply seeing something that resembles a trampoline.
You say we use out best guess, but based on what? If you drive by something on the road, and all you have done is see it, how do you know what you saw was something you are familiar with, or simply something natural that looks like that thing? If resemblance doesn’t infer design you have no way of knowing.
VJ’s statement thus is complete nonsense. Resemblance may not prove design 100%, but it mostly does infer it. If VJ is going to write an entire multiple paragraphs length post, telling us all about how clever he is to deconstruct Wallace’s argument, and says things that are so stupid, why would anyone want to continue reading what he wrote? For sport?
vjtorley,
Got it. Thanks for the clarification 🙂
We may infer something is a trampoline if it resembles a trampoline, and also that it was designed and manufactured because of what we already know about trampolines.
That’s not the same as inferring “design” because something resembles some other thing that we already KNOW was designed. Especially when the resemblance is not clear at all.
A spider net resembles a trampoline. So fucking what?
dazz,
I am still trying to understand why we may infer something is a trampoline, just because it resembles a trampoline? How do we know it is not just something formed by wind erosion?
That looks like something you should be able to figure out yourself.
You might try jumping on it.
Pedant,
How would jumping on it help?
If I climb on Stonehenge will that tell me if it was man-made or wind blew it there?
Wind blown rock particles (chance) plus gravity (law) are the most obvious explanations for Stonehenge.
What about electromagnetic force?
It’s great to see that both, creationists and darwinists, agree that besides law/chance magic also plays a role in human design.
I agree. But I can’t rule out plate shifting.
I think that is what caused the Cadillac Ranch in Texas. I doubt they are actually Cadillacs. Why would GM put them there?
Looking at the details. Isn’t that what we do all the time?
You would want to have an operational definition of trampoline, with as much detail as you can, to be able to figure out what makes a trampoline a trampoline.
Then you would look at the object being evaluated and try to collect as much data about it as possible.
ID refuses to define it’s terms in any useful way, there’s no hope to ever be able to infer anything based on it.
There are necessary features to a thing, so that you can call it that thing with some justification, and then there are sufficient features, so that it’s unjustifiable to deny that it’s that thing. One of the major problems with ID “design” is that it is not distinguished from non-design and you can never tell when it’s “real” as opposed to merely apparent.
Same issue as always with Wallace’s approach also. “2. Does it resemble something that you know is designed?” Designed in what sense? Manufactured? Planned as in an architect’s project? The problem is that an architect’s project is essentially indistinguishable from a painter’s sketch from nature. Both a project and a sketch have the same relationship with the thing itself – a reflection at best, no necessary causal relationship. As to manufacturing, there is a world of difference between a car and a bear’s footprint in mud, while both are “designed” in some sense. And “resemble something that you know is designed” has again no necessary causal link, so it says nothing about the thing you are examining.
So there’s lots of clarification to be done with the concept of design before the question becomes meaningful. At the current stage a “design inference” looks like, “Here’s a thing I have no clue about. Let me just compare it to another thing I know something about, without any defined methodology, and in this manner convince myself I know something about this thing.”
Dunno if you’ve ever heard of Plato’s “third man” argument: on one interpretation it’s about resemblances “resembling” one another.
Are you sure walto made that claim? He doesn’t remember doing that. Maybe you could quote him!
You did say this, right?
How do you know this?
Hi phoodoo,
You write:
I take it you’re asking why a car couldn’t form naturally, from ordinary metal existing in nature. You write that “energy is no problem.” Au contraire, energy is a very big problem. Iron and steel don’t exist in nature, so you’ve got to come up with a natural process that generates pure (or reasonably pure) iron from ferrous or ferric oxide (FeO or Fe2O3), which is what we find in nature. Human beings can only make iron by heating these ores in blast furnaces, so there’s a huge energy problem, right away.
But even if we could imagine a lump of iron forming naturally on Earth, we still have to explain how the various pieces that make up a car’s chassis would break off from the lump. Once again, we need a lot of energy for that to happen. Of course, that’s not all we need: the pieces have to be just the right shape, so we need information as well. However, I hope you can see that even before we get to the information problem, the project of forming a car naturally is doomed on energetic grounds alone.
You also write:
Actually, what I said was that an object A’s functional and/or structural resemblance to a designed object B does not warrant the inference that object A was designed. (Of course, if we knew that A and B had similar histories, then we could infer design, but that begs the question.)
As for how we know that something is a trampoline: design has nothing to do with it. As the old saying has it: handsome is as handsome does. If we landed on a strange planet and found some rectangular elastic structure that we could stand up on and bounce up and down on, then we’d be justified in calling that a trampoline, regardless of whether it formed naturally or was designed by an intelligent agent. The term “trampoline” denotes an object’s function, and that’s all. And I’m prepared to say that if we found something looking just like a car, then if we could drive it, we’d be justified in calling it a car, for the same reason: if it works just like a regular car does, then it’s a car, period.
I’m new here and not quite sure how the technical stuff works yet, so please excuse me if there’s some accidental repetition of quotations, or alternatively a missing quote.. I need to see how this post actually appears on the page.
Robert Byers said :
“The important one is whether chance can produce things”
Chance clearly does produce some things and plays a part in many events. For instance if I step into the road without looking or paying attention in other ways I may get run over. My own heedlessness in that case caused the accident. But chance may well determine whether at that precise moment a car may be coming along and the driver unable to stop in time, or whether I am undeservedly fortunate and escape unscathed or with minor injuries only.
However no-one in this case is alleging that chance ALONE is involved in the production of very complex biological structures that have the appearance of design.
“Evolutionists are saying, convincing themselves, that a fish thing can become a rhino in a series of steps based on selection on mutations.”
That a genetic lineage can lead, over many millions of years, from a fish thing to a rhino (and probably end there, since rhinos are teetering on the brink of extinction 🙁 ) in a series of steps, each useful at the time for the organism in its current environmental niche, and therefore favoured by natural selection, yes.
“is this reasonable or possible, or embarrassingly absurd??!”
Well I’d say both reasonable and possible, indeed that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of it.
“If such small steps can create the immune system, memory system, eyeballs, butts,then it could create anything however seemingly impossible.”
Not ANYTHING, however seemingly impossible. There are innumerable conceivable pathways and objects that could not be created in small steps. But it has not been demonstrated that any lineage currently postulated by “evolutionists” could not have developed in this way.
BTW, immune system, memory system, eyeballs and butts (or anuses) exist in modern fish and already existed in the ancient fishy forms that evolutionists claim are the ancestors of modern fish, rhinos and us. To get from an ancient fish to a modern rhino it was not necessary to create any of those things, just to modify what was already there.
But although the origins of these systems lie a lot further back than fish, it’s still possible to envisage, by examining ancient fossils, modern invertebrates and genetic sequences, how such systems could have originated and developed.
I think our evidence that cars don’t spontaneously form is quite good. So, if it’s true, I know it. (We can’t know anything that’s not true.)
But that’s all off the point. I did not say what you said I said, which was this:
That I know this or that has on bearing on why a car can’t form naturally.
Well said. Car is not a natural kind.
walto,
What part is well said, there is not enough energy on the planet to make a car ? But it can make volcanoes and hurricanes, and earthquakes? Huh?
Or that if we found a trampoline on another planet it doesn’t matter if it was designed or not? Well, that is the whole point isn’t it, we COULD make a good guess if it was designed or not, just by looking at it, do you somehow disagree with that? If we couldn’t make that guess, then virtually ALL of the artifacts we have from ancient times would not be considered artifacts, because that is basically all we do is look at them and determine if they were manufactured. I don’t see how any reasonable human can argue against that.
You should consider responding to what people actually say. Vince did not say there is not enough energy on the planet to make a car.
I agree with you that we can make a good guess of whether many items are designed by examining them. Again, is there something Vince or I said that suggests one cannot make such a reasonable estimate?
Shouldn’t we stop talking about design and call it manufacturing instead? Manufacturing something implies intentionality, or design. Why avoid using terms that help better explain this stuff?
walto,
If there is enough energy on the planet for nature to make a car, then what exactly is to prevent it?
Vince said resemblance to design does not infer design. Do you agree or disagree with this? Wouldn’t you say that the more something looks like something that was designed, the more likely it is that it actually was designed?
dazz,
Ok, so if we know nothing about the history of a particular object that looks like a car, how do we know if it was manufactured or not?
No part of a car is self-replicating, therefore it is not subject to the creative process of replication, mutation, and selection. Unless operated upon by an external agent, of course.
Its a CREATIVE process now?? The fact that something that makes copies sometimes does it badly, means it is a creative process?
Furthermore, that is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not chance, and accidents can make a car. What theoretically is preventing it-the fact that there are other things that YOU call creative?
Fair Witness,
If the most successful self-replicator were a grey toxic sludge, that covered the entire planet and smothered it, destroying all living things, would that still be called a creative process?
Nothing.
Nature made humans, and humans made cars. So nature did it, though indirectly.
I think we know well enough why cars don’t appear “naturally.”
What I’d like Granville Sewell, and ilk, to explain is why we get life–with copious evidence of having evolved–appearing on earth “naturally,” yet the obviously designed and manufactured goods have to be made by us. I mean, designers come up with air conditioners, computers, etc., yet we never get any of that without us actually doing it. Somehow, everything we make is not made anywhere near us by the Designer, only life with all of its evidence of evolutionary change is made by the Designer.
I could maybe see aliens making life for the sake of experiment, or redesigning it for some reason or other. But I certainly can’t imagine them not making machines, or having machines make machines. God, well, I guess is just ineffable, hence he doesn’t make anything you’d expect from actual intelligent beings, only making life with all of the baggage of history that you’d expect from evolution.
Glen Davidson
Depends on how much it looks like a car, I guess. If it just vaguely resembles one, or it definitely is a car.
So if we found a couple craters of similar size on the moon and some ridges that combined just happen to look like the silhouette of a car, I would say it wasn’t manufactured. It still somehow resembles a car, but it isn’t one.
If OTOH we found one made of similar materials as ours, and as walto said we found we could drive it, and we even found the blueprints in a nearby abandoned car factory, pretty sure that’s good enough to infer it was manufactured (and also designed)
You look at the details, not ignore them as IDists do
There’s enough energy on the planet for me to have sex with Naomi Watts too. Sadly, nothing is especially necessary “to prevent it.” This is a weird causal burden shift. Or something. Why should a car weirdly pop into existence just because there’s sufficient energy “on the earth” for that? What are you getting at, exactly?
I think he said that simply from something X looking a bit like some something else, Y, it’s not safe to infer that Y was designed from the fact that X was designed. And that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, to take a Putnam example, suppose a bunch of ants march in a line that reads, “I hate everything” ? Is it safe to infer that this meaning was intentional?
Or to go in the other direction, take any item that you believe was not designed. And now get somebody to make a good facsimile of it. That the first item resembles the second one is not conclusive evidence that the first item was designed, is it? Remember, we started with an item you agreed was NOT designed.
Anyhow, it seems pretty obvious that it’s not safe to depend on resemblance alone for evidence of intentionality.
From the point of view of the sludge, yes.
Welcome to TSZ, Sally.
What makes you think a grey toxic sludge would have an opinion?
No, it isn’t. IDers ask for details and the “skeptic” shakes her head and wonders why the demand for details. Avoid the details at all cost.
When some genius ID “skeptic” comes up with a way to detect, measure, or otherwise identify “non-design” it will be a breakthrough of enormous magnitude.
It is the evo-materialists who claim to be able to see only “apparent” design. They can’t say how though. Nor can you.
Well, first, again you are qualifying the statement, by saying some thing looks ” a bit” like something else. Why the “a bit” part, is that relevant? I guess it is, the more something looks like something, be it something manufactured or something intelligently designed, the more likely that it is IN FACT so. So we make a mental measurement, how much does it look like that thing. That right there tells you that Wallace is right and VJ is wrong about resemblance inferring design.
Now Wallace never said that resemblance, and resemblance alone proves design, so if someone wants to change his meaning to this strawman argument, then of course the person changing his argument is wrong, not Wallace.
Furthermore, if a line of ants reads “I hate everything” the first thing one must consider is , how much does it look like it says that, sort of vaguely, like an astrological sign in the stars, or much more precisely, like it was written with New Times Roman fonts, in a perfectly clear formation. If one saw that, they might start to think something was up right?
And then if a line of ants spelled out the entire version of the New James Testament bible, complete with page numbers and illustrations, that would be more evidence that something was designed, now don’t you think so?
So it doesn’t really matter if you think a car would likely form spontaneously, do you think a spaceship like craft with some never before guidance system could form spontaneously, without any intelligent input?
Again, more evidence that Wallace is right, and you and VJ are wrong, that we can use our eyes and our brains to make some inferences about design. I think anyone claiming otherwise is really just being pointlessly obstinate frankly.
Not non-design, non-intelligent similar to human design.
How a designer go about this? Glue the ants little feet together so they couldn’t move?
From my point of view, this is why the concept of design is scientifically worthless. Everything is design(ed) in the sense that it has a structure. Non-design would be primal chaos, which is unobserved.
When everything is design(ed), there cannot logically be any “detecting” or “inferring” it – it already is design(ed) a priori. In order to be scientifically useful for natural sciences, the concept or thing must be empirically isolated so that you can experiment on it. You can’t do that to design. This is why all scientific claims around it are only pseudoscience.
Problem is that’s not what Wallace said.
The way those things come to be doesn’t resemble the way living forms and all their complexity come to be. It’s not even close.
Erik,
I don’t think it makes sense to say everything is designed, because it exists or has structure. When we talk of design, we are talking about an intelligent intention (of course you could say all of the world has an intelligent intention, but I think that is a separate and easy to differentiate.
So if design means a plan in essence, then somethings are planned and some aren’t. A pile of rocks, which may so happen to provide shelter from the elements is not the same thing as a house made of stone, with electrical wiring running through it, plumbing, gutters and sky lights. Thus man can use his own intelligence to try to asses if something was constructed with a plan. We obviously do this everyday, when we walk into someone’s house, we are well aware that it has been constructed for that purpose, and thus we assume it belongs to someone. We don’t just assume any structure which looks like it would keep rain off our heads, is just a fortuitous circumstance for us to take advantage of.
I don’t see the problem at all.
You have no idea how things came to be, and furthermore, since the discussion is whether or not one can detect the presence of design, through observation, your point is irrelevant.
You don’t understand. You said cars don’t form without intelligent input. Even if you believe that all species were specially created, you can’t use that car analogy to support your believe, because living forms do form all the time without the kind of intelligent input that produces cars.
ID’ers have been making “inferences about design” since ID was thought up, but it’s resulted in precisely zero useful knowledge.
Prove me wrong!