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.
See how definitions matter and see how you instantly messed it up. How do you distinguish “an intelligent intention” from “all of the world has an intelligent intention”? You don’t. You assume you can, but you cannot.
Quote from UD: “In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose.”
So, right there according to your own authoritative source, you recognize patterns rather than “design” in the sense of “intelligent intention”. To make it more properly scientific, what Wallace should do is list specific features in patterns, features which distinguish “designed” (in the sense of “intelligently intentioned”) patterns from non-designed (unintelligently intentioned or unintentioned or whatever) patterns. As long as this distinction has not been made (and it cannot be made, ever), ID theory is not science.
Or you can try a simpler exercise: Distinguish irreducible complexity from reducible one. With examples.
I don’t have an authoritative source, so perhaps it is you that has messed things up, I didn’t mess up anything. It is my belief that the existence of constant laws is precisely that, evidence for intelligent creation. It seems what you want to argue, is whether or not chance can exist in a created universe, but I believe that unnecessarily confuses the issue.
It changes nothing about whether or not we as humans have the ability to distinguish between something built for a specific purpose (say a house), and something built to exist say a rock. Things as they exist can be co-adapted for other uses-like say a garage door could be built into a skate ramp. We can’t say we can’t decide if it was built to be a skate ramp, just because it was also once built to be used as a door.
Your further point about irreducible complexity is your own issue, I haven’t discussed that here, so you are just off on a tangent with that one.
When I look at a skate ramp, I don’t have to decide what it was used for earlier, it is a skate ramp that was built, I can deduce that based on taking many factors of its appearance into consideration. That doesn’t mean it can’t be wrong, and it may never have been built to be a skate ramp, but I can still certainly make educated inferences. Your point that no inferences can be made seems pedantic to me. Wallaces claims are every bit as simple as that.
The OP makes an important distinction. “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).”
Paley compared Creation to the design of a watch. The problem: The watch has extrinsic purpose, while Creation has intrinsic purpose, so the analogy does not fly well.
Behe brought two examples to irreducible complexity: Mousetrap and bacterial flagellum. The same problem. Intrinsic purpose, if any, is detectable only from first-person view, if at all. It cannot be detected from outside by calculating FIASCO or the like.
It indeed confuses things. Which is why I am not arguing anything like this.
For scientific purposes it changes everything. Whether something is calculable/detectable or not makes the difference of whether your claim has some empirical value or not.
Erik,
I also completely disagree with the way you are using the word pattern (I don’t think UD is using the word pattern, the way you are, a pattern can simply be a shape, but it can also mean, for instance, a discernible coherent system based on the intended interrelationship of component parts).
When the word pattern is used to simply mean a shape, than everything that exists has a pattern, but when a more sophisticated use of the word is intended, then only some things can be said to exhibit a pattern. A bunch of L shapes in the sand therefore does not necessarily qualify, just because it is a repeated pattern.
Erik,
But your point is absurd, in science WE ROUTINELY make assumptions and calculations about the existence of things we observe. If we didn’t, paleontology and archaeology would never exist.
I guess you don’t consider that science.
Yes, concerning things we observe. My point is that we don’t observe “intelligent intention” as you put it. All attempts to calculate it as per ID theory have failed and, I’d say, will continue to fail forever for this reason. There might be other reasons also.
On the other hand, we observe patterns and we can measure and calculate them. But patterns are not intentions, intelligent or otherwise.
Good! Then if we accept for a moment the premise that chance can exist in a universe, whether or not it was created, than we can then use the concept of chance to analyses the appearance of forms.
Do the forms have the appearance of a pattern through chance, or is a more likely explanation the existence of intelligent interference incurred upon the form.
That’s a pretty central element of a whole lot of scientific observation. You seem willing to dismiss an awful lot of those conclusions. Should we ignore whether wind is coming from the atmosphere or from a helicopter, because in the end they are the same thing?
Of course patterns can be intentions. Someone can intend to make a pattern or not intend to. THIS is precisely what many science fields determine.
I make a distinction between observation and analysis. In statistical or probabilistic analysis, things are “likely” at best, but from observation you can know the causes for sure. If we are talking about observation, then “likely” has nothing to do with it, but evidently you are not talking about observation. Which again highlights the importance of definitions to have a good conceptual grasp of what it is that you intend to communicate. Dembski never got this part right.
I can dip my thumb into ink and leave a fingerprint on the table intentionally or it may happen more or less accidentally. Either way it doesn’t mean that the fingerprint is (identical to) my intention. So patterns cannot be intentions, ever. Basic category error.
Is a book an intention? Is music? Is having sex?
When someone is asked, what was your intention, and they answer “to have sex”, have they made in incorrect statement in your eyes, because having sex is not an intention?
So you are admitting that the cause can be one or the other, but you have a problem with trying to determine if the cause was intentional or not?
How odd.
So if we observe cave markings, we don’t use science to determine the intent??
phoodoo,
Whatever is done can be done intentionally or unintentionally. From the fact of the event alone you cannot tell whether it was intentional or not. Some things just sort of happen – a guy shoots himself in the foot, it does not mean he intended to do it. You may even ask him and he may say, “Yes, I intended to shoot myself in the foot.” but he may be lying. To determine intention you need more and more context.
Context is everything, any specific pattern does not say much. A specific pattern may be clear or messy, but intention is a whole different thing, inferred from background context, not based on any specific material pattern.
Have fun with cave markings. You may get extrinsic intention right half the time, it says nothing about intrinsic purposes in nature and that’s the crux when it comes to bacterial flagellum and the like. Even for extrinsic intention, if you get it right only half the time, it’s scientifically poor performance.
A cave that was recently unearthed has things on the wall that look like deer. You think that without background context we can’t determine if the images were intended or not?
You are arguing about the strength of the evidence, not whether or not our observations are evidence. Just because we might also use other avenues of evidence if it is available, like a bunch of charred clay pots full of deer bones next to the deer paintings, that doesn’t mean we don’t use our observation as evidence of intent. Of course we do.
This is not a matter of opinion. If you think it is, you are on very wrong tracks.
I am not telling where this pic was taken. You tell me whether the pattern is intended (“intelligently designed”) or not. No matter which way you answer and regardless if you got it right or wrong, it has no bearing on intrinsic purpose. From my point of view, the correct answer in this case should be “Need more context/data.”
Its not a matter of opinion, what are you talking about? You said you make a distinction between observation and analysis. Ok, great! And what was your point? We look at things (observe) and then think about what they mean (analyses). Did someone disagree with this?
You think if you can show me a picture and if I can’t tell its origin for sure, that you are making some stunning advancement? I have already conceded that our interpretation can be wrong (we can think something is a Dinosaur leg, and it could turn out to be a dog, the painting of the deer could just be mud splatter), but the fact that we are imperfect observers means nothing to this discussion, other than we use our best guess.
Honestly, I am having trouble even trying to get what point you are trying to ram home, because it doesn’t seem obvious at this point that you have one.
It sounds like all you have said is that, with limited information, our best guess could be wrong sometimes. And my reply to that would be, Gee, Really? No kidding.
So we shouldn’t guess?
I think we need to close a hell of a lot of museums.
Erik,
Well, good luck explaining how the bacterium flagellum came about without having a design. It hasn’t happened so far, and your chances aren’t improving any.
You mentioned observation (where there’s no inference involved) when the rest of what you said (inference and weighing of likelihoods) was only applicable to analysis. Observation is just collection of data, whereas analysis is a whole different phase in the procedure that leads to a conclusion, if done properly and when there’s enough data. You use “observation”, “inference” and “detection” interchangeably, but they are not interchangeable. Failure to distinguish these leaves the strong impression that you don’t know what you are talking about.
Yes, because you are failing to acknowledge the role of context which enables analysis to get started. This failure confirms the impression that you don’t know what you are talking about.
With too little context, it’s not even wrong. It’s not even a guess worth the name. It’s just meaningless noise serving no purpose.
Can you prove or support the idea that true randomness actually exists?
So you still don’t understand that “design” doesn’t explain how anything **came about**
You’re hopeless, phoodoo
Let me try this. Phoodoo, I take it you believe that ID must include the possibility that the designer is an omnipotent God. Is there any pattern that couldn’t be the product of God’s will? Any process this omnipotent God couldn’t have used to create whatever you think He created? I was convinced a while back that it’s not impossible in principle that an omnipotent God could create something by means of random processes, and still get as a result whatever he intended to create.
Do you understand that if the above is true, then there’s no way of knowing whether something was designed or not based on arguments like “randomness can’t produce life” or “matter can’t assemble itself to produce life”?
An omnipotent God could have poofed a universe just like ours into existence by throwing atoms and letting them fall at random
An omnipotent God could have created a universe just like ours, including life by letting matter arrange by itself.
And don’t tell me ID is not about identifying the designer, if an omnipotent God could potentially be the designer, then all the above applies, and you have no way of telling if something was designed by looking at it
dazz,
That’s a nice point, dazz.
Put slightly differently: God, being omnipotent, is wholly constrained by anything apart from His will. But if there are no constraints on divine action, there can’t be determinate parameters that guide testing over ranges of variables. And yet that is what is essential to any successful empirical verification. So if the Designer is God, then ID cannot be a scientific theory. And that means that ID also cannot be a genuine alternative to evolutionary theory, even if evolutionary theory is a bad scientific theory.
I think that a good deal of ID rhetoric implicitly recognizes this, by insisting that evolutionary theory lacks empirical support, and thus isn’t really a scientific theory at all, and the correlated emphasis that ID is fighting against the metaphysics of “materialism” (which of course is a Very Bad Thing).
In other words: having conceded that evolutionists were right all along in saying that intelligent design can’t be empirically verified and isn’t really a workable scientific theory, the dominant response by design theorists and advocates is a vast tu quoque.
Erik,
This sentence makes no sense, I think in your extreme desire to confirm how right you were, you flew off the handle. You better rewrite it, because its your assumptions not mine. It has nothing to do with my position.
But in terms of context, do you mean like a cave painting? Ha. How much context do we have? We have a cave and something painted on the walls, or splattered, or a spider walked across some red paint in the shape of a deer…
There is no context, so I think your whole premise is full of shit.
Kantian Naturalist,
No I don’t buy this KN. This only makes sense if we fall for your, “There is another concept which is neither planned nor unplanned, but we can’t explain it” rhetoric.
If we don’t fall for your third option theory, then as soon as we show that random mutations and chance can’t do it, ID wins.
Your mysterious third option is a complete red herring.
“a spider walking across some red paint in the shape of a deer” IS the context, what I previously referred to as “the details”. It’s a stupid hypothesis, but at least it has some explanatory power.
If you can’t even make the effort to understand what those things mean it makes no sense to keep on discussing
Once one cannot demonstrate how the Designer created the design, the only option left is natural processes.
Haha..and you think it is ME who doesn’t understand?
Oh brother.
Here’s what you said.
None of what you mention is central to scientific observation. There’s no explanation or inference involved in observation.
And your attention span is too short to allow for meaningful discussion.
Do you see how poorly you have explained yourself Eric? He thinks THIS is what you are saying?
And if you agree, you are both looney.
Erik,
Cave painting Erik, cave paintings.
If you can’t even address that, its not me with the attention problem.
Extrinsic versus intrinsic purpose. It’s in the OP. Your example of cave paintings is overly reductionist (not to say materialist) and misses the main point.
Erik,
Misses whose point? It certainly doesn’t miss my point. Do you think the spider walking across paint is part of the context? That’s funny.
newton,
How did you arrive at this assertion?
I honestly don’t know who you’re arguing with here. Has someone suggested that resemblance is irrelevant to questions about whether something is designed, or that additional amounts (or kinds) of resemblance ought to be ignored? I won’t speak for Vince, but that’s not my view, and I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that it was. To say that one can’t infer X from Y, is not the same as saying that incidence of Y provides no evidence whatever of X. A deductive inference would simply fail, but an inductive inference gets stronger with such evidence.
Again, I’m really not sure what point you are trying to make. As I suggested in my last post, it can’t be the case that one can safely infer that something is designed by its close resemblance to something else that surely is, if only because we may be able to make a close facsimile of an undesigned item. Once we do that we’ve got two closely resembling items, one designed, one not, right?
Yes, I think we both agree with phoodoo that considerations of various types of resemblance may be relevant to our investigation of whether something is designed. How could it not be?
Yet phoodoo wants to argue with us anyhow, for some reason. Dunno why.
Do you really think these two choices are the only choices?
Could the six-sided patterns of snowflakes form by pure chance?
Not when it happens almost every time.
Are they intentional?
I doubt it. I see no point to it.
Does it not appear that there can be processes that are something more than pure chance, and yet are not intentional?
Does it not seem that you are making a false dichotomy?
walto,
Can you give an example of why you think this statement is true?
I believe I have reposted the quote from VJ at least three times now. I am not going to go back and copy and paste it again, but he said, resemblance DOES NOT infer design, AND this is exactly the point I am arguing with, which it seems to me you earlier agreed with VJ. Now, resemblance to design may well not prove design, but to suggest it does not at least infer, to whatever degree, is rather obviously false (and this is the point Wallace made). If you are now saying you agree with this, then very well. Then we disagree with VJ.
I have chosen only one of VJ’s assertions to take issue with, but I could just as easily have chosen others.
Fair Witness,
As I said earlier, I think talk of the “Mysterious Third Way” is Alice In Wonderland allegory.
The only way to truly determine if something is designed is if one can identify and understand the constraints the supposed designer faced. Designers design things because they can’t do anything and everything; they have limited time, resources, technologies, and processes. They also have design constraints in the form of requirements. For example, “drivers must be able to see out of car” coupled with “car must have a way to protect drivers from wind, debris, and other elements while driving” places several constraints upon the design of cars. These constraints are the very foundation of design; no constraints, no design.
So unless/until ID can identify the constraints surrounding the supposed design of natural objects, the entire concept will continue to be dismissed as useless.
First of all, that is not what he wrote. People infer, characteristics imply. Secondly, I just pointed out (again), that inferences/implications vary by type. Deductive inferences are different from inductive inferences. And if VJT said that one ought not to infer X from Y, you could read him (charitably) as meaning that it is risky to do that based on resemblance alone, rather than (as you uncharitably are) as meaning that resemblance is completely irrelevant to all such inferences.
Anyhow, I’m pretty sure that there’s no substantive disagreement here between you, me, dazz or Vince on this issue. I’m not sure how there could be, actually. But I’ll let Vince speak for himself.
I did give an example. Twice actually. You pick some item you believe has not been designed and I’ll give you a third.
Second law of Mockery
walto,
So your conclusion is that everything is designed?
I thought that was Never Wear Cellophane.
Um….No. My conclusion is exactly what I wrote: that it is unsafe to infer that something is designed from the fact that it resembles something we know to be designed.
Otherwise, you pay a whole lot for faked mineral specimens.
Glen Davidson
Third Law