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The Detection of Intelligent Design
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Simple Stuff Mindless Nature Cannot Do
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Sean D. Pitman, MD
© May 2008
Last Update: May 2010
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Not knowing how something was created is not evidence for intelligent design. This is a common and apparently reasonable argument. I hear it all the time from very smart people. It makes sense - even to me. There is a bit of a problem with it however. We do know how certain types of phenomena could have been designed and are actually produced with deliberate intent while we have no idea how they could possibly have been produced without deliberate intent...
A rather simplistic idea - right? Yet, this simple concept is in fact the basis for all mainstream sciences that search for intelligent design - to include anthropology, forensics, and yes, even SETI science.
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Take SETI scientists for example. SETI scientists are looking for a particular type of radiosignal coming from outer space. If they find this type of signal they will actually announce that they have found evidence of non-human intelligent activity in this universe. How could they possibly say this based only on a radiosignal without having ever met their proposed designer?
The basis for their argument is very interesting - - and very simple. They are looking for a type of radiosignal that they know humans can and do make, but that is well beyond anything that any known non-deliberate process of nature makes or has ever made (at least within the specific locations of outer space that SETI scientists are looking - i.e., planetary regions). The type of signal they are looking for is actually quite simple - a signal with a narrow band spectrum (see Link).
Some might argue that this ID hypothesis isn't really scientific because it can "explain everything and therefore nothing." What this means is that the ID hypothesis isn't falsifiable - even in theory. However, the argument here is not that intelligence can produce the phenomenon in question, but that only a mechanism backed by at least human-level intelligence could produce the phenomenon in question. This ID-only theory is quite falsifiable. For example, as the basis of SETI, all that would have to be done to falsify the SETI ID-only hypothesis for the radio signals they are looking for is to show that some previously unknown non-intelligent natural force - producing essentially the same types of radio signals that SETI scientists had claimed were clearly artifactual. Such a demonstration would in fact neatly falsify the ID-only hypothesis proposed by SETI scientists for their radio signals. 
There are actually some famous examples of the falsification of intelligent design theories within various mainstream sciences. One striking example of this is the story of Germaine Henri-Martin and her once-popular theory regarding numerous "artifacts" she found in Fontechevade Cave in France. She thought she discovered the remains and artifacts of the "First Frenchmen" - but many years later these apparent artifacts were shown to be naturally produced and layered as natural flood deposits (see Link). SETI scientists also had a little bit of a glitch with the discovery of the first pulsars. "Pulsars were briefly tagged with the moniker LGM (Little Green Men) upon their discovery in 1967." (see Link).
Of course, the fact that many scientific hypotheses, even those having to do with the detection of intelligent activity both here on Earth and coming from outer space, have been falsified has not stopped science or the scientific search for signs of intelligent activity here on Earth and even coming from outer space - - as long as it has nothing to do with explaining the origin of life or its diversity on this Earth (for some odd reason?).
Why then when some new phenomenon is encountered, especially if it is a fairly simple phenomenon well inside the known range of human-level creativity and production, is the most logical default explanation some as yet unknown non-deliberate process of nature? How does one know that is the most reasonable conclusion without any real evidence that any non-deliberate force of nature can get remotely close to doing the job? How does one know that a non-deliberate process is a more likely explanation than a deliberate process? - especially if one knows how the phenomenon in question could be created deliberately even with human-level intelligence?
Why not just follow where the evidence leads instead of making a priori philosophical limitations to the paths which a scientist may or may not follow? - even if the various potential paths may have very significant philosophical or even "religious" implications - God forbid. Why not just let science be science?
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A Very Special Universe
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It has come to the attention of many scientists, especially physicists and astronomers, that the universe in which we live is a very special place that is filled with numerous fine-tuned coincidences that are "just right" to support life - kind of like the children's story of Goldilocks on a cosmic scale. These features are generally referred to as the "Anthropic Principle".
A few examples of this principle include the very precise speed of expansion of the universe - precise to 1 part in 10123. Any slower of a rate of expansion and the universe would have imploded upon itself before it ever got very far along. Any faster and galaxies and solar systems would not have formed. This level of precision is like picking the right grain of sand out of the Sahara Desert five times in a row - blindfolded. Not too shabby...
The size and distance of the Moon are just right - as is the age, mass, distance, and color of the Sun. The Earth's orbit, being nearly circular, is also just right to avoid overheating or overcooling.
The atom itself is a bundle of numerous very fortunate "coincidences". Within the atom, the neutron is just slightly more massive than the proton, which means that free neutrons can decay and turn into protons. A free neutron is unstable and will decay into a proton in about 10 minutes - if not within a nucleus. If the proton were larger and had a tendency to decay rather than the neutron, the very structure of the universe would be impossible. A free proton has a half-life of ~1033 years.
Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey, "Let's Start at the Very Beginning," How Now Shall We Live?, 1999,Tyndall House Publishers, Wheaton, IL
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/particles/proton.html
The strong and weak nuclear forces also have to be very precisely balanced in order for the proper type of stars to form and even molecules necessary for complex life to be able to exist.
The proton mass is 1836 times that of an electron. If this ratio were off even slightly, molecules would not form properly. It is also interesting to note that although protons are very different in size and mass, the charges are exactly the same in opposite degree. If this were not the case, again, molecules necessary to support complex life could not form. The same is true of the electromagnetic coupling constant between protons and electrons - it is very precisely balanced to support complex life.
The ratio of the gravitational force constant to the electromagnetic force constant also cannot differ from its value by more than one part in 1040 without eliminating the possibility for complex life.
- http://www.reasons.org/scientists/anthropic-principle-precise-plan-humanity
- http://www.reasons.org/design-and-anthropic-principle
There are dozens of these very precisely balanced constants in the universe necessary to support life. While some can be significantly changed if balanced by equivalent changes in other constants to compensate, it is quite clear that the ratio of those parameters that would work vs. those that would not work is an extremely tiny fraction of all the possible ways in which these constants could have been set up - which would not have allowed for the support of complex life.
Of course, the classic argument is given in response to such anthropic arguments that one shouldn't be surprised to find these fine-tuned features in the universe because if these features weren't fine-tuned, we wouldn't exist. Therefore, the fact that we exist means that such fine-tuning should only be expected by the mere fact of our own existence - not at all surprising.
However, this argument is like a situation where a man is standing before a firing squad of 1000 men with rifles who take aim and fire - - but they all miss him. According to the above logic, this man should not be at all surprised to still be alive because, if they hadn't missed him, he wouldn't be alive.
The nonsense of this line of reasoning is obvious. Surprise at the extreme fine-tuning of the universe, given the hypothesis of a mindless origin, is only to be expected - in the extreme.
This observation is not lost on even mainstream scientists - especially physicists and astronomers who believe in some sort of intelligent design behind it all compared to biologists.
For example, there are the interesting back-and-forth arguments from Paul Davies (an English astrophysicist). Although he is currently a seemingly conflicted atheist (Link), he was once a kind of theist and still manages to argue strongly for what seems like a nearly overwhelming impression of design that most physicists come away with when studying the fine-tuned features of the universe.
The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists. This rather diffuse feeling could, I suppose, be termed theism in its widest sense.1
The force of gravity must be fine-tuned to allow the universe to expand at precisely the right rate. The fact that the force of gravity just happens to be the right number with stunning accuracy is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology...
The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe.2
Davies, Paul C.W. [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide at the time of writing], 1) "The Christian perspective of a scientist," Review of "The way the world is," by John Polkinghorne, New Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 1354, pp.638-639, 2 June 1983, p.638 (Link, Link) aand 2) Davies in his1984 book Superforce.
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British mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, was among the first to voice the obvious philosophical conclusion:
The extremely high level of fine-tuning astronomers and physicists discern powerfully suggests a purpose behind the universe.
Roger Penrose, in the movie A Brief History of Time (Burbank, CA: Paramount Pictures Inc., 1992).
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Nobel laureate Arno Penzias makes this observation about the enigmatic character of the universe:
"Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."
Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics), Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
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"As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming."
Sir Fredrick Hoyle, famous British astronomer who early on (1951) argued that the coincidences were just that, coincidences. But, by 1953 he had evidently changed his mind and wrote:
Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy coincidences. But there are so many odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them... A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.
- http://www.leaderu.com/offices/bradley/docs/universe.html<>
- Hoyle, Fred. "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16.
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Physicist Eugene Wigner in a widely quoted paper entitled The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences (1960) notes:
"The enormous usefulness of mathematics is something bordering on the mysterious...There is no rational explanation for it...The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve..."
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Albert Einstein in a letter to a friend (1956, Lettres a Maurice Solovine) commenting on the mathematical comprehensibility of the world noted:
"You may find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be in any way grasped through thought... The kind of order created, for example, by Newton's theory of gravity is of quite a different kind. Even if the axioms of the theory are posited by a human being, the success of such an enterprise presupposes an order in the objective world of a high degree, which one has no a priori right to expect. That is the miracle which grows increasingly persuasive with the increasing development of knowledge."
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Charles Hard Townes, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics and a UC Berkeley professor noted:
"This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all....
Some scientists argue that, "Well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right.
Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate. It assumes that there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that our was planned, and that is why it has come out so specially."
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtml
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American astronomer George Greenstein expresses his thoughts:
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
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From the beginning of this book we have emphasized the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems. The information cannot in our view be generated by what are often called 'natural' processes, as for instance through meteorological and chemical processes. . . Information was also needed. We have argued that the requisite information came from an 'intelligence'.
