What if ID was a real theory?

In these posts, I will be showing how the negative nature of ID means that it is not an alternative theory to evolution. ID almost always consists of criticizing evolution, but offers no alternative in its place. A good example of this is Michael Behe. Behe is unusual amongst evolution deniers because of the amount of evolution he does accept. He accepts an old earth and even accepts common descent. What he doesn't accept is the mechanism of evolution, natural selection. He admits that it happens, but doesn't believe that it is adequate to account for the observed changes.

Historically, he is not alone with this. Common descent was accepted very quickly after the publication of Origin of species, but the mechanism was more contentious. Neo Lamarckism was one alternative popular at the turn of the century. But notice that Neo Lamarckism wasn't just an attack on the adequacy of selection, it offered an alternative mechanism. Other alternatives that were suggested include mutationists and the hopeful monster. More recently, the neutralists dispute the role of selection in many changes at the molecular level, and offer genetic drift as an alternative mechanism (an alternative that is widely accepted).

Behe does not do this. He just says that selection is not adequate, and therefore there is design. Even if he is completely correct and selection is not adequate, that is no more of an argument for design than it is an argument for Lamarckism or mutationism. Selection could be completely wrong and design also wrong. So the question is what does Behe offer in its place?

That is not easy to determine. As is typical of ID, he is very vague on an actual positive theory to replace evolution. The best that I can tell, based on his most recent book, The Edge of Evolution, is that he holds to some form of directed mutation. This is the idea that random mutation isn't adequate to supply the material on which selection acts, and so some designer must create the mutations. As is typical of evolution deniers, this is not a new argument. It was proposed and rejected a century ago. In fact, many genuine historical questions about evolution have revolved around the source of variation, especially before the insights of Mendelian genetics and population genetics.

Behe does not develop a theory of directed mutation. It is just implied in what he says, he does not actually propose an alternative. I would like to discuss the implications of directed mutation, as a true alternative theory of evolution.

The first important fact to notice is that there are no genetic differences between any organisms that require a kind of mutation that isn't readily observable in every generation. If we compare the genomes of any two organisms, say human and chimp, we find that in some places a single nucleotide has been altered. Of course, that happens every time a cell divides. In other cases bases are deleted or duplicated, or genes or parts of chromosomes are deleted. Sometimes chromosomes are inverted or fused or split or translocated. All of these processes occur within every single species. In the hundreds of genomes observed, there is not a single difference between organisms that could not be the product of natural processes and that does not occur almost every generation.

It could have been otherwise. It could have been that genomes are completely rearranged. It could be that there are some differences between genomes that we have never observed happening within a species. If this were the case, then maybe someone could argue that an additional mechanism is required to account for this (although that would be an argument from ignorance--we might just not have seen the process yet).

So directed mutation doesn't involve any process that couldn't have occurred naturally. The argument isn't that mutation couldn't have produced these changes, but simply that it is too unlikely to have produced this particular set. Behe argues that several mutations would have to occur simultaneously to produce an outcome. He doesn't say that the changes are of a type that couldn't occur by natural processes, just that this particular combination of mutations wouldn't happen in the same organism in the limited time available. Behe is wrong--others have shown that in fact the mutations need not occur simultaneously and he has misrepresented the math. But I would like to look at what it would mean if he were correct.

Behe admits that organisms have common descent. Therefore, he admits that one organism gave birth to another organism that had some changes in it. He admits that these changes could have occurred individually by natural mechanisms, but that it is very unlikely that they occurred at the same time. So his designer is one that uses some unexplained mechanism to cause specific mutations in an organism.

This is a strange designer. If we assume the designer is God, then he designed a mechanism of mutation that can produce lots of changes, but is not quite good enough. He could have designed the process of mutation to be efficient enough to produce simultaneous changes, but instead he made it so that he must intervene occasionally. This reminds me of Newton. Originally, his celestial mechanics couldn't account for all of the motion of the planets, so Newton thought that God would occasionally intervene to correct the orbits of the planets. God is a watchmaker, but a poor one. Instead of making a perfectly running solar system, he made one that constantly needs intervention. He designed a watch that is off by several minutes a day and has to be actively reset. Eventually, the anomalous planetary motions were explained by Peirre-Simon de Laplace, in a way that doesn't require intervention by God. Behe's God is a similar poor designer. He creates the mechanism of mutation but makes it just not quite good enough.

So theologically it is a very unsatisfying designer. But let's pursue this as science. If directed mutation were a real scientific theory, it would be developed farther. Whenever scientists develop a theory, they determine the details. They work out the mechanisms and alternative interpretations. Behe and ID in general is completely mute on the question of exactly how design works. They think it is enough to show there is design. Even if they had succeeded in doing that, it is still not a theory. Different mechanisms of design have different testable implications.

In this way, ID reminds me of psi research. The history of research into psychic phenomena is one of 150 years of just trying to show psi exists. Proponents of psi come up with a new way to detect psi every now and then. It plays itself out and then another way comes along. But the only research for over a century is just trying to show there is such a thing as psi. We do not see them coming up with competing mechanisms of psi. We do not find laws describing how psi varies with distance or the exact conditions under which it works or the neural circuits of the brain involved. There is no theory of psi at all. Trying to detect something is not a theory. ID is the same. They are interested just in showing that ID exists, and failing at it. But even if they had succeeded, there is no actual theory. We don't know if design occurs all at once or gradually, at the level of DNA or the environment, for every species or only big jumps. We do not see proponents of ID arguing amongst themselves about how design occurs. It is this lack of argument more than anything that shows that ID is not a theory. In my next post, I will dissect directed mutation in detail and show how it should be developed as a theory.