4 4 6C H A P T E R 2 0 ■ S c i e n t i f i c R e a s o n i n gOn the face of it, there are just two basic possibilities. The first option is that
Intelligence arranges the environment so that the intermediates—the ap-
parently hapless organisms, cluttered with useless proteins—are protected
against elimination under natural selection. (If we were unofficially inclined,
we might say that the good Lord tempers the wind to the shorn bacterium.)
The second option is that Intelligence provides for coordinated mutations to
arise. If 20 genetic changes are needed, it brings about all of them at once.
Or we can mix elements of both options and suppose that Intelligence in-
troduces mutations in clumps—first ten, say, and then another ten, or first
seven, then another seven, then six—and arranges protective environments
for the intermediates. Of course, any story along these lines raises serious
doubts. Just how does the coordination of the genetic changes or the modifi-
cation of the environment work?
In presenting the possibilities in this way, I may seem to be forcing words
into the mouths of the intelligent design-ers. Their core position, after all, is
that at crucial moments in the history of life, descendants of some ancestors
who lacked some trait (or organ or structure) came to possess the pertinent
trait (organ, structure) by some causal process that is, unlike natural selec-
tion, intelligent. Why, then, do they have to talk about genes, mutations, and
the need for protection against natural selection? The answer is that the traits
in question are heritable—they are not introduced in each generation by
some continued activity on the part of Intelligence, but emerge through the
interactions of genes and environments. As in the case of the bacterial flagel-
lum, there are underlying genes, and hence there have to be genetic changes
in the passages from the ancestors to the descendants. If these changes occur
over several generations, then, on the intelligent design-ers’ own principles,
there has to be protection against the tendency of natural selection to weed
out the hapless intermediates. If they happen in one step, then, again by the
favored principles, there must be coordinated mutations. Hence, even if the
position would prefer to talk more vaguely of “novelties,” it is committed to
one of the options I have presented.
What intelligent design urgently needs if it’s going to make any progress
in understanding these transitions, in tackling the problems it claims to
raise, is a set of coherent principles that identify the ways in which Intelli-
gence is directed and what its powers and limitations are. If we lapse from
the official story for a moment, we have to have some idea about what In-
telligence “wants to achieve” and what kinds of things “it can do to work
toward what it wants.” What basis do we have to think that Intelligence
aims to remedy the plight of the flagellumless bacteria, who can’t evolve
into bacteria-with-a-flagellum under natural selection? What basis is there
to believe that Intelligence—or anything else, for that matter—can coordi-
nate genetic changes or modify environments?
In fact, we need two distinct kinds of principles. First, there have to be
principles that specify when Intelligence swings into action. Perhaps they97364_ch20_ptg01_423-448.indd 446 15/11/13 12:09 3M
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