1The Guardian has recently published a series of ignorant caricatures of the Intelligent Design (I.D.) hypothesis combined with bald (almost “Epicurean” – see above) assertions of the validity of the hypothesis of evolution (see, for example, Leader, 22/12/05, and Comment, 26/11/05). Regarding the methodology of I.D. theory, it is worth considering the following comments from the July issue of Science Magazine: “Famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey thought tools made the man, and so when he uncovered hominid bones near stone tools in Tanzania in the 1960s, he labeled the putative toolmaker Homo habilis, the earliest member of the human genus. But then primatologist Jane Goodall demonstrated that chimps also use tools of a sort, and today researchers debate whether H. habilis truly belongs in Homo”. Leakey could be said to have employed intelligent design thinking in his identification of evidence for evolutionary human ancestry; in other words, that he inferred from what I.D. theorists would call the “specified complexity” of the tools that the skull must belong to a being of the genus Homo. I.D. theory is merely an attempt to work out the mathematics that support such inferences and apply them to the complexity of nature itself. It turns out that the validity of Leakey's supposition is now challenged – but this challenge has taken place by means of proper argument, and not by resorting to dogma. (A similar example of the employment of I.D. thinking in the search for evidence of evolution may be found in this BBC story about the discovery of a possible “missing link”, in which it is noted that “Stone tools . . . were also found at the site” (27/3/06).)

A more learned critique of I.D. theory appeared recently in the The Daily Telegraph, but this article in turn contains manipulative fallacies of relevance. The author states, for example, that, “far from defending God against the secular Darwinists, the supporters of Intelligent Design are more likely to disprove Him altogether”. This invites the (Christian) reader to affirm that one ought not to deny God, in order to better prepare him or her to accept the doubtful proposition that, because of the risk of failure inherent in any theory, the I.D. hypothesis should “therefore” be rejected. This in turn is designed to support the fallacy contained in the title of the article, “This is a fight the Designers have to lose”, which is an attempt at peremptorily stifling debate. The fallacious nature of the Telegraph argument can be shown by considering the following. Physicists currently believe that the universe has not existed forever. According to the quantum theory of gravity, however, it could be that the universe is completely self-contained, with neither a beginning nor an end. Should Christians then cling to the “big bang” theory and reject research into quantum theory, for fear of “disproving God”? (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow remark on this subject, “As long as we believed the universe had a beginning, the role of a creator seemed clear. But if the universe . . . [has] neither beginning nor end, then the answer is not so obvious: what is the role of a creator?” (A Briefer History of Time, Bantam, 2005, p.103). Traditional metaphysics answers this question with the principle of dependence or contingence. This is not a matter of asking when was the universe, but whence is the universe?)

The Times has carried a similar article to the Telegraph's, with the addition of much abusive language plus the following claim: “evolution was a theory when Darwin first posited it; now it is as well rooted as, say, quantum physics”. This is an example of argument by forced analogy. A more trivial forced analogy that the reader might come across in this, and other contexts, is the attempt to equate belief in God with belief in such childhood fantasies as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. This analogy is particularly vulnerable to backfiring given that the appearance of the presents or the disappearance of the tooth from under the pillow still requires an explanation other than that “it merely happens”. And that explanation is one of intelligent design.

Home	Science with Integrity
	Last updated: 22/1/07
	Introduction
	In Collective Electrodynamics (The MIT Press, 2002), Carver Mead, Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at California Institute of Technology, declares: “It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be characterized in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics” (p.1).
	In Moral Darwinism (InterVarsity Press, 2002), Benjamin Wiker demonstrates that “Epicurus [whose ancient philosophy provided the inspiration for modern materialism] was seeking a view of science and nature to fit the way of life he was advocating; that is, he needed a cosmology to support his morality” (p.22).
	If science, and philosophy in general, is to involve the search for truth, it must be presupposed that the scientist has a moral attachment to the truth. Materialism, however, denies the existence of objective morality, and so contains within itself a “justification” for failing to adhere to honest and rigorous academic and intellectual standards.
	Amongst others, the Intelligent Design¹ movement in America involves an attempt to restore the selfless Catholic love of truth to the natural sciences in order to liberate them from the tendentious corruptions of materialist theory.

	Materials
	Present-day Catholic students will have a vitally important, but highly rewarding, rôle to play in this struggle, a major part of which involves obtaining access to unbiased materials. As an excellent starting-point in this quest, CatholicSchool.org.uk recommends the Web site of the Access Research Network.
	It is also extremely important that students obtain an understanding of logic, and in particular of logical fallacies, as a great deal, if not all, of the deception contained in materialist propaganda consists in the skilful employment of these.
	(Click here to see CatholicSchool.org.uk's own Web-based resource for analysing and refuting logical fallacies.)

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