The Toolbox argument against Intelligent Design

[Nils]

One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is the argument from intelligent design. Look at the world in all its grandeur and beauty, there has to be an intelligence that has created it, they say. Particularly, in biology, it is argued that living things seem to have been created. The Intelligent Design Theory (ID) even claims that it impossible for evolution to create some features or functions used in animals and plants. The latter claim is dismissed for several reasons, mostly that it is a God of the Gaps argument, gaps that science have closed or probably will close in the future.

However, I don’t want to discuss ID now. I will rather discuss another argument, an argument against the claim that living things seem to have been created by an intelligence. I’ll call the argument the Toolbox argument. I somehow came up with it a year ago and I haven’t seen it before. It may be new even if I doubt. Few thoughts are new nowadays. When I happened to get Dawkin’s book The Blind Watchmaker as Christmas present I read it carefully looking for the argument without finding it so I bought The God Delusion but without finding it there either. I have tried to search the net but without any success. Therefore I present the argument here. All comments and critique are welcome.

The Toolbox argument is an argument from design and evolution. It is often said that the world around us is so well designed that there is a need for a Creator. I argue that this is mistaken. Looking at the evolution of species it is just the opposite. I will explain and to be understandable I have to go more in details.

(Much of what I write here is based on http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution The Scientific Case for Common Descent. It is a long, 100 pages, description of the reasons why it is clear that all life evolved from one single occasion of abiogenesis. It is worth reading by anyone that is the slightest interested in evolutionary theory even if it is not updated after 2012).

The characteristic of evolutionary development is that it is done in small small steps. When a mutation occurs it may change an animal so that it is more fit for survival and get more offspring. Most mutations are not beneficial especially not when the environment is stable. But some are and that together with more mutations may in the long run entail that a group of that species will develop so much that they can't interbreed with the original group any longer, a new species is generated. In this way the phylogenetic tree is created. Species fork and fork again, some die off and some create more species. If a feature as eyes evolve it is inherited down the phylogenetic tree (I see it with the root upwards) but they are never inherited between the forks. (There are exceptions, mostly at the bacteria level, but that is not of interest here). Eyes, for instance, have developed in different species several times but they are not identical and these differences in the original design are inherited to the descendants. Many features that are unique to one species and its descendants do never appear in species elsewhere in the phylogenetic tree even if they would be very useful for other species.

Is the claim that life seems to have been developed by an intelligent designer true? To evaluate this assertion we should investigate how intelligent design really is done. The only designers we know of for certain are human designers so it should be of interest to study how humans design, for instance technicians that design a new product. In many cases the design is about amending an old design but of more interest here is the design of new products. After having specified the product the designer tries to find a solution to the technical problem. To do that he/she searches for solutions among older products that already exist but some times he/she has to invent new technical solutions. In new designs there may be some new component but most of the design work is done by putting together known components found in older designs. These elements may be simple mechanical elements as levers, bearings, gearwheels, and springs but often complete subsystems are incorporated in the design. So technical design is usually characterised by one or a few inventions. Besides is used earlier developed subsystems and techniques that are put together in different ways in different products. Let's take the development of transport vehicles as an example. The steam engine, the Otto engine the Diesel engine, turbo engines, and electrical motors were all invented and developed separately and then put into complete vehicles like cars, boats and in some cases aeroplanes. The same with other systems as wheels, break, lights, transmission systems, steering systems etc. It can be seen as a tool-box strategy. When you design a new machine you do an overall sketch and then tries to break down the problem to smaller parts. To implement these parts you search your tool-box that can be anything from handbooks of mechanical elements to existing design and design components and try to combine them to an optimal design. Only in special cases you start with an old design and make minor modifications. This is a general strategy not only in technical design but in any design activity.

The question then is if the biological evolution has any similarity with intelligent human design. As far as I can see the answer is no. Eyes, again, have been developed many times but the different solutions are sometimes similar but there are no example of a new design that is a blue copy of an earlier design. If there were an intelligent designer why doesn’t he use the toolbox strategy in the same way as human designers do? We would find squirrels with birdlike wings, dogs that have retractable claws, birds that don’t lay eggs but give birth to live young etc.

There seems to be two ways to design, the incremental design done by biological evolution and intelligent design using the tool-box strategy. A clear difference between the methods can be seen if you try to draw a heritage tree. In biology you get the phylogenetic tree. Parts of it is well known due to fossil findings and nowadays primarily from DNA studies. There is a simple criteria for closeness in a phylogenetic tree, the similarity of DNA between two species. However, if you try to draw a heritage tree for designs done by known intelligence, i.e. humans, you get formidable problems. Let’s take cars as an example. To draw a tree you have to determine which property is used for the primary criteria of closeness, is it age, number of wheels, motor technology, size, transmission system, steering system, colour, number of doors, placement of ash trays etc. etc. Then you have to determine a secondary and a third etc criteria more or less arbitrarily. If for example ten persons would try to draw a heritage tree for all cars you will probably get ten different trees without any similarity.

My conclusion is that biological evolution isn’t explained by reference to an intelligent designer.

There are two arguments for intelligent design.
1. Evolution without intelligence is impossible (the ID argument).
2. Evolution is best explained by intelligence (what I discuss here)
I think both arguments are false.

Nils

[PaulSacramento]

Evolution by natural selection does NOT require an "intelligence" behind it since the "selection" process is "automatic".
Of course, it has not been explained how that is, how it is the nature "selects" a random mutated trait as "beneficial" or as "useful".
Some have tried to explain that the selection is random, that nature "randomly selects" certain traits and they just happen to be beneficial.
This, of course, explains nothing.

Evolution is a process, all agree on this.
What guides it?
Some think chemistry, some think environment, and so forth.

We do NOT know for sure what drives evolution.
We do NOT know HOW natural selection "selects".

[Nicki]

Evolution by natural selection does NOT require an "intelligence" behind it since the "selection" process is "automatic".
Of course, it has not been explained how that is, how it is the nature "selects" a random mutated trait as "beneficial" or as "useful".
Some have tried to explain that the selection is random, that nature "randomly selects" certain traits and they just happen to be beneficial.
This, of course, explains nothing.

Evolution is a process, all agree on this.
What guides it?
Some think chemistry, some think environment, and so forth.

We do NOT know for sure what drives evolution.
We do NOT know HOW natural selection "selects".

Isn't it supposed to be that it just turns out to be beneficial? Like an insect being born a different colour from its parents, which happens to camouflage it better in its environment so it doesn't get eaten by a bird (or at least not as quickly as one of its normal siblings)? Or is that all too simple - after all it's not necessarily the case that such an insect would automatically live long enough to produce an extra generation of offspring, for example.

[PaulSacramento]

It turns out to be beneficial?
Who or what decides that?

[thatkidakayoungguy]

The toolbox argument does hold up, since some animals do defy the norm. Mororpus, platypus, Homo sapiens, the bombardier beetle, etc.
But there is a general flow in things which suggests that the toolbox designer decided to use "beauty in sameness".

[Nicki]

It turns out to be beneficial?
Who or what decides that?

The process I described - survival of the fittest in other words. Whether that actually works or not is another thing.

[Kurieuo]

The argument generally put forward by those like Dembski, Meyer and Behe are against forms of Darwinian evolution where there is a pure dependance upon natural selection acting upon random mutations. The downfall of such ID figureheads are that they allowed the umbrella to stretch far and wide and didn't exclude Creationists, and then they let Creationists run away with their umbrella.

Yet, Process Structuralism on the other hand is much more neutral. At least, it is as neutral as saying that the design of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree having a trunk, bark, branches, leaves, suck in carbon dioxide, etc. The end goal of an acorn, and its natural potentiality as such, is to become an oak tree. It can't grow into a eucalyptus tree or something entirely distinct. There is a process and structure which will always result in an acorn growing into an oak tree.

Now one might argue that since there is an end goal, a telos to an acorn, that this therefore implies God. And, such people might be correct. Yet, it is hardly something which troubles those who have no belief in God's existence. Such are quite fine with accepting an acorns nature and the telos within are an embedded part of the natural processes in the physical world.

However, the moment we apply similar thinking to Evolution, many who can only think in terms of Darwinian Evolution (i.e., natural selection acting upon random mutations), cry foul and exclaim "Intelligent Design", "Creationism", "God", etc. Because, unlike the acorn becoming an oak, it runs too much against their sensibilities to think that natural evolutionary processes also have an end goal and telos embedded in their physical nature. Why is that?

I assume it is something like people have been educated to think that if evolution played over life would be quite different. Since natural processes are inherently random (i.e., natural selection acting upon random varations -- the assumption of randominity isn't at all proven!) that the lifeforms evolved would be largely different. Process Structuralism however says no matter how many times history was reset, or on how many other planets evolution played out, the natural processes would always result in the same lifeform structures developing by necessity (if uninhibited) -- vertebrates, hominids and even beings as intelligent as human beings.

[Philip]

Nils, appealing to evolution is a pointless, far secondary argument which would have been totally dependent upon what happened nearly 11 billion years before, at the Big Bang - as otherwise there woould have been not even very simple lifeforms to begin evolving. As what instantly came into existence within minutes of the universe's beginning is what you really need to explain - not chaos, but instantly extraordinary things of incredible designs instantly burst into existence, immediately beginning to organize, coordinate, and instantly began obeying very specific laws. Explain the first three minutes of the Big Bang - of which all existing things are dependent upon, and then you can amuse us with novel discussions about a totally dependent, secondary processes, many billions of years after the fact!

[Nils]

Evolution by natural selection does NOT require an "intelligence" behind it since the "selection" process is "automatic".

I agree but there are some persons that claim that the existence of animals and plants are an inidcation of an intelligent creator.

Of course, it has not been explained how that is, how it is the nature "selects" a random mutated trait as "beneficial" or as "useful".
Some have tried to explain that the selection is random, that nature "randomly selects" certain traits and they just happen to be beneficial.
This, of course, explains nothing.

Evolution is a process, all agree on this.
What guides it?
Some think chemistry, some think environment, and so forth.

We do NOT know for sure what drives evolution.
We do NOT know HOW natural selection "selects".

We do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution ... _selection

Nils

[Kurieuo]

Evolution by natural selection does NOT require an "intelligence" behind it since the "selection" process is "automatic".

I agree but there are some persons that claim that the existence of animals and plants are an inidcation of an intelligent creator.

Do you believe such things are an indicator to the contrary?

[Nils]

Evolution by natural selection does NOT require an "intelligence" behind it since the "selection" process is "automatic".
Of course, it has not been explained how that is, how it is the nature "selects" a random mutated trait as "beneficial" or as "useful".
Some have tried to explain that the selection is random, that nature "randomly selects" certain traits and they just happen to be beneficial.
This, of course, explains nothing.

Evolution is a process, all agree on this.
What guides it?
Some think chemistry, some think environment, and so forth.

We do NOT know for sure what drives evolution.
We do NOT know HOW natural selection "selects".

Isn't it supposed to be that it just turns out to be beneficial? Like an insect being born a different colour from its parents, which happens to camouflage it better in its environment so it doesn't get eaten by a bird (or at least not as quickly as one of its normal siblings)? Or is that all too simple - after all it's not necessarily the case that such an insect would automatically live long enough to produce an extra generation of offspring, for example.

Necessity isn't required. It's enough that the chance to survive is slightly better than those that don't have good camoflage.

NIls

[DBowling]

I don't think 'natural selection' (ie... survival of the fittest) is the problem here. Intelligent Design says nothing to oppose the reality or effectiveness of natural selection.

What ID opposes is the adequacy of 'random mutation' working with 'natural selection' to explain:
- the structure and complexity of DNA in life forms today
- the 'evolution' of irreducibly complex biological systems
- the rapid appearance of diverse animal body plans during the Cambrian Explosion with no common predecessors in the fossil record.

Scientific experimentation over the last 30 years on 'random mutation' and 'natural selection' in bacteria have given us insight into the rate of change and the types of change in the DNA that random mutation/natural selection are capable of.

And the demonstrated rate and scope of change for random mutation and natural selection are totally incapable of explaining the structure and complexity of DNA in life today as well as the rate and scope of change that we observe in the fossil record.

Tho only adequate explanation for the fossil record and DNA evidence that I am aware of is 'Intelligent Design'

[Philip]

What can non-intelligent, blind, random things do? First, can they create themselves? Can they think, see, organize, strategize, position themselves or other things, see advantages or opportunities? Of course not! But what exists shows designs, organization, and adherence of spectacular consistencies and interactivities that we (beings with intelligence) can scarcely understand ourselves. And yet we're led to believe that blind things are more intelligent that the best human minds on the planet? And the Big Bang shows such things happening - not over billions of years - but in minutes, incredible things instantly coming into existence that have these extraordinary designs and capabilities, obeying complex laws, astoundingly interacting with purpose and precision - with a power and on a scale that is mind-boggling. And EVERYTHING that exists is entirely dependent upon what came into existence and happened in the very first minutes of the Big Bang - as where mere minutes before, NOTHING physically existed. Explain that without an intelligence, and then get back to me! Don't babble along with pointless arguments about secondary and totally dependent processes which would have begun many billions of years later - least not when it comes to arguments over an intelligent Designer behind the universe!

[abelcainsbrother]

One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is the argument from intelligent design. Look at the world in all its grandeur and beauty, there has to be an intelligence that has created it, they say. Particularly, in biology, it is argued that living things seem to have been created. The Intelligent Design Theory (ID) even claims that it impossible for evolution to create some features or functions used in animals and plants. The latter claim is dismissed for several reasons, mostly that it is a God of the Gaps argument, gaps that science have closed or probably will close in the future.

However, I don’t want to discuss ID now. I will rather discuss another argument, an argument against the claim that living things seem to have been created by an intelligence. I’ll call the argument the Toolbox argument. I somehow came up with it a year ago and I haven’t seen it before. It may be new even if I doubt. Few thoughts are new nowadays. When I happened to get Dawkin’s book The Blind Watchmaker as Christmas present I read it carefully looking for the argument without finding it so I bought The God Delusion but without finding it there either. I have tried to search the net but without any success. Therefore I present the argument here. All comments and critique are welcome.

The Toolbox argument is an argument from design and evolution. It is often said that the world around us is so well designed that there is a need for a Creator. I argue that this is mistaken. Looking at the evolution of species it is just the opposite. I will explain and to be understandable I have to go more in details.

(Much of what I write here is based on http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution The Scientific Case for Common Descent. It is a long, 100 pages, description of the reasons why it is clear that all life evolved from one single occasion of abiogenesis. It is worth reading by anyone that is the slightest interested in evolutionary theory even if it is not updated after 2012).

The characteristic of evolutionary development is that it is done in small small steps. When a mutation occurs it may change an animal so that it is more fit for survival and get more offspring. Most mutations are not beneficial especially not when the environment is stable. But some are and that together with more mutations may in the long run entail that a group of that species will develop so much that they can't interbreed with the original group any longer, a new species is generated. In this way the phylogenetic tree is created. Species fork and fork again, some die off and some create more species. If a feature as eyes evolve it is inherited down the phylogenetic tree (I see it with the root upwards) but they are never inherited between the forks. (There are exceptions, mostly at the bacteria level, but that is not of interest here). Eyes, for instance, have developed in different species several times but they are not identical and these differences in the original design are inherited to the descendants. Many features that are unique to one species and its descendants do never appear in species elsewhere in the phylogenetic tree even if they would be very useful for other species.

Is the claim that life seems to have been developed by an intelligent designer true? To evaluate this assertion we should investigate how intelligent design really is done. The only designers we know of for certain are human designers so it should be of interest to study how humans design, for instance technicians that design a new product. In many cases the design is about amending an old design but of more interest here is the design of new products. After having specified the product the designer tries to find a solution to the technical problem. To do that he/she searches for solutions among older products that already exist but some times he/she has to invent new technical solutions. In new designs there may be some new component but most of the design work is done by putting together known components found in older designs. These elements may be simple mechanical elements as levers, bearings, gearwheels, and springs but often complete subsystems are incorporated in the design. So technical design is usually characterised by one or a few inventions. Besides is used earlier developed subsystems and techniques that are put together in different ways in different products. Let's take the development of transport vehicles as an example. The steam engine, the Otto engine the Diesel engine, turbo engines, and electrical motors were all invented and developed separately and then put into complete vehicles like cars, boats and in some cases aeroplanes. The same with other systems as wheels, break, lights, transmission systems, steering systems etc. It can be seen as a tool-box strategy. When you design a new machine you do an overall sketch and then tries to break down the problem to smaller parts. To implement these parts you search your tool-box that can be anything from handbooks of mechanical elements to existing design and design components and try to combine them to an optimal design. Only in special cases you start with an old design and make minor modifications. This is a general strategy not only in technical design but in any design activity.

The question then is if the biological evolution has any similarity with intelligent human design. As far as I can see the answer is no. Eyes, again, have been developed many times but the different solutions are sometimes similar but there are no example of a new design that is a blue copy of an earlier design. If there were an intelligent designer why doesn’t he use the toolbox strategy in the same way as human designers do? We would find squirrels with birdlike wings, dogs that have retractable claws, birds that don’t lay eggs but give birth to live young etc.

There seems to be two ways to design, the incremental design done by biological evolution and intelligent design using the tool-box strategy. A clear difference between the methods can be seen if you try to draw a heritage tree. In biology you get the phylogenetic tree. Parts of it is well known due to fossil findings and nowadays primarily from DNA studies. There is a simple criteria for closeness in a phylogenetic tree, the similarity of DNA between two species. However, if you try to draw a heritage tree for designs done by known intelligence, i.e. humans, you get formidable problems. Let’s take cars as an example. To draw a tree you have to determine which property is used for the primary criteria of closeness, is it age, number of wheels, motor technology, size, transmission system, steering system, colour, number of doors, placement of ash trays etc. etc. Then you have to determine a secondary and a third etc criteria more or less arbitrarily. If for example ten persons would try to draw a heritage tree for all cars you will probably get ten different trees without any similarity.

My conclusion is that biological evolution isn’t explained by reference to an intelligent designer.

There are two arguments for intelligent design.
1. Evolution without intelligence is impossible (the ID argument).
2. Evolution is best explained by intelligence (what I discuss here)
I think both arguments are false.

Nils

You do realize that there is no credible mechanism for life evolving.This is a serious problem that biologists have ignored in order to push the theory of evolution myth.Without a credibile mechanism as with the case of evolution and there is absolutely no way to show how things like natural selection,random mutations,random DNA copying errors,genetic drift,speciation,etc works on any life like is explained to cause any life to evolve.

Further the only thing scientists have proven is that there is normal variation amongst the populations and we did not need scientists to proive this to us as nobody denies it.It is just stating the obvious.Look at the link you provided for 29 examples of macro-evolution and you'll only see normal variation amongst the populations being demonstrated.But look at examples of micro-evolution and you'll see the exact same thing and that is normal variation amongst the populations.The only difference is when it comes to macro-evolution they'll throw in the evolution speciation myth to make it more believable to imply it evolved but the only thing really proven was normal variation amongst the populations.

Like I said before without a credibile mechanism and it is impossible to demonstrate speciation causes life to evolve like they claim but speciation can be easily debunked just based on how not all dogs can breed and yet they all still remain in the population of dogs and have not evolved above the speciies level. Yet they claim that it evolved when it can no longer breed.So that when scientists can only prove to us that there is normal variation amongst the population then throw in the speciation myth to make it more believable it is just a myth without any evidence that truly demonstrates life evolves and it is serious deception on the part of scientists.

If you go back 160 years ago Darwin used normal variation amongst the populations to convince the world life evolves and 160 years ago it may have seemed reasonable to assume that these small variations amongst the populations can over time add up to big evolutionary changes but not 160 years later and you never showed or demonstrated Darwin was correct and are still using normal variation amongst the populations to try to convince people life evolves. It does'nt. The only thing that has been proven is that yes there is variation amongst the populations but there is a limit to how much variation can be had so that it is impossible for life to evolve.Based on this there is no reason to believe evolution was guided by Intelligent Design,nor become a Theistic Evolutionist.

[Nils]

The argument generally put forward by those like Dembski, Meyer and Behe are against forms of Darwinian evolution where there is a pure dependance upon natural selection acting upon random mutations. The downfall of such ID figureheads are that they allowed the umbrella to stretch far and wide and didn't exclude Creationists, and then they let Creationists run away with their umbrella.

Yet, Process Structuralism on the other hand is much more neutral. At least, it is as neutral as saying that the design of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree having a trunk, bark, branches, leaves, suck in carbon dioxide, etc. The end goal of an acorn, and its natural potentiality as such, is to become an oak tree. It can't grow into a eucalyptus tree or something entirely distinct. There is a process and structure which will always result in an acorn growing into an oak tree.

Now one might argue that since there is an end goal, a telos to an acorn, that this therefore implies God. And, such people might be correct. Yet, it is hardly something which troubles those who have no belief in God's existence. Such are quite fine with accepting an acorns nature and the telos within are an embedded part of the natural processes in the physical world.

I don't understand why you bring Structuralism into the discussion. Darwinian Evolution (or rather The Evolutionary Theory TET) is by the most convincing theory and is embraced by almost all biologists. It has great predictive value and is verified almost daily and could as well have been falsified at those occasions. You say that teleology would be better appreciated by atheist if we talk about Structuralism instead of TET. I am not sure. If Structuralism only was being able to explain that two eyes or four legs (mostly) are natural properties I had no problem with the theory. If it also is supposed to explain for instance creation of almost one million insect species or the cellular design then Structuralism doesn’t seem to be possible to reduce to physics or to supervene on physics. That would imply a theist or at least a deist view which isn’t attractive to atheists.

However, the moment we apply similar thinking to Evolution, many who can only think in terms of Darwinian Evolution (i.e., natural selection acting upon random mutations), cry foul and exclaim "Intelligent Design", "Creationism", "God", etc. Because, unlike the acorn becoming an oak, it runs too much against their sensibilities to think that natural evolutionary processes also have an end goal and telos embedded in their physical nature. Why is that?

Speaking about myself, I am an atheist not primarily because of TET, i.e. I am an atheist because of lot of other reasons. Not believing in God makes me think that there isn’t any teleology in nature As long as there in no clear evidence for teleology in evolution I will not believe in any. The Toolbox argument is an argument against teleology in biology and it strengthens my position. I think most atheists have the same view.

I assume it is something like people have been educated to think that if evolution played over life would be quite different. Since natural processes are inherently random (i.e., natural selection acting upon random varations -- the assumption of randominity isn't at all proven!) that the lifeforms evolved would be largely different. Process Structuralism however says no matter how many times history was reset, or on how many other planets evolution played out, the natural processes would always result in the same lifeform structures developing by necessity (if uninhibited) -- vertebrates, hominids and even beings as intelligent as human beings.

What’s the conclusion of this paragraph?

Nils