by Phillip E. Johnson


Paper delivered at the Conference on the Origin of Intelligent Life in the
Universe

Sponsored by the International School of Plasma Physics in Varenna, Italy, July
28-31, 1998.


Introduction

I propose for consideration two models of the relation between science and
religion. In the first, materialist model, science is seen as based upon
philosophical materialism. For scientific purposes, every event or phenomenon is
conclusively presumed to have a material cause, at least after the ultimate
beginning. Within this first model, to postulate a non-material cause " such as
an unevolved intelligence or vital force " for any event is to enter the
territory of religion. For materialists, this is equivalent to departing from
reality into fantasy.

The second, or testability model defines science strictly in terms of accepted
procedures for testing hypotheses, such as repeatable experiments. Within the
second model, whatever is testable is eligible for consideration. Whether some
phenomenon could have been produced by unintelligent material causes, or whether
an intelligent cause must be postulated, is eligible for investigation whether
the phenomenon in question is a possible prehistoric artifact, a radio signal
from space, or a biological cell.

I will illustrate the difference by quoting the famous opening verse of the
Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." To a materialist that is
mythology, and scientific nonsense. A materialist might paraphrase or parody the
opening verses of John with this alternative:

In the beginning were the particles, And the particles formed galaxies and
planets, And on at least one planet the particles became complex living stuff
And the stuff imagined God, But eventually discovered Evolution.
Which is correct the original verse or the parody? To a materialist, only the
parody deserves serious consideration. To one who adheres to the testability
model of science, either possibility is acceptable. In biology, one can test the
visible and measurable qualities of organisms to see if they are such that
unintelligent material processes could produce them. It is possible that
organisms contain some feature, such as extremely complex specified information,
which cannot plausibly be ascribed to unaided material causes alone. In that
case the real existence of a necessary intelligent cause must be taken seriously
as a candidate for further confirmation or falsification. For this purpose, it
does not matter whether the intelligence is thought to belong to God, or to some
alien race of intelligent beings, or to some entity we cannot yet imagine.
The difference between the two models becomes of practical significance in light
of recent works arguing that intelligent causes may have been active in the
history of life. Should a hypothesis of intelligent design in biology be
rejected a priori as inconsistent with materialism, or should it be considered
eligible for fair-minded testing?

Science as Applied Materialist Philosophy

Richard Dawkins has expressed the scientific materialist outlook on the "mind
first" concept with his characteristic pungency:

But of course any God capable of intelligently designing as complex as the
DNA/protein replicating machinery must have been at least as complex and
organized as that machine itself. Far more so if we suppose him additionally
capable of such advanced functions as listening to prayers and forgiving sins.
To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural
Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin
of the Designer. You have to say something like "God was always there," and if
you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well say that "DNA
was always there," or "Life was always there," and be done with it. [Dawkins,
The Blind Watchmaker, Longman, 1986, p. 141.]

There is a lot of middle ground, however, between a statement that "explains
precisely nothing" and a statement that does not explain everything. Admittedly,
the naked statement that "God created life" does not explain very much, but
neither does the naked statement that "life somehow evolved." That is why the
validity or invalidity of the neo-Darwinian mechanism (or some precisely
specified materialist alternative) is such an important question for theology
and philosophy, as well as science. If I say that "the first life form was
designed by intelligence," my statement explains something, even if I can say
nothing about the identity of the designer or the means by which the design was
executed. What it explains (if it is true) is that we are on the wrong road if
we are seeking to discover how life can be made without a designing
intelligence. Detailed truth builds upon basic truth. If we base our research on
counterfactual assumptions we are likely to be heading up a blind alley.
It is also illogical to reject a basic starting point simply because it is a
starting point, and therefore rests upon something whose origin is unexplained.
The nature of explanation is that one thing is explained on the basis of
something else which is taken for granted, and the chain of explanation must
either end at some point or go around in an endless circle. A mind-first
approach starts with mind in existence, and a matter-first approach starts with
matter in existence. (This symmetry remains even when materialists obscure it by
invoking devices such as an eternal cycle of evolving universes, or the
replacement of "matter" by fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, or equations
employing imaginary time that portray a universe without a beginning.) The
advantage of starting with matter is that matter seems simpler, even though
humans are no more able to make matter from nothing than mind from nothing.
Other things being equal, a simple starting point is preferable to a complex
one. This is the kernel of truth in the paragraph by Dawkins previously quoted.
But are the other things equal? The advantage of starting with mind is that mind
has capacities which matter lacks, capacities which may be necessary to explain
the world. If there is convincing evidence that mindless matter can produce
life, and even mind, then the matter-first position holds the advantage. But if
matter lacks those capacities, then it will be more productive of truth to start
with mind. It is not scientific to assume that matter has such capabilities
merely because that is what scientists would like to believe.

Dawkins is one of many scientists who hold that materialism and science are
effectively the same thing. Another fervent materialist, Harvard University
geneticist Richard Lewontin, has written that the key to educating the public
about science is not to emphasize the teaching of particular facts and theories,
but rather to teach students to believe in materialism as a philosophy and in
"Science, as the only begetter of truth." In Lewontin's words, "We exist as
material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences
of material relations among material entities." He even invokes another verse of
John's Gospel in this connection, proclaiming that materialism is "the truth
that makes you free." (It sets you free from priests and superstition.) Lewontin
is as skeptical as I am about much of what passes as evolutionary theory,
including the adaptationist theories of Richard Dawkins, which he dismisses as
"just-so stories." He is also keenly aware that it is not only in disreputable
fields like astrology or the softer sciences that one may find biased testing or
inflated claims. Pseudoscience sometimes thrives in prestigious universities and
hospitals, with the support of powerful government agencies. Why, then, should
we trust science? Here is Lewontin's answer:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its
constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant
promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior
commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and
institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of
the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori
adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set
of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how
counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that
materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.... To
appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities
of nature may be ruptured, than miracles may happen.

[All quotes are from Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons," in the New
York Review of Books, January 9, 1997.]

To say that the commitment to materialism is a priori is to imply that science
should stick to materialism even if scientific testing does not support the
claim that matter can create life or mind. This degree of commitment is thought
to be required because the existence of a creating mind threatens the picture of
a world that is ruled only by law and chance. But the omnipotent deity as law
maker could be viewed as underwriting the natural laws rather than threatening
them, even if rare exceptions are allowed. Once again, we seem to be
encountering the "all or nothing" fallacy that excludes the huge middle ground
in between. Modern legal systems authorize the President or Prime Minister to
pardon criminals, but this provision for discretionary exceptions does not
prevent a lawyer from telling a convicted narcotics dealer approximately how
long he can expect to spend in prison. (Scientific predictions are also often
approximate or statistical.) Medical doctors occasionally encounter astonishing
cures or remissions that elude explanation. However they explain the anomalies,
the doctors rightly retain their trust in the efficacy of scientific medicine
for the great majority of cases.

The Divine Foot does not threaten a science that is content to be one important
road to truth, but it does threaten "Science as the only begetter of truth." Is
it really in the best interest of science itself to claim the power to explain
everything? It is easy to see why ambitious scientists would be attracted to a
philosophy that maximizes the explanatory power of science, but this very
advantage creates a paradox. If science explains literally everything in terms
of physical causes, then it also explains the scientific mind and its thoughts.
If matter is ultimately all there is, and if our brains are the product of
mindless chemical combinations, and if "the mind is merely what the brain
does,"then our thoughts and theories are products of mindless forces. This
disquieting point remains valid even if the relationship between chemistry and
thought is deemed to be complex, as in the "computational theory of the mind." A
computer may come up with some astonishing answers, but it computes within the
boundaries set by its designer. The computer Deep Blue plays chess much better
than its programmers could, but it will never defy them and choose to write
poetry instead.

On materialist assumptions it is mysterious that we can reach truth by
scientific investigation, exploiting mental capacities that would have been
useless in the conditions in which they supposedly evolved. One common
materialist speculation is that the most advanced human mental capacities are
accidental products of a big brain explosion that just happened to produce a
great deal more capability than primitive man could make use of at the time. I
would say that such an explanation explains precisely nothing, especially when
it comes from scientists who indignantly reject the idea that brain size is a
reliable measure of human intelligence today. When we consider all the
implications, scientists may have as much reason as theologians to be suspicious
of materialist reductionism when it is applied to the mind.

Don't misunderstand me; I am no anti-rationalist. I am convinced that we really
do have the ability to reason from sound premises to true conclusions, when our
minds are operating as they should, and that our best theories correspond at
least approximately to "the way things really are." The question is whether the
ability to theorize. which is different in kind from anything in the animal
world, can be explained from a materialist starting point. Widespread
ambivalence on this point helps to explain why there is so much resistance, even
among materialists, to extending Darwinian explanations from the body (where
they are dubious enough) to the mind. The Pope wants the Darwinists to leave the
mind to the Church, and Stephen Jay Gould wants them to leave it to left-wing
politics. Richard Dawkins says that "we are survival machines -- robot vehicles
blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." (The
Selfish Gene, Preface to 1976 edition) A little later he is fomenting robot
rebellion: "Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we
may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no
other species has ever aspired to." (The Selfish Gene, 1989 edition, p. 3.)
Dawkins ally Steven Pinker said it most dramatically:

Well into my procreating years I am, so far, voluntarily childless, having
squandered my biological resources reading and writing, doing research,
helping out friends and students, and jogging in circles, ignoring the solemn
imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake,
a pathetic loser, not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of
Queer Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't like it,
they can jump in the lake. (Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton, 1997,
p. 52.)

So it seems that we can rebel against our creator, eat the forbidden fruit, and
strike off on our own. Pinker, otherwise a materialist of the purest water,
introduces a different metaphysical starting point by insisting upon that
self-governing "I." A consistent materialist knows that "I" is no more than a
place holder for the material causes that produce the experience of
subjectivity. But "I" wonder if there is such a thing as a truly consistent
materialist.

Despite these logical disadvantages, materialism as a definition of science has
some apparent advantages that ensure its continuing popularity among scientists.
An a priori adherence to materialism allows scientists to assume certain things
that they very much wish to believe. They can assume, for example, that lifeless
chemicals are endowed with the power to combine spontaneously to produce living
organisms. This remarkable doctrine, decisively repudiated by Pasteur in the
19th Century when it was called "spontaneous generation," would be very
difficult to prove, to put it mildly. But it is easy to assume, and spontaneous
generation must have happened at least once if materialism is true. Thus Graham
Cairns-Smith, who has brilliantly debunked the reigning "RNA-first" theory in
origin of life studies, remains as convinced as Stanley Miller himself that the
solution to the problem lies with chemistry. But is that conviction more than a
leap of faith?

Similarly, try to present convincing evidence that the Darwinian
mutation/selection mechanism really does have the kind of creative power needed
to make complex organs like wings and eyes and brains or even cells. By
"convincing" evidence I mean evidence which is convincing to someone who is
inclined to doubt, not just to those who are already convinced. Everybody with
even a cursory knowledge of the literature knows that the textbook examples
(Kettlewell's peppered moths, Grant's finch beaks) describe relatively trivial
changes that involve no innovation or increase in genetic information. Debate
this point (as I have) and you will find that most Darwinists quickly retreat to
the vague claim that "evolution has occurred." But when materialism is assumed
as the very basis of science, they can re-emerge a few logical steps later in
triumph. Something had to guide evolution, to produce those wonders of apparent
design, and natural selection is just about the only materialist contender.
That is why we can have a Conference like this one, on the origin of life no,
make that the origin of intelligent life -- in the universe. Without the a
priori starting point in materialism, we might have to abandon the project on
the ground that the available data are not sufficient even for informed
speculation. I am the last person to want to spoil a party, particularly one as
pleasant as this one, but I will take the risk. Is there a better way to define
"science?"

The Challenge of Intelligent Design Theory

The challenge that materialist theories of evolution face today can be
summarized briefly. First, Richard Dawkins himself began The Blind Watchmaker,
his influential restatement of neo-Darwinism, with the observation that "biology
is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been
designed for a purpose." Dawkins also agrees that living organisms contain vast
quantities of genetic information, far more than in a typical computer program.
In Dawkins' own words:

Physics books may be complicated, but ... the objects and phenomena that a
physics book describes are simpler than a single cell in the body of its
author. And the author consists of trillions of those cells, many of them
different from each other, organized with intricate architecture and
precision-engineering into a working machine capable of writing a book....
Each nucleus... contains a digitally coded database larger, in information
content, that all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. And
this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of the body put together. (The
Blind Watchmaker, pp. 2-3)

Complex specified information of this kind is something that, in all ordinary
human experience, is produced only by intelligence. Moreover, the information is
fundamentally distinct from the medium in which it is inscribed, so that it
cannot be explained or understood solely in terms of physical or chemical laws.
This is an aspect of reality that we encounter every day in reading a book, or a
document on a computer screen.. The information is not a product, "emergent" or
otherwise, of the laws which govern the combining of ink and paper. Something
else in this case the mind and meaning of the author has to be taken into
account. Another distinguished evolutionary biologist, George C. Williams, has
put the point eloquently:

Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or
less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter.... These
two domains can never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually
implied by the term "reductionism." ...The gene is a package of information,
not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule specifies the gene.
But the DNA molecule is the medium, not the message. Maintaining this
distinction between the medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to
clarity of thought about evolution.

Putting these points together: we see that to account for life (in this case,
the cell), we have to explain not only the origin of the chemicals but also the
origin of the information. The neo-Darwinian explanation is well-known. It
assumes that a very simple replicating organism started one way or another.
Thereafter, the theory ascribes the increases in information to random mutation,
and insists that the vast quantity of information can be provided by mutation in
very small doses, if each dose immediately adds to the ability of the organism
to survive and reproduce.

There are many excellent reasons for doubting the adequacy of this kind of
explanation. Random changes (such as copying errors in the DNA) do not generate
increases in information, whether they are small or large. It is not necessarily
easier to provide the same amount of information in multitudinous small doses,
rather than a single large one. Each increment is less unlikely, but the price
one pays is that one has to have a great many increments, each of which must
supply the precise kind of new information required. To illustrate the point
with an analogy: It is hard enough to earn one million dollars by winning the
grand prize in a lottery, but it is no easier to achieve that feat by winning a
$100 prize 10,000 times.

Even if mutation is capable of providing the increments in genetic information,
what we know of organisms does not support the assumption that the complexity
can be built up by individual steps which are increasingly adaptive. This is the
central point of biochemist Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box, (Free Press
1996), which has had a wide readership in the United States and is being
translated into many other languages. According to Behe, Dawkins' blind
watchmaker thesis is a relic of a nineteenth century science which lacked the
understanding of biological mechanisms that recent advances in molecular biology
have provided. The biologists who established the still-dominant Darwinian
orthodoxy thought of the cell as an undifferentiated blob of "protoplasm." The
organism (and especially the cell) was to them a "black box" -- a machine which
does wonderful things by some mechanism nobody knows. Behe explains that
biochemists are now able to explore part of the insides of that black box, and
what they find inside is "irreducible complexity." A system is irreducibly
complex if it is "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that
contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts
causes the system to effectively cease functioning." Life at the molecular level
is replete with such systems, and biologists for the most part do not even
attempt to explain how they could have come into existence by the Darwinian
mechanism. The few examples that are do try to meet the problem are replete with
hand-waving. Crucial components "appear" or "arise" out of nowhere, as required.
That's enough for now. I don't need to make the entire case for intelligent
design, but merely to make the argument that there is something here worth
examining on a fair basis. I emphasize that, although I am talking about a
minority viewpoint I am not relying on anything that can be dismissed as fringe
science. Behe is a research biochemist with impeccable qualifications. His
scientific descriptions are echoed by his materialist colleagues; it is only the
philosophy that causes disagreements. The more theoretical aspects of
intelligent design are discussed in (among many other places) two books from
Cambridge University Press from scientific scholars with appropriate pedigrees.
[Hubert Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge University
Press 1992); William Dembski, The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press,
1998).

If living systems are composed of complex specified information, and if
information is fundamentally distinct from matter, and if contemporary
evolutionary science has failed to provide an adequate information-generating
mechanism, then it is reasonable to conclude at least provisionally that the
materialist cause is flunking the test. The materialists have a right to reply,
of course, and they may win the argument in the end. But -- if science is based
on testability rather than on a priori adherence to materialism -- they will
need to respond with scientific evidence that shows that natural selection (or
some other specific mechanism) can create as advertised.

I published a version of this argument in the October, 1996 issue of the journal
Biology and Philosophy, mainly in the hope that Dawkins and Williams would
respond. They did respond in the same issue. Along with the expected ad hominem
arguments, they both made the same substantive point, which is correct as far as
it goes. They said that the mere fact that information and matter are separate
kinds of entities does not mean that the information has to be supplied by
intelligence if the information content is sufficiently low. As Williams put it:
Johnson's argument is based on some obvious fallacies, such as information
requiring an intelligent author. The pattern of slow-moving waves in sand
dunes records information about what the wind has been doing lately. Their
shadow pattern observed late in the day is information about the structure of
the dunes and less directly about the wind. The only author recognizable here
is the wind. Similar patternings must arise in any complex molecular,
including the prebiotic. If one kind of molecular pattern influences others in
ways that increase the incidence of that pattern, a hypercycle subject to
natural selection has arisen. That would be analogous to some pattern of dune
shadows making it more likely that the responsible winds would occur more
frequently. That the author of genetic information is as stupid as the wind is
apparent in the functionally stupid historical constraints discussed in
Chapter 6 of my 1992 book [citing apparently suboptimal biological systems].
[George C. Williams, "Reply to Johnson," in Biology and Philosophy (Vol. 11,
n. 4, October, 1996), p. 541. (Emphasis added).

I think Williams' argument misses the main point, but I do like the way he
defines the issue. Evolutionary biology has traditionally asked the wrong
questions, such as "do organisms vary?" or Darwin's "are the species immutable?"
Of course organisms vary, and of course the species are not immutable. The more
interesting question is: "where does the genetic information come from?" Some
kinds of information can be produced by unintelligent causes; other kinds can
not. The kind of information recorded in sand dunes illustrates the former; the
kind of information recorded in physics textbooks, and even more in the mind of
the physicist, represents the latter. Information theory is the branch of
science that explicates the difference, and the latest word on the subject is to
be found in William Dembski's book, The Design Inference. There are speculative
ideas, such as Eigen's hypercycles and the Darwin/Dawkins blind watchmaker
mechanism, that claim to bridge the gap. The question is: are these mechanisms
convincing when you view them from a metaphysically neutral posture, or only
when you view them with an a priori commitment to materialism?

Conclusion

A quote from the late Carl Sagan captures the essential issue. In a book
published shortly before his death he said:

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or
counterproductive, and the most ruthless scrutiny of all ideas, old and new...
Consider this claim: As I walk along, time -- as measured by my wristwatch or my
aging process -- slows down.... Here's another: Matter and antimatter are all
the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third:
once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick
wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all
absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two
are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier
tunneling, they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you
insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings
on the rules that govern the universe. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle in the Dark, p. 306 (Random House 1995).

"Like it or not, that's the way the world is." Sagan understood that prejudice
of every kind is the ultimate enemy of science, but he could not grasp the
possibility that he might be guilty of the fault he ascribed to others. He was
incapable of conceiving that his own faction might have so strong a wish that
materialism be true that they would be willing to set up an a priori
philosophical principle as their God, and exempt it from the ruthless scrutiny
that science otherwise requires.. (I know this for a fact, because I tried
without success to explain the concept to Sagan in a long dinner conversation at
Cornell University hosted by our mutual friend William Provine. Sagan didn't
just disagree -- he couldn't grasp the concept.) If Sagan could have removed the
plank from his own eye, he would have seen better to remove the splinter from
his brother's eye.

True believers in the scientific method, among whom I count myself, do not
exempt ourselves from scientific standards. If we prefer to believe in divine
creation we recognize that the facts may not support our preference, and if we
prefer to believe in materialism we do the same. That insistence on questioning
what we might want to believe, and applying the same critical standards to
ourselves that we recommend to others, is how I define "science." How do you
define it?