Many critics are downright confused about the distinction between intelligent design and creationism. Let me provide a nice example that should help clarify this distinction for those who have open minds. I’ll do so by considering the basic argument (as I see it) of Stephen Meyer’s paper, The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories.

Before I begin the analysis, let me make it clear that I am not defending any argument nor am I suggesting the Cambrian explosion is associated with ID. Anyone who has read and tried to understand my web page and posts on ARN (over the last five years) knows I have not made an issue about the Cambrian explosion as this is an area I have not looked into. I am simply going to use the paper/argument as a type of case study to help people see the distinction between ID and creationism.

I first found out about Meyer’s paper from the outcry of critics on the internet. According to them, it was a terribly flawed anti-evolution paper. I was told that Meyer was arguing that evolution could not explain the origin of the Cambrian phyla, thus they must have been designed. In fact, this perception seems to have been behind some of the nasty behavior on the part of some Smithsonian scientists.

The perception itself probably originated from Alan Gishlick, Nick Matzke, and Wesley Elsberry’s blog.

They wrote:

Meyer repeats the claim that there are no transitional fossils for the Cambrian phyla. This is a standard ploy of the Young-Earth Creationists (see Padian and Angielczyk 1999 for extended discussion of this tactic and its problems).

Yet when you search through Meyer’s article for the word ‘transitional,’ it’s sole appearance is as follows:

To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediate forms connecting Cambrian animals with simpler pre-Cambrian forms. And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna (Miklos 1993, Erwin et al. 1997:132, Steiner & Reitner 2001, Conway Morris 2003b:510, Valentine et al. 2003:519-520). Further, several recent discoveries and analyses suggest that these morphological gaps may not be merely an artifact of incomplete sampling of the fossil record (Foote 1997, Foote et al. 1999, Benton & Ayala 2003, Meyer et al. 2003), suggesting that the fossil record is at least approximately reliable (Conway Morris 2003b:505).

Gishlick et al. not only assert that Meyer claimed “there are no transitional fossils for the Cambrian phyla,” they assert Meyer repeated this claim, thus rhetorically tying Meyer’s paper to creationist claims. Yet no where does he actually claim “there are no transitional fossils for the Cambrian phyla." This is a clear example of misrepresentation.

Furthermore, Meyer really does not hinge his case on transitional fossils. Meyer argues:

This review will not address these questions of historical pattern. Instead, it will analyze whether the neo-Darwinian process of mutation and selection, or other processes of evolutionary change, can generate the form and information necessary to produce the animals that arise in the Cambrian. This analysis will, for the most part, therefore, not depend upon assumptions of either a long or short fuse for the Cambrian explosion, or upon a monophyletic or polyphyletic view of the early history of life.

If Meyer’s argument does hinge on the existence or non-existence of transitionals, he cannot sidestep the historical pattern. In fact, if Meyer’s thesis cannot tolerate transitional fossils, you would think he would have sided with the “short fuse” and “polyphyletic” view rather than treat them as irrelevant.

Meyer’s footnote elaborates on his chosen focus and makes it even more clear:

If one takes the fossil record at face value and assumes that the Cambrian explosion took place within a relatively narrow 5-10 million year window, explaining the origin of the information necessary to produce new proteins, for example, becomes more acute in part because mutation rates would not have been sufficient to generate the number of changes in the genome necessary to build the new proteins for more complex Cambrian animals (Ohno 1996:8475-8478). This review will argue that, even if one allows several hundred million years for the origin of the metazoan, significant probabilistic and other difficulties remain with the neo-Darwinian explanation of the origin of form and information. – emphasis added

Thus, Meyer’s argument has nothing to do with the existence of transitional fossils (which would be expected to exist during the “hundreds of millions of years for the origin of the metazoan”). It’s all about a) whether an increase in information was associated with the Cambrian explosion and b) whether intelligence is required as the source of such information. That’s his ID argument.

Yet it is at this very point where the critic’s reflex kicks in. If “intelligence is required,” says the critic, “Meyer must be talking about God and creationism!” But let’s imagine, for the mere sake of argument, that Meyer was indeed correct. Let’s say there was an information increase associated with the Cambrian explosion that is not accounted for by Darwinian mechanisms and we found ourselves agreeing with the idea that some intelligent input was needed. How does one get from here to the necessary conclusion that the Cambrian phyla materialized into existence as a consequence of divine activity and could not possibly be descendents of earlier organisms? Rather than relying on a simple reflex, the critic needs to spell out why such creationism would necessarily follow. After all, consider the possibility where Intelligent Design’s role in bringing forth the Cambrian explosion may have expressed itself from within the matrix of evolution. Nothing in Meyer’s argument would contradict this evolutionary interpretation.

Intelligent design is simply about determining whether natural history included intelligent input. Most ID theorists are focused on developing methods for detecting such intelligent input, which is the focus of Meyer’s paper. If someone agrees with Meyer’s case, then they can proceed to downstream considerations. One such consideration would be the implementation of the design. That is, once we conclude design exists, we can begin to think about how it came into existence. This is similar to the way science first concludes something evolved and then wrestles with how it evolved. In science, evolution is a fact and it is the mechanism that is in dispute. With design theorists, they are trying to determine if design is a fact, and then the dispute about mechanisms can flourish.

So let’s say someone accepts Meyer’s argument. It would then be time to ponder the implementation question. At this point, I can see four possible mechanisms.

1. Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis. EAM is an evolutionary hypothesis that would reject the notion that variation is random with regard to fitness, and thus view the information increase as akin to organisms actively learning and guiding their own evolution.

2. Front-loading evolution. The original cells may have been designed to front-load the appearance of Cambrian-like organisms. Then, when the conditions were right, mutations that began to unpack the buried design would finally be selected for and a cascade of events leading to the origin of Cambrian-like organisms would ensue. (I am not saying my hypothesis of FLE entails the design of the Cambrian Explosion. I’m using it here merely as a illustration of one way ID could possibly be involved with the Cambrian Explosion, such that Meyer’s argument does not necessarily entail Creationism).

3. Tinkering with evolution. In his book, Finding Darwin’s God, biologist Ken Miller offers an useful observation:

Fortunately, in scientific terms, if there is a God, He has left Himself plenty of material to work with. To pick just one example, the indeterminate nature of quantum events would allow a clever and subtle God to influence events in ways that are profound, but scientifically undetectable to us. Those events could include the appearance of mutations, the activation of individual neurons in the brain, and even the survival of individual cells and organisms affected by the chance processes of radioactive decay. Chaos theory emphasizes the fact that enormous changes in physical systems can be brought about by unimaginably small changes in initial conditions; and this, too, could serve as an undetectable amplifier of divine action. – emphasis added.

In other words, a theistic ID proponent might envision God tinkering with evolution. Miller views such activity as being undetectable, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason why it must necessarily be undetectable. For example, if such intelligent interventions were infrequent and smeared across both time and biotic space, then yes, they would likely be undetectable. But what if they were clustered? What if a series of specified interventions occurred within particular lineages, adding information intended to spark the Cambrian Explosion? It is possible that such tinkering could leave behind some pattern that would leave indirect evidence of such intelligent intervention. In this scenario, the designer is supplementing and complementing evolution processes. The Explosion would be a product of both evolution and design.

4. Importing Design. In this case, the stem organisms of the Cambrian explosion were indeed imported onto the Earth by some intelligent agency. This is the only explanation that would be consistent with traditional creationism, but the intelligent agent(s) would not necessarily have to be supernatural.

Summary: While a standard creationist interpretation is consistent with one of four possible means of implementing the design, it is not an interpretation that is mandated by Meyer’s argument, nor does it constitute a necessary assumption in Meyer’s argument. Thus, we can see the clear distinction between Intelligent Design and Creationism. Intelligent design is about detecting the input of an intelligent agent as part of natural history and creationism is one possible explanation that can be offered after the detection has been made. Conflating ID and Creationism is like conflating evolution and Darwinism.

We can also see why there is a “Big Tent” aspect among teleologists when it comes to ID. While various versions of teleological evolutionists may disagree with creationists on the topic of evolution, both agree on finding methods to make more solid inferences about design. Intelligent Design “theory” would represent a transient stage, where priority is given to coming up with methods than can generate some empirically-based consensus about design among a significant community of investigators that will eventually give way to spirited debates about the implementation of the agreed-upon design. ID “theory” is akin to developing the instruments which can eventually be employed to generate a true theory.