A Brief
Word on ID Mechanisms
Mike Gene
(
While it
sounds reasonable to demand ID theorists provide the “mechanisms” behind
intelligent design, we must remember that in cases of direct intervention, such
a mechanism is otherwise known as a protocol, recipe, blueprint, and means to
implement the protocol, recipe, or blueprint. Yet can we really derive this
type of information from studying the thing in question coupled with the
regularities of Nature?
Consider a scientific experiment. It is something that scientists design. The
expression of the design is the experimental results. Thus, the results are the
products of design. The mechanism of design is listed as the material and
methods. Yet, faced only with the results, how easy is it to reconstruct the
materials and methods?
Here is the
result of one experiment involving RNA and protein in a matrix of acrylamide.
Can anyone take this result and easily reverse engineer the mechanism behind
its existence? Take a stab at it.
Here’s
the protocol.
How did
you do?
Of course, someone with good experience doing these type of experiments
might be able to reconstruct a decent approximation of the actual method
(mechanism), as mobility shift assays are a commonly used technique in many
labs. But what if such experience is
quite limited to none? How well would you do?
Now…..how
much experience do we have designing life forms?
If we make the issue focus around “mechanisms,” this stacks things in favor of
the non-teleological approach as regularities clearly lend themselves toward
mechanistic explanations more easily than the decisions and recipes of
intelligent agents. Yet, as I have explained before, advances in our own
efforts in nanotechnology and biotechnology might eventually allow teleologists to roughly approximate proposed design
mechanisms behind life (as our experienced experimentalist might be able to
approximate the method used to deliver the result above). But right now, expecting
a design theorist to propose a serious mechanism of intelligent intervention is
like expecting a history scholar to propose the method used to generate the
above result.
