No Evolution

You believe that God or an intelligent designer operates within natural processes, but does not operate through evolution. In the Intelligent Design literature, evolution is often characterized as 'blind chance' --- and how could blind chance account for all of the amazing and delicate adaptations we see? Certainly it would be hard to argue that an outcome such as the arising of a complex structure such as the eye is probable based on what amounts to the toss of a coin (or many coins).

But if all possibilities being equiprobable (as they are in the toss of a coin) is what is meant by 'blind chance', then it is not an accurate description of the mechanics of Evolution Theory. It is true that Evolution Theory asserts that new traits arise in a population by chance, but it is not a matter of chance whether these new traits get passed down with increasing or decreasing frequency in a population. New traits propagate or fail to propagate in a population over generations according to natural selection, which is anything but random. Will the new trait enable the organism to beget more or fewer offspring than it would without the new trait? It seems relatively uncontroversial and quite determinate that if a new trait enables an organism to beget more offspring that, over several generations and all other things being equal, the new trait will propagate in a population. Thus chance novelty combined with natural selection, and not mere randomness, are what Evolution Theory brings to the table.

An illustration is in order. Sober (2002a, 301) cites Fisher (1930) as the source of the following example. Consider the casino industry: every day, thousands of chance events occur at casinos in this and many countries. Whether the casino industry makes a profit or not is intimately tied to the results of these many chance occurrences, and yet the casino industry almost without exception consistently makes a profit every year. Of course, we all know that this is the case because the profits of the casino industry are not determined solely by the outcomes of the thousands of chance events, but also by the rules by which those chance outcomes pay off. In other words, casinos do not make a profit by 'blind chance'. If a casino should go out of business, we would sooner blame lack of customers or misformulated rules for paying off than 'blind chance'. And so it is with Evolution Theory: randomly generated traits combined with rules for the 'payoff': the natural selection of those traits.

But perhaps complex adaptations like the eye constitute proof of a creator God or an intelligent designer, and could not possibly be the result of evolution, even given that it has some determinate processes. Please continue to Proof of Design for a discussion of this position.

If, however, you still believe that there are serious empirical doubts about evolution as a scientific theory, or if you believe that Intelligent Design Theory is good science you should take a quick detour to Empirical Doubts before going on to Proof of Design.