Darwinian atheistic philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University offers up an editorial in last Sunday's New York Times in which he probably says more than some of his anti-ID allies would have liked.
For instance, one of the claims we hear from evolutionists in the battle over the teaching of ID is that there's no reason why one can't be both an evolutionist as well as a religious believer. Darwinism is not hostile to theism, we are assured, but then Dennett lets the cat out of the bag:
True, you can still believe in God and accept evolution, Dennett informs us, but your belief in God is plainly irrational. In other words, he suggests, Darwinism renders the existence of God highly implausible and unlikely.
In his column, the Tufts philosopher accuses Intelligent Design advocates of perpetrating an "ingenious hoax" which accusation is, of course, a slander. It entails that ID scientists and philosophers know full well that intelligence was not at work in the development of life, but nonetheless deliberately deceived, and continue to deliberately deceive, the gullible masses into believing it was. This is to impute reprehensible behavior and motives to people in the ID camp, and unless Dennett can back his allegation up with some justification he ought to apologize. His reckless and insulting charge is reminiscient of Richard Dawkins' asinine claim that anyone who denies evolution is either "ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked-but I'd rather not consider that)."
Amusingly, having called ID a hoax, Dennett implies that the assurance we have of the truth of the Darwinian doctrine that natural processes are sufficient by themselves to account for the emergence of all living things is comparable to the assurance we have of the truth of both quantum physics and relativity theory.
Both quantum physics and relativity theory have been tested and confirmed many times. When has the claim that mechanistic forces are adequate by themselves to create biological information ever been tested, much less confirmed? How could it even be tested? Dennett's doctrine is a piece of metaphysical speculation, not science and his claim that it enjoys the same degree of confirmation as the theories of physics is risible.
Dennett also finds himself unable to talk about biological structures and processes without resorting to the vocabulary of purpose and intelligence that he disdains, which is an interesting admission in itself. He sprinkles his essay with terms and phrases like:
Dennett would deny any telic intent in these phrases, of course, but the fact remains that brilliance and cleverness are attributes of minds, not purposeless forces. That he feels constrained to use those words to describe biological phenomena does not help him make the case that these phenomena were not intentionally designed by an intelligent mind.
He completely misses the point when he writes that:
Surely Professor Dennett doesn't think that ID needs to explain how structures like the bacterial flagellum were designed. A tourist need not have any idea how Mt. Rushmore came into existence in order to conclude that it is the product of intelligent agency. A detective need not have any idea how a crime was committed in order to know that it was an intentional act and not an accident. The role of ID is not to explain, but to identify, intelligent purpose in biological structures.
Nor do ID'ers argue that because evolutionists haven't explained everything yet that therefore ID is true. They argue that some things haven't been explained in terms of purely natural mechanism because any such explanation that could be offered is so improbable and implausible as to render it literally incredible. They argue that it is only an apriori commitment to material explanations that prevents researchers from admitting that biological sytems and structures certainly appear to bear the impress of intelligent input in their manufacture.
Finally, in his quest to strike a fatal blow to ID he stumbles over a few hoary myths left over from the 1950s. He claims for example that:
Well, no. Michael Denton lays out the physiological rationale for the wiring of the eye's nervous system in a 1999 article that can be found here. It turns out that the eye's neural wiring itself manifests an extraordinary bit of engineering and design. Dennett will have to come up with another "accident" if he's going to use sub-optimal designs as an argument against ID.
Dennett's editorial may be compelling to those readers who may be eager to be persuaded, but as a piece of convincing argumentation it's pretty lame. It suffers itself from an intellectual sub-optimality analogous to the "accidents" he cites against the existence of an intelligent designer. There's much additional criticism of Dennett's essay here.
