The Problem With Intelligent Design

Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: The Movie, which I've not yet seen (Ed Morrissey had a nice review here), raises the issue of intolerance in academia by analysing issues around the study of Intelligent Design. That's a good excuse for me to revisit my issue with the Intelligent Design argument:

Complexity is not proof of intelligence.

Quite the contrary, simplicity is the hallmark of genius. Einstein, in the process of explaining gravity, turned Maxwell's complicated equations of electromagnetism into one elegant 4-dimensional equation. Darwin explained the origin of species as one elegant process of evolution by natural selection. Neither Einstein, Maxwell nor Darwin prove or disprove the existence of God. But if there is a proof of the divine to be found in nature, I suspect it can be seen more in the power of the human mind to contemplate it all in the first place rather than in any misplaced sense of what constitutes proof.

Here's something I wrote about this a few years back on another (now defunct) blog:

Intelligent Design seems poised to challenge the science of evolution in US schools, most recently in Kansas. As I understand it, proponents of Intelligent Design argue that life is so complex that it can only have come into existence as a result of a considered plan. For example, if you found a watch buried in a field, you would not infer that such a complex mechanism came into existence through a series of slight, random modifications. On the contrary, you would infer that an intelligent force planned the design.

The premise of Intelligent Design seems to me to be fundamentally flawed. It assumes that complexity equals intelligence. I would argue the opposite, i.e. that the hallmark of intelligence is simplicity. Elegance in design comes from simplification, not complexity. The same is true of great physics: for example, Einstein reduced previously complex descriptions of light and gravity into a few simple equations, culminating in the insight that E=mc^2. Anyone who has tried to create something truly great must learn that it takes incredible intelligence to make complex things simple. The simpler the design, the longer it will last, the more powerful the impact, and the greater its ease of use.

If we posit that intelligence leads to simplification, and that intelligent designers seek simplicity as a means to enhance survivability, then we are lead to the following conclusion: the complexity inherent in life inevitably leads to the conclusion that it was not designed by an intelligence. Indeed, the conclusion that a random series of events, that survive due to a process of natural selection, is a simpler explanation than Intelligent Design.

Let's restate my argument somewhat: simplicity is a better argument for intelligence than complexity. Evolution by natural selection is a simpler explanation for the origin of species than complexity as a result of an Intelligent Designer. Thus, the theory of evolution may be a better argument for the hand of the divine in the processes of nature than an examination of the end results of evolution as evidence of complexity. The simplicity of Darwin's argument, backed up by meticulously collected evidence, is a testatment to Darwin's genius, and equally a testatement to the genius of whatever set this all in motion!