Intelligent Design

Lately, I have been reading a lot about intelligent design. There are a number of (flimsy) arguments in its favor I have seen repeated again and again, and that I feel compelled to respond to. I am always in favor of an intelligent debate, but the positions that follow range from subtly flawed to criminally ignorant, and the need to be retired from the sphere of publicly circulating ideas.

These first three begin on the criminally ignorant end, and I found them on the following website:
http://darwinconspiracy.com/
This webpage is a sponsored link on Google, and it is somewhat depressing that someone thought these arguments were worth paying to share. I will refute their 3 "Fatal Flaw"s one by one.

"Evolution is Missing a Mathematical Formula"
Last time I checked, there were a number of mathematical formulas associated with genetics, as well as a number of reputable scientific theories that are not mathematically formulated. This criticism could also be applied (even more) effectively to intelligent design, which not only lacks a mathematical formulation but is intrinsically incapable of acquiring one.

"Darwinian Evolution is missing a way to add genes"
First note that the above is a direct quote, and it annoys me that whoever wrote this garbage can't decide what proportion of the words in their titles they'd like to capitalize. This is also flat not true. Occasionally, people are even born with a partial or complete extra 21st chromosome (Down syndrome) and there are numerous less spectacular instances of mutation producing new genes.

"Helpless Babies Contradict 'Survival Of The Fittest'"
This argument works if you consider the phrase "Survival Of The Fittest" a complete and exhaustive summary of evolutionary biology, but that is not the case. If you expand that phrase just a bit to "Survival Of The Offspring Of Fit And Responsible Parents" this argument evaporates, and I think its definitely still within the sphere of what Darwin envisioned.

The next argument originates with William Paley, who was an English theologian in the 1800s. It is summarized here:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html
Its a bit better, but it still has some serious flaws. Since I'm too lazy to make my links clickable, I'll summarize it here. The gist is that if you were out walking and you found a pocket watch, you wouldn' t think that the plants in the field had somehow generated it; because of its unusual and complex structure, you would have to attribute its construction to some external, intelligent power.

I think this is a pretty reasonable response to a watch in a field, but the analogy is flawed. Observing a sophisticated organism is not like finding a watch in a field, because the organism is not so alien from the other objects around it. A more appropriate analogy would be this: you enter a room full of a dizzying array of self repairing and self reproducing timepieces. Some are very complicated, some are not so complicated, and there seems to be a continuum of sophistication in between. Considering one watch in this room, it becomes a lot more reasonable to think its related to some of the less sophisticated watches. This is essentially the statement of the theory of evolution; it does not demand something from nothing, but that more sophisticated things develop from less sophisticated ones.

More to come...