It just keeps coming, doesn’t it? Another fine example of woo is Intelligent Design, and today’s Guardian has an article that claims Intelligent Design is science, and not faith. The article is written by Richard Buggs who apparently sits on the scientific panel of Truth in Science – the lobbying body in the UK for Intelligent Design. "Truth in Science" – another fine example of Unspeak – a phrase that suggests the complete opposite of what, in fact, that body is engaged in.
Buggs’ article is already being nicely dissected by the commenters and shown to be rubbish, but I can’t help adding a couple of observations of my own.
His opening two paragraphs already contain a fine example of Unspeak in themselves. He starts by quoting James Randerson on Darwin:
"It is true that complex things in nature look as if they have been designed. Darwin knew this. But the sublime truth about his theory is that it explains how complex things can come about without design."
But then in his second paragraph, his paraphrase of that quote effectively shifts the goalposts:
"But despite the brilliance of Darwin’s work, it is overoptimistic to claim that his theory explains the origin of all living things".
Note the phrase: the origin of all living things. He’s clearly implying "origin of life", and he knows full well that Darwin’s theory of evolution has absolutely nothing to do with origins – it’s about how complex things can come about without design – as Randerson correctly states. This sleight of hand is typical of Buggs, it seems to me. For example, one of the famous arguments of those supporting Intelligent Design is to quote the example of the bacterial flagellum. They claim that the development of the flagellum cannot be explained by evolution, it must have been "intelligently designed". Here’s Buggs, in a letter to the Times of 18 October 2006:
"I do not know of a good evolutionary pathway for the development of the bacterial flagellum. In his latest book, Professor Richard Dawkins identifies a single possible intermediate step. This hardly constitutes a pathway".
Buggs is either being disingenuous or he is a liar. The evolutionary pathway was proposed back in 2003, and has been further refined since then. Thus far, the hypothesis holds up. While there are discussions in the scientific community about the precise details of the pathway, these will be settled by scientific experiments and data – and not by a version of "Goddidit" as Buggs prefers to do.
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