Introduction
E. Coli at the No Free Lunchroom: Bacterial Flagella
and Dembski’s Case for Intelligent Design
Howard J. Van
Till
Professor of
Physics and Astronomy Emeritus
Calvin College,
Grand Rapids, MI 49546
18 November, 2002
The Intelligent Design movement argues that
it can point to specific biological systems that exhibit what ID’s chief
theorist William A. Dembski calls “specified complexity.” Furthermore, Dembski
claims to have demonstrated that natural causation is unable to generate this
specified complexity and that the assembling of these biological systems must,
therefore, have required the aid of a non-natural action called “intelligent
design.” In his book, No Free Lunch, Dembski presents the bacterial flagellum
as the premier example of a biological system that, because he judges it to be
both complex and specified, must have been actualized by the form-conferring
action of an unembodied intelligent agent. However, a critical examination of
Dembski’s case reveals that, 1) it is built on unorthodox and inconsistently
applied definitions of both “complex” and “specified,” 2) it employs a concept
of the flagellum’s assembly that is radically out of touch with contemporary
genetics and cell biology, and 3) it fails to demonstrate that
the flagellum is either “complex” or “specified” in the manner required to make
his case. If the case for Intelligent Design is dependent on the bacterial
flagellum, then ID is a failure.
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| Contributed by: Dr. Howard Van
Till
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