From Whitworth College, Whitworth
Today Winter 1995
The year was 1952. In a laboratory at the University of Chicago, a young graduate student named Stanley Miller set up an experiment that would profoundly affect the way scientists thought about the most vexing and factious of scientific questions: How did life begin on Earth? Using a flask of boiling water, some tubing and a couple of electrodes, Miller began exposing a mixture of reduced gases - methane, ammonia and hydrogen - to an electrical charge. When he popped the top off his flask a week later, he found something astonishing. In addition to the yellow-brown "tar" that had formed on the inside of the flask, the reaction had produced some amino acids - the organic building blocks of protein molecules, which are, in turn, the building blocks of life.
When Miller published his findings the following year, the
mainstream press heralded his work as a monumental step in explaining
how life on a primordial Earth could have sprung forth from a
lifeless sea of chemicals. It was that same year that James Watson
and Francis Crick at Cambridge University in England ushered in
the era of molecular biology when they elucidated the DNA strand
and showed how genetic information was stored and transmitted.
Science, it seemed, was well on its way to answering the colossal
questions posed by life itself.
But 40 years after Miller performed his historic experiment, scientists
are not appreciably closer today to discovering how a lifeless
pool of chemicals could have possibly organized itself into even
the most primitive single-celled organism, said Stephen Meyer,
a Whitworth College philosophy professor who has staked out a
very controversial position in the origins debate. In fact, Meyer
said, the materialistic theories of life's origin that Miller's
experiment nourished and the accompanying neo-Darwinian view of
evolution exhibit all the symptoms of a theoretical research paradigm
in distress. As Meyer describes it, making the leap from a few
simple amino acids stuck on the side of a flask to a living, functioning,
self-replicating cell is the equivalent of trying to take a young
child's first syllables and rearrange them into Stephen J. Hawking's
A Brief History of Time. And no one has been able to get
past the first steps in the process, Meyer said.
But if nature isn't capable of generating life by its own devices,
as Meyer maintains, how did we get here? According to Meyer, nature
had some help. To the consternation of many scientists throughout
academe, Meyer and a group of up-and-coming young scientists and
philosophers across the country espouse a theory called "intelligent
design" to explain the origin of life. In the process, Meyer
has become one of the central players in the newest twist of an
age-old debate.
Simply stated, intelligent design theory argues that life on Earth
arose via the purposeful act of an intelligent agent, which people
might choose to view as a deity. At some point when the planet
was young, say 3.5 billion years ago, there was an intervention
by an intelligent agent that somehow provided what was needed
- sequenced information, organic material, energy, etc. - for
life to spring forth on a lifeless planet. Furthermore, and this
is key to the theory, proponents of intelligent design maintain
that evidence of design in even the simplest living organisms
is scientifically detectable by applying new mathematical and
informational theories.
In the last two years, Meyer's opinion pieces and columns on the
origins debate have appeared in such publications as The Wall
Street Journal, Insight magazine, and many scientific
and philosophical journals. Meyer has helped organize origins
symposia, presented papers, contributed to books, and engaged
one of the most divisive issues of the scientific enterprise with
dogged prolificacy. He has spoken at origins conferences from
the University of California-Berkeley to Cambridge University,
where he gave a plenary address at the "Cosmos and Creation"
symposium last summer. At 36, his vita is as thick as those of
scholars many years his senior. Currently, with grant support
from the Pascal Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Religion,
Meyer is writing a book about design with Bill Dembski, an expert
in math and complexity theory, and Paul Nelson, who recently received
his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Chicago.
A 1980 Whitworth College graduate who majored in physics and
geology, Meyer took a job out of college as a geophysicist with
Atlantic Richfield. Meyer said that throughout his undergraduate
years, he had always reconciled his scientific work and religious
convictions by believing that evolution and theism were not incompatible.
"I was quite comfortable accepting the standard evolutionary
story, although I put a bit of atheistic spin on it - that (evolution)
is how God operated."
While working for ARCO and living in Dallas, Meyer attended a
conference that brought together top philosophers, cosmologists
and origin-of-life biologists to debate the religious implications
of contemporary scientific findings. "I remember being especially
fascinated with the origins debate at this conference. It impressed
me to see that scientists who had always accepted the standard
evolutionary story were now defending a theistic belief, not on
the basis that it makes them feel good or provides some form of
subjective contentment, but because the scientific evidence suggests
an activity of mind that is beyond nature. I was really taken
with this."
Although he enjoyed his work in the oil industry, Meyer had always
wanted to go to graduate school. He applied for a Rotary International
Scholarship to Cambridge University but finished runner-up to
the former Miss Texas. A year later, when oil prices took a plunge
and his level of job security followed, he again applied for the
Rotary Scholarship, received it, and was off to Cambridge University.
There he studied the philosophy of science, wrote his dissertation
titled "A Methodological Interpretation of Origin-of-Life
Research," and earned his Ph.D. Meyer returned to Whitworth
College in 1990 as an assistant professor of philosophy and was
named the1993-94 recipient of the Dean's Award for Junior Faculty
Achievement. This fall he was promoted to associate professor.
In addition to his philosophy courses, he is a member of the teaching
team for CORE 350, an interdisciplinary course that explores the
scientific tradition and its impact on the world.
It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin's Origin of Species
rocked the scientific and theological worlds by declaring that
life, in all its diversity, complexity and splendor, had evolved
from the simplest of life forms over billions of years. Human
beings were not the handiwork of a divine creator, but rather,
in the words of the late Har-vard evolutionist G.G. Simpson, "Man
was a result of a purposeless process that did not have him in
mind."
"The biggest question at the root of the origins debate is
purposeless chance versus intelligent design or guidance,"
said Meyer. "Is life the result of purposeless or purposeful
causes? At the most basic, most fundamental level , you see incredible
evidence for intelligent design. It's becoming clearer and clearer
that the ordinary processes of nature that we see in operation
now do not produce the kinds of structures and complexity that
we see at work in a cell."
Meyer argues that by using modern information and probability
theory, evidence of design in the form of non-random information
sequencing in living organisms is detectable. He points out that
astrophysicists are already using a similar technique to search
for evidence of intelligence in another realm. The $100-million
Search for Extraterrestrial Life project, or SETI, is essentially
a giant interstellar microphone that monitors the cosmos for non-random
messages. The purpose of the project is to detect evidence of
intelligent life in the universe.
Meyer said the same mathematical approach can be applied to biology
to probe for intelligent design. Within each living cell there
is a chemical code or language that exhibits non-random, aperiodic
complexity. To Meyer and his colleagues, the non-random sequences
of these chemical messages strongly suggest design. Even the simplest
single-celled organisms show daunting complexity and organization,
Meyer said. These organisms exhibit a functional integration of
parts, information storage and transfer mechanisms, regulatory
and feedback loops, hierarchical levels of organization. "If
we were to see these kinds of features in any other artifacts,
we would immediately infer that they were designed."
But Meyer's critics, who would constitute the bulk of the scientific
community at research universities around the world, say Meyer
has hopped the fence that separates science from philosophy and
theology, and has dressed up an antique creationist theory as
science.
"There's a feeling of deja vu here - we've been through all
that and it's plowed ground," said Richard Dickerson, professor
of biochemistry and geophysics at UCLA, and former director of
the Molecular Biology Institute there. "Intelligent design
is a disguised form of creationism. To say that a life form arose
because of a designer goes beyond science. That's philosophy.
It's religious apologetics, which is not necessarily a bad thing
so long as it's not done in the name of science."
Ken Kardong, an associate professor of zoology at Washington State
University who teaches evolutionary biology, agrees that intelligent
design is an incarnation of an idea that has its roots in the
early 19th century, and the same flaws apply. "These kinds
of views are fun to discuss and play with, but I would be very
reluctant to see these old arguments recirculated," said
Kardong, who said he has his own problems with some aspects of
neo-Darwinism, but believes that the theory will evolve to solve
more and more riddles of the origins debate. "When you start
calling something in nature 'designed,' it is an inference, not
a fact. It steps outside of the context in which scientists do
their work."
Kardong likens intelligent design theory to looking at a bank
of white fluffy clouds. When you see a cloud that's shaped like
a horse head, does that mean it's been designed; does that mean
a purpose can be inferred? No, said Kardong, not if you want to
stay within the realm of science. The problem with intelligent
design is the same because it does not start with a neutral point
of view. "If you look at enough clouds, you're going to see
a horse head."
Lee Anne Chaney, associate professor of biology at Whitworth,
also offers a dissenting view of intelligent design theory. "As
a Christian, part of my belief system is that God is ultimately
responsible. But as a biologist, I need to look at the evidence.
Scientifically speaking, I don't think intelligent design is very
helpful because it does not provide things that are refutable
- there is no way in the world you can show it's not true,"
she said. "Drawing inferences about the deity does not seem
to me to be the function of science because it's very subjective."
Yet Meyer disputes the demarcationist argument that intelligent
design is inherently unscientific. "Scientists make design
inferences all the time," he said. "No geologist, for
example, would attribute the origin of the faces on Mount Rushmore
to wind and erosion, nor would an archaeologist insist that the
inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone are the result of purely natural
causes. In the case of the Rosetta Stone, we infer design because
we know that only intelligent agents have the capacity to produce
the encoded information that the inscriptions contain. There is
an important and clear difference between a "picture"
in a cloud and an encoded message. And modern probability theory
entirely supports this conclusion."
Beyond the weighty issue of how life originated, the origins
debate raises big questions about the nature and philosophy of
science. Just what is science, and when it comes to the issue
of origins, what delineates science from philosophy and theology?
Is science only concerned with the material universe and the laws
of nature, the observable, the physical, the empirical, the falsifiable?
Or with the contentious question of life's origins, where direct
observation is not possible, can science make room for something
more?
According to Meyer, no case better illustrates the politics of
origins than the plight of San Francisco State University Biology
Professor Dean Kenyon. Although his supporters and critics disagree
as to the value of his work in the discipline, Kenyon co-authored
the 1969 textbook, Biochemical Predestination, which was
considered one of the most authoritative explanations of how a
living cell could have organized itself from lifeless chemicals
in the "primordial soup."
But by the 1980s, Kenyon had begun to have his doubts about the
dominant scientific paradigm he had worked hard to advance, and
he began to share those doubts, along with information about intelligent
design, with his students. In 1992, following complaints from
several students that Kenyon was teaching creationism, the head
of the biology department at SFSU removed Kenyon from the classroom.
The Kenyon case became something of cause celebre for Meyer
and others working on intelligent design. After Meyer did an op-ed
piece about Kenyon's case in The Wall Street Journal, and
pressure from SFSU's Academic Freedom Committee and the American
Association of University Professors mounted, Kenyon was reinstated.
Nevertheless, the biology department at SFSU has proposed a ban
on further discussion of intelligent design theory because it
is "unscientific."
"The Kenyon case teaches us a lot about who de-fines the
rules of the debate," said Meyer. "Kenyon was silenced
not because any of his data were inaccurate, or because his students
didn't like him. He was silenced because his dean sought to impose
a definition of science that made Kenyon fall out of bounds."
In order to justify this kind of thinking, many in the scientific
establishment use self-serving definitions of science to justify
excluding intelligent design, Meyer said. But the "rules
of science" that exclude intelligent design are applied selectively.
"Dean Kenyon was accused of violating the canons of the scientific
method because he had inferred an unobservable entity - an intelligent
designer. Yet scientists, including evolutionary theorists, routinely
infer the existence of entities that cannot be seen, such as fields,
forces, quarks and past mutations, to name a few."
Meyer said that, in any case, attempts to draw a rigid line separating
science from philosophy or religion do not work. "Origins
theories invariably have religious and philosophical implications
one way or the other. There's a lot more going on here than just
a debate over data. There is also a power struggle over who will
get to tell the creation story for our culture. For years, materialistic-minded
biologists have functioned as a secular high priesthood. They
have defined what the questions are, what the rules are, and what
answers can be considered. Now, as more scientists are realizing
that nobody really has any idea how nature could have produced
the complexity and information in the first cell, many are challenging
the authority of that elite. Unfortunately, some in the scientific
establishment are resorting to intimidation to stifle dissent."
In a recent edition of Insight magazine, Meyer debated
these issues with Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center
for Science Education in Berkeley, Calif. Scott, who also believes
that intelligent design is dressed-up creationism, gave her appraisal
of Meyer's place in the origins debate. Scott likened Meyer to
an insect next to the elephant - "a minor annoyance if it's
noticed at all."
Meyer said that ad hominem comments aside, he realizes
that as a proponent of intelligent design theory, he is vastly
outnumbered in the scientific world. But that is starting to change
as more scientists begin to look for an alternative to strictly
materialistic theories, he said. "There's tremendous optimism
and enthusiasm - a whole network of people are working on this."
And indeed, intelligent design does appear to be catching on in
some circles. At the Cambridge University conference last summer,
several senior scientists, including biochemist Michael Behe of
Lehigh University, cell biologist David Shotton of Oxford University
and polymer scientist Walter Bradley of Texas A&M University
gave sympathetic papers in a seminar that Meyer had organized
on "Detecting Design in Creation." Recently, Princeton
University plasma physicist Robert Kaita gave intelligent design
theory favorable mention, calling it "eminently reasonable"
in a Wall Street Journal piece on the origins debate.
In fact, Meyer and other scientists and philosophers who are pursuing
intelligent design theory have started their own E-mail bulletin
board on the Internet, where they exchange ideas, critique each
other's work, and chart out a new theoretical research program
to test their hypothesis. Today there are more than 130 scientists
and other academicians contributing to the E-mail network. It's
like talk radio for the scientifically disenfranchised.
"In the history of scientific revolutions, numbers don't
mean much," said Meyer. "Very few people can cause meaningful
changes if they have the goods and can deliver them. Right now
we're in the very early stages of a new approach to things."
But what is Meyer's place in the origins debate? Is he just an
insect next to the elephant? Definitely not, said Phillip Johnson,
the Jefferson E. Peyser professor of law at the University of
California-Berkeley, author of Darwin on Trial, and initiator
of the E-mail bulletin board. Johnson, who also supports intelligent
design theory, said Meyer is on the leading edge of an effort
that is attracting more and more researchers and could ultimately
lead to a paradigm shift in the scientific world. "Right
now the intellectual ground is being plowed for a critical debate
whose time has come. Steve and his colleagues are raising some
tremendously important issues," Johnson said.
As important as it is for Meyer and his colleagues to articulate
precisely what their views are in order to establish some credibility
in the mainstream scientific community, it may be equally important
for them to establish firmly what their views do not represent.
That may be the greatest obstacle they face - not being grouped
with the marginal characters of the origins debate.
"It's interesting - when I first came to Whitworth, some
people thought I must be one of those people from the young Earth
creationist camp, which is simply not true," Meyer said.
"We're not absolutists, we're not fundamentalists in the
sense that we want to commit to a certain story and we're not
young Earth creationists, We're fairly minimalist. What we want
to say is that however life arose, design is certainly detectable
from the things we see."
Meyer does not dismiss all aspects of evolutionary theory; he
says it's clear that over time life has evolved and diversified.
"That's microevolution and no one disputes that," Meyer
said. "The big question involves macroevolution, the origin
of new structure, the origin of new information, the proper sequencing
of that information, the origin of major body parts and functionally
integrated systems. Those are unsolved questions. And yet we have
this great extrapolation from very little data, and it is promulgated,
pushed and advertised to the culture as what science has discovered."
It is no accident that Steve Meyer has taken up shop at Whitworth
College. It is a place where faculty purposefully integrate their
Christian faith into the disciplines they teach. But it is also
a place with a solid academic reputation where faith and the pursuit
of knowledge do not stand in the way of one another, he said.
That purposeful tension allows Meyer to vigorously pursue an alternative
approach to the origins issue without fear of reprisal or of being
relegated to the fringe.
"Whitworth doesn't have the reputation of being a stridently
fundamentalist school and it does have a strong academic reputation,"
Meyer said. "It's a place where I can speak on these issues
and not bring immediate scorn and eye rolling. A lot of my colleagues
at secular universities could not have spoken out on the Kenyon
issue."
How do his colleagues at Whitworth view Steve Meyer? Several faculty
members said that Meyer is a razor-sharp intellect, a great teacher,
a dynamic lecturer who energizes his students, and a prolific
writer and researcher who has vigorously engaged the most challenging
issues of his discipline. Yet his unabashed advocacy of a controversial
theory does not come without some intellectual discord. Some faculty
members also said Meyer can be too polemical and that he tends
to turn the scientific method on its head.
Meyer knows that there will never be a shortage of people to disagree
with him. "Howard Stien (professor emeritus of biology) and
I used to go around and around on this issue," Meyer said.
"People thought we were great enemies and that we didn't
like each other, but we were actually great friends. Howard was
just more willing to wait for the Darwinists to solve the problem
while I was looking for another approach."
Lois Kieffaber, professor of physics and one of Meyer's CORE teaching
partners, finds herself a bit torn when asked about intelligent
design theory and its philosophical implications for the scientific
world. "I do not rule out the possibility that a supernatural
or design event could leave a footprint in the materialistic world
that could be interpreted and read," she said. "However,
whenever you try to put forth a theory like this to explain what's
happened in the past, you have no way of proving it false. It's
both exciting and scary to think about the boundaries of science
being pushed back. Can the material world give evidence of the
immaterial world? That would be a dramatic change in the way science
works."
Hans Bynagle, Whitworth's library director who holds a Ph.D. in
philosophy from Columbia University, said he believes Meyer is
fighting an important philosophical battle on an issue that challenges
the governing rules of science. And Bynagle believes science needs
to open up if it seeks to find elusive truths. "We divide
up knowledge into boxes for the sake of organization and convenience.
But we can't assume because we draw those boxes that when we look
at reality, everything is going to fit neatly in those boxes;
nor can we rule out certain things because they don't happen to
fit neatly into those boxes."
Whether they agree or disagree with him on the origins issues,
students taking a class from Meyer can be assured of lively, thought-provoking
discussions that force people to think through their assumptions
about the world. Perhaps Forrest Baird, professor of philosophy
at Whitworth, puts it best. "Steve brings diversity to Whitworth
and he brings a very important kind of diversity - diversity of
ideas."
For Meyer, this debate is just beginning. Discussion of these
issues is taking place on a level that would have been unthinkable
10 years ago, he said. The pinhole is becoming a crack. "We
are trying to create space in those branches of science that are
concerned with ideologically charged questions," said Meyer.
"We want to show that there is an evidential basis for intelligent
design and that the evidence is there. The next 10 to 15 years
are going to be very interesting."
Copyright © 1995 Whitworth Today. All
rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date: 11.18.98