Discovery Institute: The Intelligent Designer was a Eugenicist

December 19th, 2007 EmmaPeel Posted in News |

For years now, we’ve been pleading for intelligent design advocates to tell us something - anything - about this Intelligent Designer, the existence of whom they are so sure is implied by the facts of biology. But for years now, they’ve adamantly denied that they have any interest in speculating about the Designer, His identity, His motives, or His methods.

Granted, in the beginning they were loudly proclaiming that the study of ID would help pull society back from the brink of destruction caused by our rampant belief in godless evolution, but when challenged by scientists on ID as science, they insisted that they were only interested in “design-centric” research programmes, not “designer-centric” ones.

But that mask of studied disinterest in the Designer Himself may have slipped. Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute thinks that a study of skull shapes of St. Bernards, released in late October, actually helps make the case for ID instead of for evolution as the study authors claim, and his reasoning is, er, disturbing…

First, the study:

Biologists at The University of Manchester say that changes to the shape of the breed’s head over the years can only be explained through evolution and natural selection.

The team, led by Dr Chris Klingenberg in the Faculty of Life Sciences, examined the skulls of 47 St Bernards spanning 120 years, from modern examples to those of dogs dating back to the time when the breed standard was first defined.

“We discovered that features stipulated in the breed standard of the St Bernard became more exaggerated over time as breeders selected dogs that had the desired physical attributes,” said Dr Klingenberg.

“In effect they have applied selection to move the evolutionary process a considerable way forward, providing a unique opportunity to observe sustained evolutionary change under known selective pressures.”

The study found that generations of selective breeding - applying artificial selection to dogs with combinations of alleles that the breeders found desirable - created noticeable changes to the shapes of today’s dogs’ skulls. Since they could not find any plausible physical advantages to these changes, such large changes were much bigger than they’d expect to see after so short a time in the absence of a selective pressure.

That’s an unremarkable finding in this day and age. In fact, Charles Darwin himself based his theory of evolution on the claim that natural selection worked much like artificial selection. Darwin drew a direct line of reasoning from the artificial selection by pigeon breeders done in order to create new breeds, to the “unconscious” breeding by farmers on their livestock, to the completely unintelligent process of natural selection, all capable of acting to turn varieties into species and beyond given enough time.

But to Luskin, the takeaway lesson is quite different:

“Breeders selected” and “the selective considerations of breeders” sure sound a lot like intelligently-guided artificial selection, not natural selection. But these scientists don’t let little distinctions like that get in the way of finding support for Darwinism. In fact, they claim their research demonstrates the grand Darwinian narrative…. So intelligent design is now cited as proof that natural selection is the fundamental driving force behind the evolution of life. [emphasis mine]

and:

In the end, this study doesn’t demonstrate anything about natural selection. Rather, it demonstrates that some Darwinian scientists are following the evidence to Darwinism, even when it leads to intelligent design.

This argument makes no sense.

No sense at all.

Unless, that is, Casey Luskin is saying exactly what he seems to be saying: Artificial selection - a.k.a. eugenics - is one of the methods The Intelligent Designer used to do His intelligent designing.

Now that the Discovery Institute has taken steps (however timid) toward a specific stand on a fundamental Designer-centric question (”How did He do it?”), we can only hope they will continue advancing their scientific research programme, and confront the questions that Luskin’s answer implies: When the Intelligent Designer did His artificial selection, did He “cull the herd” of individuals that didn’t measure up to His standards, or did He merely sterilize them, or did He subtly “encourage” the favored individuals to breed according to His wishes? And did He ever perform any of this, ah, “Designing”, on humans? And if He never used such techniques on early humans, then can we conclude that the transition from earlier, more ape-like species to Homo sapiens was indeed the result of evolution alone, no intelligent eugenics necessary?