Are Bacterial Flagella Intelligently Designed? Reflections on the Rhetoric of the Modern ID Movement

ISBN:

0954-4194

URL:

http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11463898&site=ehost-live

Keywords:

BACTERIA; BIOLOGY; CAUSATION; INTELLIGENT design (Teleology); bacterial flagellum; Darwinism; Intelligent Design

Abstract:

The modern 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 actualised by the form-conferring action of an unembodied intelligent agent. In this essay we shall challenge Dembski's rhetorical strategy and argue that he has failed to demonstrate the need for non-natural action to assemble the bacterial flagellum.