INTELLIGENT SELECTION, aka Artificial Selection and Selective Breeding

Dog Illustration in Darwin’s book, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

This illustration of a dog was one of several dog illustrations used by Charles Darwin.  The other illustrations can be viewed here.  These illustrations of dogs were presented in Darwin’s book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Charles Darwin observed dog breeding, and recognized that breeders select certain kinds of dogs to increase qualities and strengths in different dog breeds. This selection process is what inspired Darwin to believe that wildlife must have its own selection process as well. Hence, the concept of natural selection was born.

One can also view ID theory to be nothing more than the suggestion that natural selection is not the only means of selection. In a certain sense, ID theory is simply the belief that natural selection is accompanied with another selection process, based upon intelligence, or a preplanned program, possible in the DNA that drives evolution.

Definition of Intelligence:

There is no special ID definition of intelligence other than what is defined in Webster’s dictionary. ID refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.

Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Micheal Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box (1996) is perhaps the best-known statement of the movement’s critique of Darwin and its argument for a role for God or some other intelligence in the design of biological entities.

I think that will lead to research as to how the engineering took place and how the pre-programming was written. I think design will lead to the …”computer software program” for lack of a better way to phrase the information pre-programmed in DNA. I think before we learn any clues about the designer, we will learn more about the software program that gives the selection process it needs to select for greater complexity, something which natural selection is incapable of doing on its own. I believe natural selection (NS) occurs and is a scientific observable fact. But, it must work in conjunction with an intelligent selection process as well. In the future, we will learn more about the intelligent selection process just like we have studied NS for the last 100 years. Then, after much time, we might possibly have more clues to know something more about the designer.

I think what is obvious, is that whatever the source of the intelligence was, it is gone. In the absence of a designer, it cannot be scientific to conjecture as to what nature this designer might be. The designing work has been abandoned, left dormant, and there is not reason to assume the designing will resume up again. It appears that NS is left to do its work with only the intelligent selection that remains in DNA. Something is in the genome of all species to cause those life forms to be designed the way they are. There’s a guidance software program in there that is directing those extra genes to duplicate the way they to evolve into the new genes they develop into.

It’s obviously an intelligently guided system. But, that’s not easy to prove. It’s very difficult to detect design because development occurs one tiny copying error at a time where the variation in the phenotype is very slight. Because of this fact, we might NEVER get past the search to detect design in the first place. But, that does not negate the fact, if it is a fact, that ID is at work. There should at least be the research to see if ID is plausible. Let the research begin, let’s see what they got, and see if it goes anywhere before rendering our jury verdict. Maybe there is nothing to it. But, maybe there is. I think scientists should at least try to resolve it once and for all.