[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Are evolution and design compatible? I'm Casey Luskin. Welcome to id the future. As you might guess, the question of whether evolution and design are compatible probably depends upon how you define evolution and what you mean by design. Well, a very respectable, though we would say, ultimately unsuccessful attempt at merging intelligent design and evolution has been proposed by a theologian at the University of Helsinki named Evie Rope Kajonin. In 2021, he published a thoughtful and serious book titled the Compatibility of Evolution and Design, published by Paul Grape McMillan and Springer Nature. In the book, Kajonin basically argues that evolution and design can be harmonized, but not just in sort of the very general sense of change over time or common ancestry. He is actually contending that at a very deep and fundamental level, evolutionary biology in the mainstream is fully compatible with design. Well, some of my most valuable members of our team here at Discovery Institute, I'm thinking of Dr. Emily Reeves, who we have with us today on the podcast, along with some other great folks we've interviewed as well on this topic. Steve Dilley and Brian Miller did a book club over the last year and a half or so reading Kajonin's book. And then last year in 2023, we co authored a peer reviewed paper published in the journal Religions titled on the relationship between design and evolution, which is a critical analysis of Professor Kajonin's model. And we each contributed different parts of the paper, and it covers a lot of ground. So we're doing a series of podcasts with each of the co authors to discuss their role in the paper and also their take on Professor Kajonin's attempt to harmonize design and evolution. So today we have on the show with us Dr. Emily Reeves, a biochemist, metabolic nutritionist, and also aspiring systems biologist. Her PhD studies were completed at Texas a M university in biochemistry and biophysics. She's currently an active clinician for metabolic, nutrition and nutritional genomics at nutriplexity. Emily, I know that you have interviewed me a few times for id of the future, and I've been grateful for that. So it's great to have you today on the other side of the microphone being the one interviewed. So thank you so much, Dr. Reeves, for joining us.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Thank you, Casey. It's truly a pleasure to be here and talk about our recent publication on the relationship between design and evolution.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Yes, really excited to talk to you about this. Can you give us a little bit of background about your interest on this topic and the question of whether design and evolution or faith and evolution are compatible?
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Sure. So the idea that design and evolution are compatible is trending in faith circles, Christian, Islam and Judaism, with high profile scientists like Francis Collins holding a compatibility view. I think a lot of people that love science and don't know a lot about the mechanisms of evolution or the evidence for design just readily accept this idea. Now, for myself, compatibility between these two ideas has never really made sense intuitively to me. And so because of this, I find it interesting to hear from people who hold this view, so I can better understand their perspective. Now, between reading Kachonin's book on the compatibility of design and evolution, which I'm going to refer to throughout the rest of this podcast as CED, and then having conversations with different people, and finally then co writing our publication together, I have really been able to learn a lot more about this perspective in the last year and a half, and I am really grateful for that.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah, and just so our listeners understand, we're using this acronym CED, to sort of refer to Kajon and thesis on the compatibility of design and evolution. So if you hear us talking about CED, we're talking about this model that's been proposed for synthesizing design and mainstream evolutionary biology into one model. Dr. Reeves, can you provide us with a summary of CED in your own words?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. So, in short, CED takes evolutionary theory as correct, and then argues for why and how design arguments and design perceptions are compatible with standard evolutionary theory. And this is all done primarily from a philosophical standpoint. So, as Casey said already, CED is a great work of scholarship. But I think its relevance really hinges on whether empirical evidence supports Jonan's version of how the design is implemented within evolutionary theory. And then, of course, whether design arguments and perceptions of design are really compatible with evolutionary.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, great summary, and I very much agree with you. It is a very nice work of scholarship. We thought that Kajonin's book was thoughtful. He tried to be fair. Although we ultimately do disagree with thesis, we don't think it works. We do think it was a valiant effort, and we would encourage folks who are interested in this question to read his book. So our paper that we published is an open access paper. Of course, we'll link to it from the podcast description, but can you provide us with sort of a brief summary of our response on the relationship between design evolution? If you can be brief, I think it was like a 20 something thousand word paper, but summarize what we said in the paper.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. So we have three main lines of critique. Our first line of critique is that the particulars of Kajonin's conception of design really run contrary to the empirical data. And that's like data in biology. And we discuss two major points to this end. First, the rarity and isolation of proteins, and then the argument of irreducible complexity, which is exemplified in the bacterial flagella. And then our second major line of critique is that his view of design fits poorly with mainstream evolutionary theory. And particularly we talk about convergence. And then finally, our third line of critique is that his model, if you accept it, also harms your ability to do design you.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: And, you know, Kajonin's book really covers a lot of ground. And so our response had to cover a lot of ground, getting into science and philosophy and even some theology here and there, and many different lines of scientific evidence that he brought to bear in support of his thesis that design and evolution are compatible. So for you, what do you think is one of the key parts of Kajonin's book?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: One of my favorite parts of the book is this analogy that Kajonin gives when he is describing how evolution and design could be compatible. He is thinking that evolution would stand as the proximate natural explanation, while divine design would stand as the sort of ultimate explanation that works through evolution. And so to explain this, he gives an analogy. He says, let's suppose that an elderly uncle dies in suspicious circumstances, and the relatives suspect that this niece actually killed her uncle. So it's not just merely a random death. Police investigations, however, reveal a natural cause for the death, an overdose of the uncle's medication. Nevertheless, Kachonin argues, in spite of the police figuring out that it was just an overdose, that it may still be plausible to claim that the niece killed the uncle by mixing up his medication, in which case the actions of an agent, in this case, the vindictive niece, would act as the sort of ultimate cause of death, working through the more proximate natural cause of mixing up the medications. And I think this is a critical section, because I feel like it makes a big impression on a reader. However, there's something that's glossed over in this analogy, and the key, I think, to understanding that is breaking down the difference between methods and cause. So cause is really who done it, who did it? And methods is, how does that happen? But the two need to be compatible. So my issue with CED is not with cause, but with method. So, in the analogy, there is an assumed direct method by an agent, which is that someone has to mix up the medication, and that results in the vindictive niece's desired outcome. However, by not discussing the method of how the medication came to be mixed up, Katonin avoids the important part that the proposed method has to be plausible for the situation to be believable. For example, if the proposed method is that the hate of the niece caused the uncle to become more anxious, and that ultimately led to the uncle overdosing himself, this would probably not stand in court. And this is precisely the case with the proposed parallel to evolutionary theory. So Kajonin seems to be saying that as long as the cause is ultimately a divine designer, then the method of design isn't that important. But the validity of compatibility between design evolution depends on the method proposed. So if the type of design that Kajonin has in mind is implausible, then there's little reason really to harmonize that type of design with evolution. And that's what we found, is that the empirical evidence does not support Kachonin's proposed method of design. So I think this is a key part, but is also not resolved.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: That's a really good summary of the way his thesis operates and how we can test it, by looking for where he says that the design has been implemented in the natural world, in the world, and then asking if that's plausible. I think that's a really helpful analogy. So, according to Kajonin, God created the laws of nature, which eventually give rise to fine tuned preconditions that make evolutionary development possible. What is your take on his view of the laws of nature?
[00:09:48] Speaker B: So, the typical view of how the evolutionary mechanism works, and I'm going to first talk a little bit about the evolutionary mechanism, and then switch to the laws of nature. So the typical view of how evolution, the evolutionary mechanism, works, is as a blind, undirected process that favors just what random changes are selected by the environment. Or another way to describe this, is that evolution is not merely a carrier of patterns already embedded in nature, but evolution is able to bring about those patterns spontaneously in a way that is undetermined by the laws of nature. So this is kind of the standard view, I would say, of evolution, not Kajonin's view. So, in Kajonin's view, he thinks that biological evolution just pushes the problem back to the laws of nature. And throughout the book, he discusses this idea of the laws of nature being the locus of design. The problem with this view is then, that the laws of nature have to do the heavy lifting in terms of producing creativity and the information that's needed for all of biological complexity. And at present, there just is no empirical evidence that the laws of nature, meaning the law of gravity, electrostatic thermodynamics, or quantum mechanics, that those produce laws of form which give rise to information or cause specific outcomes that would be necessary for the design of biological organisms. So we just don't really have evidence of this type of thing happening. I would say what we do see is that the laws of nature today, they operate consistently, and they constrain nature by providing stable conditions and physical boundaries. And then within those physical boundaries, different biological outcomes are possible. But the laws don't determine the outcomes in the same way that, say, a goal oriented action of an agent would. And to give some more specific examples on this, in the molecular biology world, I would say gravity, for example, which is one of the laws of nature, it is used as a cue by biology to determine directionality. But gravity by itself, doesn't make a leaf grow up or a root grow down. That only happens because you have a complex system of a leaf, that living system, and that system is sensing, interpreting, and acting on a gravitational cue. But the gravity is not causing the leaf to grow up or down. And this is the same for other things, like the periodic table of elements, for example, the electrostatic laws. These laws, they describe how positive and negative charges attract one another. But these laws do not cause the formation of, say, an electrochemical gradient across a membrane. That can only happen because you have molecular machines harnessing energy to push a system away from equilibrium. So, basically, in some, the evidence we currently have about the laws of nature just does not support this claim that they would lead to some laws of form that would then produce specific outcomes in biology. So, once again, Kajonin's conception of design is faulty.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: So, to fix some of these defects, what would you like Kajonin, or perhaps other folks in his camp, to provide?
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah, what I would like to see from Kajonin is really a more fleshed out view of what designed evolution is, or what he's proposing it to be. Especially more detail about how the laws of nature, like gravity, thermodynamics, would give rise to the laws of form. And then I think if there's a more well defined model, it can be more rigorously assessed empirically, and then also assessed for how well the design and evolution elements go together. So, basically, I want just more specifics on what the model is, especially related to how the laws of nature give rise to the laws of form.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Obviously, you have your own views of design and how design works. So where do you think we should look to further our understanding of the mechanisms of design.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: I think that given that the design logic of organisms is comprehensible to us, and since we can redesign organisms using our own capabilities as agents, then it is acceptable to conclude that the divine designers cause and methods are at least partly akin to our own. So for those who believe humans were created in the image of the divine to design and create things, it also makes sense that by understanding our methods of design, for instance, engineering and art, we may gain at least some insight into how living organisms were created. Now, even if an agent is far more capable or may have employed a mechanism or method that is unknown or inaccessible, inferencing from the most comparable methods is useful, even if those turn out, I think, not to be quite correct.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Okay, so, getting back to our response to Kajonin, it's a very long paper. I would understand if a lot of folks find it a bit long to read. You kind of really want to have to dig into this question, this issue, and we cover a lot of ground, and you obviously contributed to multiple different parts of the paper and had a lot of influence over various sections. So, for you, what is one of the key parts of our response that you would like to highlight and that you had a major role in?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, one of my favorite parts is really the section on convergence. So, first, let's give just a quick definition of convergence. So, as defined by Kajonin, convergence refers to the independent evolution of the same biological outcome in two or more different lineages, beginning from different starting points. So let's give an example, because that's kind of a long definition. So, dolphins and sharks, they have similarly streamed bodies and dorsal fins, even though dolphins are mammals and sharks are fish. So Kajonin interprets this is convergence, and Kajonin interprets this as evidence for preconditions, or more specifically, that laws of form play a significant role in helping evolutionary processes cluster around similar solutions. So somehow this law of know guided evolution to produce both a dolphin and a shark. And forms that appear multiple times in nature are regarded by Kajonin as they're an emergent consequence, he says, of the laws of physics and chemistry. So, again, back to what we were saying before. Somehow the laws of nature have to give rise to the laws of form, and then that somehow works in accordance with standard evolutionary theory. So now, in standard evolutionary theory, convergence is really this big, unsolved mystery, which doesn't fit well at all with the mechanism of the theory, because convergence relies on many improbable events, as it not only requires the evolution of certain complex proteins, and traits, but it requires the evolution of those things independently more than one time. And so our critique to this really had two parts. First, since the empirical evidence shows that evolutionary development of even one structure, such as the eye, is extremely unlikely, then how much more so independent evolution of the same trait, not just one time, but multiple times. Now, Kachonin thinks this is not a problem if evolution is not prohibitively improbable in the first place due to fine tuning. But what we really showed is that there's strong empirical evidence against any such fine tuning. Thus, Jonan is envisioning design in a way that allows evolution to work like a search engine within this constrained possibility space. But it's very unclear that there is sufficient evidence to support this type of design. So, to me, this is sort of like an idea, but there's not a lot of evidence like holding it up. Then the second part of our critique was to point out that while convergence helps design arguments, it severely injures the evidence for common descent, which Jonan accepts and which is necessary to support evolutionary theory. So by including convergence as a key part of CED, Jonan sort of injures the case for common ancestry, which is one of the major lines of evidence used to support evolutionary theory. So, once again, you have this tension between his view of design and his view of evolution. Yeah.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: And I think this issue with convergence really is a problem for not just Kajonin's thesis of design and evolution, but know, many attempts to sort of construct evolutionary models that are based upon common ancestry, where you say that, okay, well, there's similarity between organisms, and that similarity reflects their common ancestry, but then you get many instances of similarity that can't be explained by common ancestry, and you have to appeal to convergent evolution. These two features, these two structures, even sometimes these two gene sequences, they just evolved independently. And it sort of pulls the rug out from under the whole rationale that's used normally to say that similarity implies inheritance from a common ancestor. Well, I guess that's true, except for when it doesn't, and it's the result of independent evolution. And so it makes for a thesis that is not very consistent, and it's very hard sometimes to predict exactly what we should find. So do you have any concluding thoughts about Kajonin's book and his thesis and the whole issue?
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So Kajonin, in his book and more recent preprint, says that whether evolutionary theory stands or falls, the arguments for the compatibility between design and evolution still stand. And my gut response to that is, well, sort of maybe not. If Kajonin's formulation of where or how the design is implemented in the natural world turns out not to be true, then I would say there's no reason to really argue for the compatibility of it with anything. You need evolution and design to get compatibility. So if either evolution or design fails, you don't get compatibility. So I think empirical data is really important in this conversation. And, of course, also the extent to which design arguments mesh with evolutionary theory. Yeah.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: And what's really interesting about Kajonin's thesis is that he has very specific sort of loci of where design is helping evolution to be able to work. So it's a testable know. And it's not that. We're not just critiquing evolution generally here saying, oh, evolution fails, therefore his thesis fails. What we're seeing is that he has very specific cases where he says, oh, the fitness landscapes of protein sequences are finely tuned to allow for new proteins to evolve by random mutation and natural selection. Okay, well, we can actually test that question. Do protein sequences look like they are fine tuned to allow for these sequences to evolve by essentially mechanistic processes? And when we look at the data, we don't see it. We don't see that there's that fine tuning there. So the design that he's predicting is there to help evolution work is just not there. So then that means. Yeah, kind of. Okay, what's left of evolution, I guess evolution doesn't have that sort of boost that it needs from design. Solution also has problems. But really, the core thing, though, is that his thesis doesn't hold up. So, Dr. Reeves, thank you very much for all the work that you did on this paper. It was fantastic having your contributions to this project, and thank you for sharing with us today your insights about the compatibility of evolution and design.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much, Casey. It was a pleasure.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: I'm Casey Luskin with id the future. Thank for listening.
Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
