For reasons that escape me, the question, Who designed the Designer? is universally popular among critics of intelligent design. (I treated this question briefly and flippantly here. The objection is so pervasive, however, that it merits a more detailed response.) The question is treated as if it’s an unarguable refutation of design arguments. It’s not.

Suppose someone says: “X is designed,” or “Intelligent design is the best explanation for X.” Make X any event or structure you like. Think, for instance, of Mt. Rushmore. It clearly gives evidence that it was designed—sculpted, to be exact. Would it make any sense for someone to protest, “Well then who sculpted the sculptor? Who designed the designer? Ha! Q.E.D.”

That objection is ludicrous. We know Mount Rushmore was designed regardless of the identity or causal history of the sculptors, and we know it based on what we observe.

This is true even in those cases where the designer is (probably) not human. (I’ll speak of a designer in the singular because, all things being equal, Ockham’s Razor reminds us not to multiply entities unnecessarily). In principle, SETI researchers could discern intelligent signals if any such signals are ever detected by their equipment. Presumably these would come from an extraterrestrial source.

Think of another, familiar example: that black monolith on the Moon, which astronauts discover in the science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The characters, the audience, everyone, recognize the structure is designed, and isn’t just a really self-disciplined Moon rock. The movie never identifies the agent who constructed the object and buried it on the Moon. We assume that it is an artifact of an extraterrestrial intelligence. But the identity of the object’s “designer” has little or no bearing on the strength of our inference that it is designed. That conclusion is the same whether the designer is an Alpha Centurian, a being from another dimension, an Olympian god who put it there as a practical joke, or the God of theism who created it ex nihilo for unknown reasons. The basis by which we discern that the monolith is designed remains the same: we study the object and look for features that indicate design. And even if it were created ex nihilo by God, the inference that it was designed by some intelligence doesn’t suddenly become mysterious, or a parochial “religious” conclusion that violates the separation of church and state.

We have Mount Rushmore. We have the monolith. In these and in all such cases, we have the conclusion, based on some observational evidence, that X is designed. Or, to put it more precisely:

(ID) Intelligent design is the best explanation for X.

Let’s call that conclusion “(ID)” for short. (Assume also that there is some argument for the conclusion as well, although we’re not treating that here.) Now someone from the Skeptical Inquirer will quickly ask: “Ah, but who designed the designer?” The satisfaction induced in the inquirer is immediate. But how exactly does this refute the truth or “assertability” of (ID)? It not only fails to refute (ID), it doesn’t even address it. It just changes the subject. By itself, the question has no more logical force against (ID) than any question someone might ask, such as: “Who designed the designer’s mother-in-law?” or “Ah, but what was the price of pork futures yesterday?” Non sequiturs aren’t refutations. They’re fallacies. The fact that someone can form new words with their mouths and string them together into an interrogative sentence in the wake of (ID) does not bear on, let alone refute (ID).

Of course, sometimes the inquirer gives a few details, rather than treating the relevance of the question as self-evident. For instance, the skeptic may argue that Ockham’s Razor (the regulatory principle that we not multiply entities without need) should stop the regress of explanation at the object itself, rather than pointing beyond itself to a designer. Now think about this for a minute. Recall, as noted above, that the basis by which we infer design is, at least in many cases, logically and epistemically separate from the identity and even the intentions of the designer. (I know that many people dispute this. But I could give examples all day that show that we not only can but do make rational design inferences without independent knowledge of the identity or intentions of the designer. I suspect that many people deny this only because they know that it’s hard to block certain unsavory design arguments if you concede the point.) Now, if Ockham’s Razor generally prevented us from inferring design based on an observation of some object or event, we would rarely if ever be justified in inferring design. Ockham’s Razor would be a universal acid. It would mean that you can’t infer design on the basis of the text you are now reading. But you are justified in so inferring. So this use of Ockham’s Razor vastly overreaches, and is not a serious threat to (ID). (I make this same point here.)

Sometimes the question takes a slightly richer form. Recall that design arguments usually proceed by trying to explain some property of X in terms of intelligent design—say, specified complexity in the coding regions of DNA (as William Dembski and Stephen Meyer have argued) or the “fine-tuning” of physical constants (e.g., gravity or electromagnetism). Let’s call whatever property on which the design theorist argues for design a “design property.” But any designer of that design property, the objection goes, will have to have at least as much if not more of the design property. So the ultimate origin of the design property has not been explained. It’s just been moved, like dust swept under a rug. Design inferences, therefore, have no explanatory virtue. (Richard Dawkins has been a leading exponent of this form of the argument.) It’s better, this argument goes, to stop the regress of explanation with X itself.

This form of the argument combines Ockham’s Razor with a worry about an infinite regress. We’ve already seen that only a truncated and simplistic form of Ockham’s Razor makes any trouble for intelligent design by outlawing all design inferences, which is absurd. But what about the infinite regress worry? Let’s assume, for a moment, that any designer of X (any designed object) must have at least as much specified complexity or fine-tuning (or whatever design property to be explained) as X—the designed object. How does this undercut (ID)? It doesn’t. (ID) could still be justified, well supported by the evidence, and true, even if there is a real regress.

As long as we’re simply asking: “Is X designed?,” and can infer design on the basis of some property of X, such as specified complexity, then the fact that the designer must also “contain” at least as much specified complexity as X is not material. This is because the design theorist need make no pretense of answering the question: “Where does specified complexity (or fine tuning) ultimately come from?” He can address, in fact he usually is addressing, much more modest questions, such as: “Where did the specified complexity in X come from?, “Is specified complexity in X a reliable marker of intelligent design?,” “Is specified complexity generally a reliable indicator of intelligent design?” and so forth. (ID) here is a proximate explanation, not an ultimate explanation.

The difference is easy to establish. Imagine that my wife asks me: “Where did the gas come from that’s in the car?” I can answer: “The BP station on Bellevue Way.” That’s the proximate explanation, and it’s not a bad explanation simply because the gas ultimately came from Alaska by way of a refinery.

Or consider the homicide detective who discovers a woman dead in her kitchen with a knife in her back. After studying the scene carefully, the detective concludes that she was murdered rather than accidentally bumping into a knife and then falling face down on the floor. Can you imagine the detective’s assistant protesting: “Oh, but you’ve explained nothing. Not until we know the murderer’s motive, the environmental and genetic forces that drove him to murder, stretching back to the first violent primate will we have explained anything!”? This is absurd. Proximate explanations are perfectly acceptable in their place. So even if there’s a real regress, such as the amount of complex specified information (or whatever) increasing as we move up the causal chain, that wouldn’t block (ID) in specific instances.

Frequently, design theorists are tempted to respond to the question by diving straight into a discussion about fundamental or ultimate explanations. This is a mistake. As a general rule, one shouldn’t appeal to highly abstract metaphysical principles, first causes, the nature of causality and so forth when something less complicated and less controversial will do. There’s plenty to talk about in the realm of proximate causes. The question, Who designed the designer?, founders long before we need to climb into the rarified air of fundamental metaphysics.

Also, materialists want design theorists to conflate proximate explanations of design with ultimate explanations, because of their Prime Directive: Argue that all design arguments are just theology in disguise (with the implication, of course, that theology is highly disreputable and self-indicting.) But there’s no good reason for the design theorist to take the bait. One can look at Mount Rushmore or molecular machines and consider if someone made them without piercing eternity past.

All that said, I don’t see any reason to concede the premise that leads to the regress in the first place. We infer design on the basis of certain features of objects and events. For instance, something about the metal configurations of my Skagen watch leads me to infer a Danish watchmaker. It hardly follows that the watchmaker must have the same or more of the same type of configuration. The watchmaker doesn’t have a second hand, a titanium band, or metal gears. The watch does. It doesn’t even make much sense to say that he does. What he has is the capacity to make a watch with all these features.

Similarly, if we talk about specified complexity or fine-tuning, it’s not clear what it even means to say that an agent “contains” more of these properties than an object the agent designs. That sounds like a category mistake. Agents have properties and capacities, like self-consciousness, freedom, intentions, and so forth. Agents also can cause certain things to come into existence, including complex things. But as a causal explanation, agency/intelligent design is simple. It’s not a metaphysically exotic or arcane concept.

Now some hard core, reductionist materialists will want to identify (or rather, reduce) human agents to some physical state, such as a brain state, and say that brain states are really complicated. I think it’s good to surface this reductionist assumption whenever possible, because it shows that materialism is not just incompatible with divine agency, but with agency in general. But the denial of agency contradicts our first person experience of ourselves as agents, which is always more secure than any argument for materialism. Therefore, any argument that implies that, strictly speaking, you and I don’t exist, has just met its demise in a reductio ad absurdum. But the crucial point here is that agent causation is the stuff of common sense. If materialism can’t tolerate the existence of agents, then so much the worse for materialism.

Metaphysics: Enter at Your Own Risk

Of course, the skeptic might concede all our reasoning to this point, but insist on going all the way to the summit: “OK, but I want to talk about ultimate causes. I want to know where the regress of explanation stops. I want to know WHAT YOU BELIEVE.” These are fine topics to discuss, but everyone should realize what they’re doing. They’re asking metaphysical questions—literally, questions that go beyond or above physics. And we must keep several things in mind.

First, just because the debate about design can lead to a conversation involving metaphysics, and just because the ID debate has metaphysical implications, it doesn’t mean that intelligent design is “nothing but” metaphysics, or that ID depends on controversial metaphysical assumptions. As we’ve seen, many of the questions related to ID can be both asked and answered within the realm of every day experience and observation. They don’t have to wait until these fundamental metaphysical disputes are settled.

Notice that we have moved from lower level reflection on observation and experience to a more explicitly metaphysical discussion. While there’s obviously feedback between our experience of the world and the metaphysical beliefs we bring to that experience, we still can strive to move, intellectually, from the more common sense realm of experience to the commanding heights of metaphysics. There’s a difference between moving to metaphysics from lower level questions about design, and asserting metaphysical first principles and then trying to cram experience into it. There’s a difference, in other words, between an implication and a mere assumption.

Second, the arbitrary exemption of materialism must be left at the door. Materialists like to claim (and preferably assume) that materialism is non-controversial and commonsensical, and that the burden of proof is on the one who would deny materialism. As Robert McHenry, former editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica recently asserted: “Epistemologically, materialism is a default position for any rational being who has not been favored with a direct revelation of the divine.”

Nice try, but this is nonsense. Such blind assertions without argument are the stuff of village atheism, since materialism is subject to both common sensical and profound philosophical objections. And so far from being the commonsense position, it’s actually an extreme minority position restricted almost exclusively to certain groups of modern intellectuals. Finally, it’s a question-begging mind trap, since accepting McHenry’s dictum makes it impossible to ask two perfectly sensible questions quite apart from a “direct revelation of the divine”: (1) “Is it possible that the universe is designed?” And (2) If it is designed, how would we tell?” McHenry’s strategy is to keep anyone from asking such questions in the first place.

So, when Carl Sagan asserts at the beginning of his Cosmos series (not, it’s important to observe, at the conclusion): “The Cosmos is all that is, or was, or ever will be,” he doesn’t get a free pass. That’s a metaphysical claim. Just because it reduces reality to the physical doesn’t change that.

And it is here (and not before) that we should make the familiar point that we’re all allowed a resting place, an uncaused cause, a fundamental reality, where further explanation stops. Everybody gets to stop somewhere. But that’s not the last thing to be said. Lots of folks take the Kuhnian or strong presuppositionalist position, and claim that there’s no way to compare fundamental explanations. They say something like: “Well, we all have arbitrary assumptions. We all have something by which we ultimately explain everything else. I’ve got mine. You’ve got yours. They’re incommensurable. The materialist grounds everything in matter. I ground everything ultimately, in mind.” So the charge of arbitrariness is rebutted with a glib tu quoque.

I think this attitude is fashionable, compelling, and misguided. After all, we can compare the live candidates for ultimate explanation, and, at least in principle, try to determine the best candidate, all things considered. Now given the ephemeral nature of matter and the origin of the physical universe itself in the finite past, matter and the physical universe are really bad candidates for ultimate explanation. As fundamental realities go, it’s hard to do much worse.

Some highly theoretical types, recognizing this problem, will appeal not to matter itself, but to the laws, the regular mathematical patterns, by which we describe matter in the universe. I’ve never been able to make sense of this claim. Physical laws are something like abstract mathematical descriptions of the regularities exhibited by material objects. (I might say that laws describe aspects of the natures of material objects or of the physical universe, but I don’t need to insist on that here.) So if anything, the laws seem to derive from or depend on the physical universe, or its constituents, rather than the other way around. In any case, we have no reason to think that physical laws call any material things, let alone everything, into existence.

Whatever is the ultimate reality needs to be eternal. It needs to have enough causal power to bring a universe into existence. And it needs to be fundamental, not derivative. So it can’t depend on or be composed of something more basic than itself. Preferably, it should be the sort of thing that cannot not exist. And such a fundamental reality should be ontologically liberal but not prodigal. So, unlike materialism, it should make space for the things we already know exist, like human agents. I think there’s a good candidate for this role. And you do too. Just think about it.

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For more on this topic, see "The Designer Regress" in Bill Dembski's The Design Revolution.