Garry Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor of Pathology at Stanford University. He is a productive and respected immunologist who has published more than 330 research articles, and is a pioneering inventor of laboratory tools for his field.  

He also believes in extraterrestrials — that is, intelligent non-human visitors to Earth. Though Nolan admits that the publicly available evidence has not yet reached the standard of scientific proof, he says that he has been personally convinced by the evidence he has examined. More importantly, he is adamant that whether extraterrestrial visits have actually happened or not, scientists should be exploring the possibility rather than ignoring it.

Not Everyone Agrees

Some people — whether they would put it in so many words or not — believe that certain types of answers are simply off-limits in a scientific inquiry. Nolan has no patience for this notion. He says: 

That’s not how a scientist operates. If you take a potential solution off the table and you throw it in the garbage, you could spend the rest of eternity searching around on the table for the answer, and you threw it in the garbage. 

That’s very well-put. There’s no harm in keeping a potential answer on the table, and there could be harm in tossing it in the trash. Without saying anything about the evidence itself, the philosophical principle underlying Nolan’s investigation is sound. And it’s a principle with much wider applications. 

By investigating the possibility of intelligent, non-human causes for certain phenomena, Nolan is, in fact, working as an intelligent design researcher — whether he would embrace that label or not (and I see no reason to think he would). The underlying logic of an argument for alien design in mysterious artifacts or conditions is the same logic underlying the arguments for design in the origin of life or the laws of the universe. 

Nolan seems to be aware of this. Asked in a recent interview what he considered the most fascinating aspect of biology at the cellular level, he had this to say:  

The micromachines and the nanomachines that proteins make and become. That to me is the most interesting: the fact that you have this, basically, dynamic computer within every cell that’s constantly processing its environment, and at the heart of it is DNA, which is a dynamic machine, a dynamic computation process. People think of the DNA as a linear code. It’s codes within codes within codes, and it is the, actually, the epigenetic state that’s doing this amazing processing. I mean, if you ever wanted to believe in God, just look inside the cell.

He goes on to say that the appearance of design goes all the way down to the laws of physics and the fabric of the universe itself. 

Yet as far as “wanting to believe in God” goes, Nolan isn’t sure that he does. He prefers to posit alien intelligences and remain agnostic, for the time being, about their natures. Within the bounds of pure science (not getting into philosophy), that’s a perfectly valid stance to take, since examining an artifact can’t tell you everything about its designer. Whether you personally think that God or a non-God extraterrestrial is the more credible explanation, the design inference is the same. 

Since he is making that inference in his research, it is not surprising that Nolan is running up against the same objection that other ID researchers do: the objection that certain types of explanation should be rejected a priori because they are (by definition) unscientific.

This Is All Well and Fine 

That is, as long as scientists happen to be investigating something with a true explanation that belongs to the set of approved options. But suppose it doesn’t? Suppose the real explanation lies in the “off the table” category of answers? (If you don’t think that’s possible, suppose.) Should any scientist spend his or her whole life looking for a type of answer that doesn’t exist? At what point do we start considering the off-limit options? That’s Nolan’s point about throwing a potential solution in the garbage — once you do that, you could be doomed to an eternity of futile searching.  

The pressure to dig around in the garbage for discarded explanations is growing in many scientific disciplines. It is probably strongest, at the moment, in the field of origin of life (OOL) research. The difficulty (read: impossibility) of crafting a coherent explanation for how self-replicating structures could arise through deterministic processes has led some scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick, to admit that alien intelligence is a possible cause. (So Dawkins and Crick join the ranks of intelligent design theorists, albeit unwillingly.) 

Honest OOL researchers admit that they reject ID arguments not because those arguments lack all merit, but simply because they are off the table, out-of-bounds. For example, take some interview comments by OOL researcher Joana Xavier (also discussed by David Klinghoffer in a recent post). She said:  

I read Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer… and I must tell you, I found it one of the best books I’ve read in terms of really pointing, putting the finger on the questions. What I didn’t like was the final answer, of course. But I actually tell everyone I can, “Listen, read that book. Let’s not put Intelligent Design in a spike and burn it. Let’s understand what they’re saying and engage.” And it’s a really good book that really exposes a lot of the questions that people try to sweep under the carpet. It’s just … I think we must have a more naturalistic answer to these processes. There must be! Otherwise I’ll be out of a job. [laughs]… I like to see myself as a very open-minded person in terms of metaphysics, but that’s not to say that the molecular study of the cell should just end. I don’t even think that the ID people want it to end — it’s just the pressure to accept that there’s no answer through naturalistic means that I’m a bit against.  

To her credit, Xavier is upfront about her reasoning. Not everyone is; some scientists would prefer to pretend that the case for ID is pure rubbish, rather than admit that they are simply working in a framework that cannot accept a conclusion of intelligent design. 

Xavier, by contrast, makes it quite clear that she does not believe in accepting a non-naturalistic answer to a scientific question. (I’m not sure whether she would apply this to the idea that a “natural” intelligent being, such as an extraterrestrial, created the first life.) It’s great she acknowledges that her community’s philosophical commitments don’t justify sweeping the arguments of ID proponents under the rug. But is it really practical to engage with an argument while giving yourself the rule that you cannot accept it? 

“This Appears Designed”

Xavier’s fear is that to say, “This appears designed,” would be to give up on the quest to find a natural cause: there might be one, but scientists would never find it because they ended their quest by shrugging their shoulders and saying, “I guess God did it.” 

Her fear is justified. It’s a real danger. Sometimes, things that at first glance appear designed turn out to have purely natural causes. We shouldn’t close our minds to naturalistic explanations just because an intelligent designer could have done it. 

But OOL researchers such as Xavier should realize that the opposite danger also exists. If you begin by saying, “Unguided natural causes did it,” then if unguided natural causes didn’t do it, you will miss the true explanation. You might, as Dr. Nolan said, “spend the rest of eternity searching around on the table for the answer, and you threw it in the garbage.”

Intelligent design theory is not opposed to naturalistic explanations. It is merely open to non-naturalistic explanations. You don’t have to throw any explanation in the garbage: not natural processes, not intelligent mind, not God, not aliens. The deeper purpose of science is not to find a naturalistic explanation, but to find the true explanation. Every possibility must remain on the table in the search for truth. 

Out of a Job?

Will that lead to OOL researchers being put “out of a job,” as Xavier fears? Well, it’s certainly true that once you find a definite answer to a problem, you may have little work left to do on that problem. So maybe one day (probably pretty far off) origin-of-life researchers will settle the question once and for all, and have nothing left to do. 

But is that the worst thing that could happen? Scientists work themselves out of a job all the time. Normally, when they do, they just move on to another question. Isn’t that better than throwing the answer in the garbage, just to ensure you can keep searching for it forever?