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The Darwinian Trilemma

The Darwinian Trilemma consists of the following three inconsistent, but often defended propositions:

1. Science cannot test the proposition that biological features are designed.

2. Darwinism explains the appearance of design in biology not as actual design but as the product of natural selection and random variation.

3. Darwinism is a theory that falls within the domain of science.

Proposition 1 is usually employed to reject the scientific status of intelligent design. Proposition 2 does the work of reduction: attempting to explain the phenomena at a finer grained level of detail than the appearance. In this case, Darwinism tells us how something can appear designed, when in fact it is not. Proposition 3 states, quite simply, that Darwinism is a scientific theory.

The three propositions are inconsistent. To solve the trilemma, one needs to successfully modify or eliminate one of the propositions.

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