Intelligent Design is a fun one. If you're one who doesn't ordinarily read the Comments section, I would encourage you to do so over the next few weeks. Because ID generally is viewed as creationism or anti-evolutionary theory, it has been written about and discussed by some brilliant folks on both sides of the coin. I have already decided to break the Design posts into a minimum of three weeks; yet, I'll only be scratching the surface. I have little doubt that a multitude of arguments will be presented in the Comments section (probably more so next week than this), and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
EVOLUTION
I think too often that the scientific community tries to deflect arguments for intelligent design by defining science to be a study of event causation then dismissing ID as “not science.” As Greg Koukl put it, “…when somebody says, ‘that aint science,’ or ‘That’s not scientific,’ to the general population, it doesn’t mean Oh, I see… we are shifting now from one way of knowing about the world – the scientific method – to other ways of gaining legitimate knowledge about the world….” Rather, generally, this statement is tantamount to saying, “that’s not true.” ID, in essence, is a theory that posits an agent cause rather than an event cause. The facts are the same. The method is the same. It’s really the conclusions that differ.
To draw a parallel (again, I’ll borrow from Mr. Koukl here), “We realize that if you come upon a dead man who’s got 15 holes in his chest, his head has been lopped off, and he’s got a knife in his back, he probably did not die of natural causes.” His allusion, of course, is to the forensic sciences, where scientists look to physical evidence for clues and draw conclusions based solely on the evidence. If you presumed in the above example that the deceased became that way via event causation, you could certainly assume that he ducked under the circular saw to grab his shotgun…. Still, no reasonable forensic scientist would assume that no agent was involved. When we study ID, the concept is much the same. The evidence is there for anyone to study, and ID theorists believe that the evidence points to intelligence.
There is an ideology that naturalists present which is utterly infuriating… regardless of who advocates the materialist position, it seems that each presumes that science will “figure it out” sometime in the future. For instance, paleontologists presumed that the fossil record should include a winged, feathered dinosaur-like creature somewhere between where dinosaurs are found and where birds first emerge. Scientists found such a creature. In fact, scientists are often vindicated with evidential support of their theories. So, the conclusion seems to be that, if a scientist assumes that life came about by natural processes, science will be right because science has been oh-so-right in the past. Of course, science has been incredibly wrong in the past as well (a point that is oft forgotten), but the tendency is to blame the religious folk for those errors.
The problem here is not that we haven’t “figured it out” yet; rather, it seems that we have figured it out… that we understand the random chemical bonding processes inherent in the materials of life. Yet, those processes lead to the conclusion that the likely way to naturalistically form life is by sheer chance. This notion of the chance formation of life is not just disconcerting to theists. Evolutionary theorists understand, too, that the odds against life forming by chance are problematic (again, using the well-founded interactions of the chemicals therein); as such, a number of materialists have posited theories to remove or reduce this chance element. I’ll focus more on this next week.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081016141405.htm
The Layman’s Argument for ID
("Intricate Toiling Found In Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle,"
In any other realm of experience, we would immediately assume that we have an artifact of mind.
The idea behind the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, which uses the Allen Telescope Array to search and filter various radio signals, is to seek life by searching for signals that could not occur naturally (this concept was made popular by the movie Contact). Of course, the array picks up a constant barrage of signals, so how do SETI scientists propose to look for intelligence? They look for information. Information, to the SETI scientists, is sufficient grounds to suppose intelligence. SETI recognizes that certain patterns simply do not occur naturally.
Shaped tools and hieroglyphics point archeologists to man’s influence.
Cryptographers sort through randomness to find coherence, and, hence, intelligence.
The point here is not necessarily that ID is equivalent to these other sciences, but that our experience tells us information is a likely indication of intelligence. When one theorizes, then, that another information source should be investigated for an intelligent causer, is such a venture as outlandish as some might have you believe? Next week, I’ll explore some of the calculations previously referenced by Dembski and others to better explain why ID theorists (and many evolutionary theorists) view abiogenesis as something that many believe simply cannot be explained by chance.
(A Quick Note: The materialist readers shouldn’t salivate too terribly much at the idea of reviewing Dembski’s calculations. I don’t intend to simply retread his arguments.)