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This article is about the concept of intelligent design. See also the teleological argument. For the associated social movement see ID as a movement. For the book, see Intelligent Design (book).

Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an unguided process such as natural selection. ID advocates state that their focus is on detecting evidence of design in nature, without regard to who or what the designer might be. This makes Intelligent Design and agnostic theory, and not another school of Christian Creationism as is commonly purported.

Adherents of ID it stands on equal footing with the current scientific theories regarding the origin of life and the origin of the universe . This claim has not been accepted by much of the scientific community. The National Academy of Sciences has said that Intelligent Design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own . Critics argue that ID proponents find gaps within current evolutionary theory and fill them in with speculative beliefs, and that ID in this context may ultimately amount to the "God of the gaps" .

These criticisms reflect many of the common misconceptions about Intelligent Design. Thoug it is true that it has not been accepted by much of the scientific community, it is attaining growing acceptance within it. It has many of it's own research programs. One example is the Discovery Instute's Center for Science and Culture.

Intelligent Design is, in practice, quite testable. The fact that it is falsifiable, for instance, if exhibited in frequent attempts by critics to do just that. If satisfactory naturalistic explanations can be found to have brought something into existance (e.g. natural selection), then design arguments should be abandoned in favor of those. If, however, design has greater explanatory power, and does not commit the God of the Gaps logical fallacy, then that explanation must be accepted instead. Other things like specified complexity, provide positive evidence for Intelligent Design.

Both the Intelligent Design concept and the associated movement have come under considerable criticism. This criticism is regarded by advocates of ID as a natural consequence of philosophical naturalism which precludes by definition the possibility of supernatural causes as rational scientific explanations. Proponents of ID state that there is a systemic bias within the scientific community against proponents' ideas and research based on the naturalistic assumption that science can only make reference to natural causes.

Intelligent Design in summary

Intelligent Design is presented as an alternative to purely naturalistic forms of the theory of evolution. Its main purpose is to investigate whether or not the empirical evidence necessarily implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents. For example, William Dembski, one of ID's leading proponents, has stated that the fundamental claim of ID is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

Proponents of ID look for evidence of signs of intelligence — physical properties of an object that necessitate design. The most common cited signs being considered include irreducible complexity, information mechanisms, and specified complexity. Many design proponents state that living systems show one or more of these, from which they infer that life is designed. This stands in opposition to mainstream explanations of systems, which explain the natural world exclusively through impersonal physical processes such as random mutations and natural selection. ID proponents state that evidence for design in nature can be detected. Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence claims "Proponents of intelligent design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes. Note that intelligent design studies the effects of intelligent causes and not intelligent causes per se." Questions concerning the identity of a designer fall outside the realm of the idea.

Critics say ID is attempting to redefine natural science. They cite books and statements of principal ID proponents calling for the elimination of "methodological naturalism" from science. Natural science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation alone (sometimes called empirical science). Critics of ID consider the idea that some outside intelligence created life on Earth to be a priori (without observation) knowledge. ID proponents cite some complexity in nature that cannot be explained by the scientific method. ID proponents infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that cannot be explained through naturalistic means. Since the designer cannot be observed, critics continue, it is a priori knowledge.

Origins of the concept

For over a millennium, philosophers have argued that the complexity of nature's "design" that operates for complex purposes indicates the existence of a purposeful supernatural designer/creator; this has come to be known as the argument from design for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (thirteenth century), design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and William Paley in his book Natural Theology (nineteenth century) where he makes his watchmaker analogy. The modern concept of intelligent design is distinguished from the teleological argument in that ID does not identify the agent of creation, and its proponets seek to take the debate into the realm of science rather than just philosophy.

The phrase "intelligent design" can be found in an 1847 issue of Scientific American and in an 1868 book. It was coined in its present sense in Humanism, a 1903 book by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design."

The phrase then lay unused for nearly a century. "The term intelligent design came up in 1988 at a conference in Tacoma, Wash., called Sources of Information Content in DNA," claims Stephen C. Meyer, co-founder of the Discovery Institute and vice president of the Center for Science and Culture, who was present at the phrase's re-creation, which he attributes to Of Pandas and People editor Charles Thaxton. The phrase appeared in the first edition Of Pandas and People in 1989, which is considered the first modern intelligent design book. The term was promoted more broadly by the retired legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson following his 1991 book Darwin on Trial. Johnson went on to work with Meyers, becoming the program advisor of the Center for Science and Culture and be considered the "father" of the intelligent design movement.

Defining intelligent design as science

Evolutionary scientists often claim that their position is more scientific than Intelligent Design. This presents a demarcation problem, which in the philosophy of science, is about how and where to draw the lines around science. For a theory to qualify as scientific it must be:

Consistent (internally and externally)
Parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations, see Occam's Razor)
Empirically testable & falsifiable (see Falsifiability)
Based upon controlled, repeated experiments
Correctable & dynamic (changes are made as new data is discovered)
Progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
Tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting certainty)

For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet at least most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer which are matched, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a couple or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any meaningful sense of the word.

Typical objections to defining intelligent design as science are:

Intelligent design lacks consistency.
Intelligent design is not falsifiable.
Intelligent design violates the principle of parsimony.
Intelligent design is not empirically testable.
Intelligent design is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive.

In light of its adherence to the standards of the scientific method, intelligent design can not be said to follow the scientific method. There is no way to test its conjectures, and the underlying assumptions of intelligent design are not open to change.

ID as a movement

Main article: Intelligent design movement

The Intelligent design movement is an organized campaign to promote ID arguments in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The movement claims ID exposes the limitations of scientific orthodoxy, and of the secular philosophy of Naturalism. ID movement proponents allege that science, by relying upon naturalism, demands an adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that dismisses out of hand any explanation that contains a supernatural cause. Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the intelligent design movement and its unofficial spokesman stated that the goal of intelligent design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept:

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy."
"So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do."

The intelligent design movement is largely the result of efforts by the conservative Christian think tank the Discovery Institute, and its Center for Science and Culture. The Discovery Institute's wedge strategy and its adjunct, the Teach the Controversy campaign, are campaigns intended to sway the opinion of the public and policymakers. They target public school administrators and state and federal elected representatives to introduce intelligent design into the public school science curricula and marginalize mainstream science. The Discovery Institute operates on a $4,000,000 budget and receives financial support from 22 foundations, at least two-thirds of which state explicitly religious missions. The institute's CSC was founded largely with funds provided by Howard Ahmanson Jr., who has stated a goal of "the total integration of biblical law into our lives." A CSC mission statement proclaimed its goal is to "unseat not just Darwinism, but also Darwinism's cultural legacy".

Critics note that instead of producing original scientific data to support ID’s claims, the Discovery Institute has promoted ID politically to the public, education officials and public policymakers. Also oft mentioned is that there is a conflict between what leading ID proponents tell the public through the media and what they say before their conservative Christian audiences, and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy obfuscates its agenda. This they claim is proof that the movement's "activities betray an aggressive, systematic agenda for promoting not only intelligent design creationism, but the religious worldview that undergirds it.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares "Teach the controversy" with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children."

Underscoring claims that the ID movement is more social and political enterprise than a scientific one, intelligent design has been in the center of a number of controversial political campaigns and legal challenges. These have largely been attempts to introduce intelligent design into public school science classrooms while concurrently portraying evolutionary theory as a theory largely scientifically disputed; a "theory in crisis." The most often cited example of this "theory in crisis" is the Discovery Institutes petition "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism". Since 2001 this petition has generated signatures from 400 scientists from around the world, which unfortunatley only contains 73 biologists. An unfunded project The Four Day Petition was organized "A Scientific Support For Darwinism" in Sept and October of 2005. That petition generated 8040 verified scientists signatures, representing a 1,200% increase over the Discovery Institutes at a rate 640,000% faster. Despite a consensus in the scientific community that ID lacks merit and ID proponents have yet to propose an actual scientific hypothesis. These campaigns and cases are discussed in depth in the Intelligent design movement article.

Intelligent design debate

Intelligent design
Part of a series on
Watchmaker analogy
Concepts
Irreducible complexity Specified complexity Fine-tuned universe Intelligent designer Theistic science Neo-creationism
Movement
Timeline Wedge strategy Politics Kitzmiller v. Dover
Campaigns
Discovery Institute campaigns "Teach the controversy"
Authors
Jonathan Wells William A. Dembski Phillip E. Johnson Michael Behe Stephen C. Meyer
Organisations
Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Centre for Intelligent Design International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity Truth in Science
Reactions
Jewish Roman Catholic Scientific bodies that explicitly reject intelligent design
Creationism
Category
v t e

The intelligent design debate centers on three issues:

whether the definition of science is broad enough to allow for theories of human origins which incorporate the acts of an intelligent designer
whether the evidence supports such theories
whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate in public education.

ID supporters generally hold that science must allow for both natural and supernatural explanations of phenomena. Excluding supernatural explanations limits the realm of possibilities, particularly where naturalistic explanations utterly fail to explain certain phenomena. Supernatural explanations provide a very simple and parsimonious explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Proponents claim that the evidence strongly supports such explanations, as instances of so-called irreducible complexity and specified complexity appear to make it highly unreasonable that the full complexity and diversity of life came about solely through natural means. Finally, they hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools, because teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding the Creationist beliefs. Teaching both, ID supporters argue, allows for a scientific basis for religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote a religious belief.

According to critics of ID, not only has ID failed to establish reasonable doubt in its proposed shortcomings of accepted scientific theories, but it has not even presented a case worth taking seriously. Critics of ID argue that ID has not presented a credible case for the public policy utility of presenting Intelligent Design in education. More broadly, critics maintain that it has not met the minimum legal standard of not being a "clear" attempt to establish religion, which in the United States is constitutionally forbidden. Scientists argue that those advocating "scientific" treatment of "supernatural" phenomena are grossly misunderstanding the issue, and indeed misunderstand the nature and purpose of science itself. Furthermore, if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system. While Christian fundamentalists imagine their God to be the only deity to be referenced, a cursory examination of mankind's belief systems reveals that there is a very large number of potential supernatural "explanations" for the emergence and organization of life on earth, none of which have any empirical support and all of which therefore are equally deserving of promotion as Intelligent Design. Proponents of ID, however, rarely if ever appear to note such alternative theological/supernatural possibilities, defaulting invariably to their particular interpretation of their particular Christian God.

Between these two positions there is a large body of opinion that does not condone the teaching of what is considered unscientific or questionable material, but is generally sympathetic to the position of Deism/Theism and therefore desires some compromise between the two. The nominal points of contention are seen as being proxies for other issues. Many ID followers are quite open about their view that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase religion from public life and view their work in the promotion of ID as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over Intelligent Design, though others note that ID serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent ID proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society.

ID concepts

The following are summaries of key concepts of intelligent design, followed by summaries of criticisms. Counterarguments against such criticisms are often proffered by ID proponents, as are counter-counterarguments by critics, etc.

Irreducible complexity

Main article: Irreducible complexity

The term comes from Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a German biologist who believed that complex systems must be examined as complete, irreducible systems in order to understand how they worked. He extended his biological work into a general theory of systems in a book by the same title, General Systems Theory. After Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA in the early 1950s, GST lost many of its adherents in the physical and biological sciences. Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity provides a good discussion of the "triumph" of the mechanistic view in biochemistry. Systems theory remained popular among social sciences long after its demise in the physical and biological sciences. Apparently, it fell so far out of favor in mainstream science that it's new form, a thinly disguised version of creationism, is touted as being "totally new." Michael Behe, in his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, does not recount the history of his irreducible complexity argument but rather, gives the impression that there is something new when he posits that evolutionary mechanisms cannot account for the emergence of some complex biochemical cellular systems. ID advocates argue that the systems must therefore have been deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence. Irreducible complexity is defined by Behe as:

"...a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."--(Behe, Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference).

According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur without specific design or intent. The environment 'selects' variants that have the highest fitness, which are then passed on to the next generation of organisms. Change occurs by the gradual operation of natural forces over time, perhaps slowly, perhaps more quickly (see punctuated equilibrium). This process is able to 'create' complex structures from simpler beginnings, or convert complex structures from one function to another (see spandrel). Most ID advocates accept that evolution occurs through mutation and natural selection at the 'micro level' such as changing the relative frequency of various beak lengths in finches, but assert that it cannot account for irreducible complexity, because none of the parts of an irreducible system would be functional or advantageous until the entire system is in place.

Behe uses the mousetrap as an illustrative example of this concept. A mousetrap consists of several interacting pieces—the base, the catch, the spring, the hammer—all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. The removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap. Likewise, biological systems require multiple parts working together in order to function. ID advocates claim that natural selection could not create from scratch those systems for which science is currently not able to find a viable evolutionary pathway of successive, slight modifications, because the selectable function is only present when all parts are assembled. Behe's original examples of irreducibly complex mechanisms included the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.

Criticism

The IC (irreducible complexity) argument also assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially. But something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary. For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the IC clotting cascade was later found to be absent in whales, demonstrating that it isn't essential for a clotting system. Many purported IC structures can be found in other organisms as simpler systems that utilize fewer parts. These systems may have had even simpler precursors that are now extinct.

Perhaps most importantly, potentially viable evolutionary pathways have been proposed for allegedly irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the immune system and the flagellum, which were the three examples Behe used. Even his example of a mousetrap was shown to be reducible by John H. McDonald. If IC is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution, it should not be possible to conceive of such pathways—Behe has remarked that such plausible pathways would defeat his argument.

Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin have shown that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular systems actually exhibit is redundant complexity — a kind of complexity that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions results in his taking snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures and processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in which those features are naturally embedded and an over-reliance of overly-simplistic metaphors such as his mousetrap. In addition, it has been claimed that computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it is possible for irreducible complexity to evolve naturally.

Specified complexity

Main article: Specified complexity

The ID concept of specified complexity was developed by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski claims that when something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously) one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed), rather than being the result of natural processes. He provides the following examples: "A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specified. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified." (Intelligent Design, p. 47) He states that details of living things can be similarly characterized, especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

Dembski defines a probability of 1 in 10 as the "universal probability bound". Its value corresponds to the inverse of the upper limit of "the total number of specified events throughout cosmic history," as calculated by Dembski. (The Design Revolution, p. 85) He defines complex specified information (CSI) as specified information with a probability less than this limit. (The terms "specified complexity" and "complex specified information" are used interchangeably.) He argues that CSI cannot be generated by the only known natural mechanisms of physical law and chance, or by their combination. He argues that this is so because laws can only shift around or lose information, but do not produce it, and chance can produce complex unspecified information, or non-complex specified information, but not CSI; he provides a mathematical analysis that he claims demonstrates that law and chance working together cannot generate CSI, either. Dembski and other proponents of ID argue that CSI is best explained as being due to an intelligent cause and is therefore a reliable indicator of design.

Criticism

The conceptual soundness of Dembski's specified complexity/CSI argument is strongly disputed by critics of ID. First, critics maintain that Dembski confuses the issue by using "complex" as most people would use "improbable". He defines CSI as anything with a less than 1 in 10 chance of occurring by (natural) chance. Critics claim that this renders the argument a tautology: CSI cannot occur naturally because Dembski has defined it thus, so the real question becomes whether or not CSI actually exists in nature. They claim that Dembski does not attempt to demonstrate this, but instead simply takes the existence of CSI as a given, and then proceeds to argue that it is a reliable indicator of design.

Another criticism of specified complexity refers to the problem of "arbitrary but specific outcomes". For example, it is unlikely that any given person will win a lottery, but, eventually, a lottery will have a winner; to argue that it is very unlikely that any one player would win is not the same as proving that there is the same chance that no one will win. Similarly, it has been argued that "a space of possibilities is merely being explored, and we, as pattern-seeking animals, are merely imposing patterns, and therefore targets, after the fact." Critics also note that there is much redundant information in the genome, which makes its content much lower than the number of base pairs used.

Furthermore, it is not sound to assume that various biological processes and structure arose all together in their current form by chance, instead, one must understand that any biological system is made up of numerous smaller and more basic systems working symbiotically to create a larger structure. On this scale it is easier to assume that simpler and thus more likely reactions occurred that would procure the material needed for larger and more complex structures The theory also ignores the actual relative chance in terms of the universe, for example there is an estimated 125 billion or more galaxies in the universe with roughly 100 billion stars in each. Stars then have a chance for the presence of terrestrial planets and given the scope of a planet and the various elements existent in the universe, multiplied by the previous statement concerning the amount of stars, it is easy to assume that, the chance of a set of circumstances leading to life is perceivable. One must also take into account all the possible and by-chance chemical reactions that have occurred over the history of the universe.

Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology argues that "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation."

Fine-tuned universe

Main article: Fine-tuned universe

ID proponents use the argument that we live in a fine-tuned universe. They propose that the natural emergence of a universe with all the features necessary for life is wildly improbable. Thus, an intelligent designer of life was needed to ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve that particular outcome. Opinion within the scientific community is still divided on the "finely-tuned universe" issue, but this particular explanation and assessment of probabilities is rejected by most scientists and statisticians.

Within mainstream physics this is related to the question of the anthropic principle, whose weak form is based on the observation that the laws of physics must allow for life, since we observe there is life. The strong form, however, is the assertion that the laws of physics must have made it possible for life to arise. The strong form is a distinctly minority position and is highly controversial.

Criticism

Critics of both ID and the weak form of anthropic principle argue that they are essentially a tautology; life as we know it may not exist if things were different, but a different sort of life might exist in its place. The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible.

Based on the unproven idea that some of the universe's initial conditions might have been different, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle have shown that from the initial conditions of the universe, that is, the moment immediately after the Big Bang, a large number of types of universe could have formed. The type of universe that we live in is called a Hartle-Hawking type universe. According to their calculations, the chance that a Hartle-Hawking universe forms is over 90%. Thus, the chance that our particular universe formed may be small, but the chance that a universe of the same type, with stars, planets and the other elements required to create life as we know it would come out of the Big Bang is over 90%, not improbable at all.

Recent work in cosmology has put forth the mathematical possiblity of a multiverse. This would allow many types of universes to simultaneously arise, of which ours is one possibility. Although multiverse theories currently lack verified predictions, some astronomers believe that gravity may leak into other dimensions in braneworld scenarios, potentially providing the first observable data to support these theories.

External links

Discovery Institute (Largest promoter of Intelligent Design)
- Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Design Arguments for the Existence of God
Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences Second Edition (1999)
National Center for Science Education articles and other resources about ID
Resolution from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Talk Origins Archive (Archive of a UseNet discussion group)
Design Inference: The website of William A. Dembski
ID Network
Origins.org
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
Access Research Network

Notes and references

Stephen C. Meyer, 2005. The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories. Ignatius Press.
"Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science" In Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition National Academy of Sciences, 1999
Niall Shanks, 2004.God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Oxford University Press.
The Economist Magazine, July 30 thru August 5 2005, "Intelligent design rears its head", page 30 thru 31
AP, August 2 2005
Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, August 3 2005;
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Barbara Forrest, 2000. "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection." In Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 7-29.
Phillip E. Johnson in his book "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education" (InterVarsity Press, 1995), positions himself as a "theistic realist" against "methodological naturalism."
"My colleagues and I speak of 'theistic realism'-- or sometimes, 'mere creation' -- as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology." Phillip Johnson. Starting a Conversation about Evolution
William Dembski in The Design Inference" (see further reading) cited extraterrestrials as a possible designer .
Michael J. Murray, n.d. "Natural Providence (or Design Trouble)" (PDF)
William Dembski defends ID from "silly claim" that "ancient technologies could not have built the pyramids, so goblins must have done it."
Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologica. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk
"...the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." Phillip Johnson. "The Wedge", Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. July/August 1999.
"Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed." Phillip Johnson. "Keeping the Darwinists Honest", an interview with Phillip Johnson. In Citizen Magazine. April 1999.
William Dembski, 1998. The Design Inference. Cambridge University Press
Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensible to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210
Dembski. 2005. Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris.
Intelligent design is generally only internally consistent and logical within the framework in which it operates. Criticisms are that this framework has at its foundation an unsupported, unjustified assumption: That complexity and improbability must entail design, but the identity and characteristics of the designer is not identified or quantified, nor need they be. The framework of intelligent design, because it rests on a unquantifiable and unverifiable assertion, has no defined boundaries except that complexity and improbability require design, and the designer need not be constrained by the laws of physics.
The designer is not falsifiable, since its existence is typically asserted without sufficient conditions to allow a falsifying observation. The designer being beyond the realm of the observable, claims about its existence can neither be supported nor undermined by observation, hence making intelligent design and the argument from design analytic a posteriori arguments.
Intelligent design fails to pass Occam's razor. Adding entities (an intelligent agent, a designer) to the equation is not strictly necessary to explain events.
That intelligent design is not empirically testable stems from the fact that intelligent design violates a basic premise of science, naturalism.
Intelligent design professes to offer an answer that does not need to be defined or explained, the intelligent agent, designer. By asserting a conclusion that need not be accounted for, the designer, no further explanation is necessary to sustain it, and objections raised to those who accept it make little headway. Thus intelligent design is not a provisional assessment of data which can change when new information is discovered. Once it is claimed that a conclusion that need not be accounted for has been established, there is simply no possibility of future correction. The idea of the progressive growth of scientific ideas is required to explain previous data and any previously unexplainable data as well as any future data. This is often given as a justification for the naturalistic basis of science.
Elizabeth Nickson, 2004. "Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin." In Christianity.ca.
Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
Phillip E. Johnson quoted. November 2000. Touchstone magazine. Berkeley’s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
BaptistToBaptist.com, May 15, 2001
Max Blumenthal, 2004 "Avenging angel of the religious right." In Salon.com.
Barbara Forrest, 2001. "The Wedge at Work." from Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. MIT Press.
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Phillip E. Johnson. January 10 2003 on American Family Radio In www.christianity.ca
Jon Buell & Virginia Hearn (eds), 1992. "Proceedings of a Symposium entitled: Darwinism: Scientific Inference of Philosophical Preference?" (PDF)
Semba U, Shibuya Y, Okabe H, Yamamoto T., 1998. "Whale Hageman factor (factor XII): prevented production due to pseudogene conversion." Thromb Res. 1998 1 April;90(1):31-7.
Matt Inlay, 2002. "Evolving Immunity." In TalkDesign.org.
Nic J. Matzke, 2003. "Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum." In TalkDesign.org.
John H. McDonald A reducibly complex mousetrap.
Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin. Redundant Complexity:A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry. East Tennessee State University.
Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, Adami C., 2003. "The evolutionary origin of complex features." Nature. May 8 2003;423(6936):139-44.
William A. Dembski, 2005. ""Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by Michael Shermer in How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (2003).
Nowak quoted. Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Willam A. Dembksi . Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural Theology? From Dembski's designinference.com
Beth McMurtrie, 2001. "Darwinism Under Attack." The Chronicle Of Higher Education.
The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories. Stephen C. Meyer. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239. August, 2004.
Wesley R. Elsberry, 2004. "Meyer's Hopeless Monster." In The Panda's Thumb.
Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington. September, 2004.
AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Richard Sternberg, 2004. "Procedures for the publication of the Meyer paper."
"Clarifications Regarding the BSG, Bryan College, and Richard Sternberg."
Richard Sternberg, 2004. Alleged Office of the Special Counsel letter to Sternberg
Pim Van Meurs. October 2005. Panda's Thumb: "Rhe statement based on the OSC letter to Sternberg presents the ‘findings’ in an incorrect light. No official findings or conclusions were presented as far as I can tell. The OSC lacked jurisdiction and the museum was never given a chance to respond."
"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Discovery Institute. What is Intelligent Design?
Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design," The New Republic, August 22 2005.
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32

Notes and references

Stephen C. Meyer, 2005. The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories. Ignatius Press.
"Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science" In Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition National Academy of Sciences, 1999
Niall Shanks, 2004.God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Oxford University Press.
The Economist Magazine, July 30 thru August 5 2005, "Intelligent design rears its head", page 30 thru 31
AP, August 2 2005
Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, August 3 2005;
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Barbara Forrest, 2000. "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection." In Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 7-29.
Phillip E. Johnson in his book "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education" (InterVarsity Press, 1995), positions himself as a "theistic realist" against "methodological naturalism."
"My colleagues and I speak of 'theistic realism'-- or sometimes, 'mere creation' -- as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology." Phillip Johnson. Starting a Conversation about Evolution
William Dembski in The Design Inference" (see further reading) cited extraterrestrials as a possible designer .
Michael J. Murray, n.d. "Natural Providence (or Design Trouble)" (PDF)
William Dembski defends ID from "silly claim" that "ancient technologies could not have built the pyramids, so goblins must have done it."
Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologica. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk
"...the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." Phillip Johnson. "The Wedge", Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. July/August 1999.
"Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed." Phillip Johnson. "Keeping the Darwinists Honest", an interview with Phillip Johnson. In Citizen Magazine. April 1999.
William Dembski, 1998. The Design Inference. Cambridge University Press
Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensible to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210
Dembski. 2005. Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris.
Intelligent design is generally only internally consistent and logical within the framework in which it operates. Criticisms are that this framework has at its foundation an unsupported, unjustified assumption: That complexity and improbability must entail design, but the identity and characteristics of the designer is not identified or quantified, nor need they be. The framework of intelligent design, because it rests on a unquantifiable and unverifiable assertion, has no defined boundaries except that complexity and improbability require design, and the designer need not be constrained by the laws of physics.
The designer is not falsifiable, since its existence is typically asserted without sufficient conditions to allow a falsifying observation. The designer being beyond the realm of the observable, claims about its existence can neither be supported nor undermined by observation, hence making intelligent design and the argument from design analytic a posteriori arguments.
Intelligent design fails to pass Occam's razor. Adding entities (an intelligent agent, a designer) to the equation is not strictly necessary to explain events.
That intelligent design is not empirically testable stems from the fact that intelligent design violates a basic premise of science, naturalism.
Intelligent design professes to offer an answer that does not need to be defined or explained, the intelligent agent, designer. By asserting a conclusion that need not be accounted for, the designer, no further explanation is necessary to sustain it, and objections raised to those who accept it make little headway. Thus intelligent design is not a provisional assessment of data which can change when new information is discovered. Once it is claimed that a conclusion that need not be accounted for has been established, there is simply no possibility of future correction. The idea of the progressive growth of scientific ideas is required to explain previous data and any previously unexplainable data as well as any future data. This is often given as a justification for the naturalistic basis of science.
Elizabeth Nickson, 2004. "Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin." In Christianity.ca.
Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
Phillip E. Johnson quoted. November 2000. Touchstone magazine. Berkeley’s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
BaptistToBaptist.com, May 15, 2001
Max Blumenthal, 2004 "Avenging angel of the religious right." In Salon.com.
Barbara Forrest, 2001. "The Wedge at Work." from Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. MIT Press.
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Phillip E. Johnson. January 10 2003 on American Family Radio In www.christianity.ca
Jon Buell & Virginia Hearn (eds), 1992. "Proceedings of a Symposium entitled: Darwinism: Scientific Inference of Philosophical Preference?" (PDF)
Semba U, Shibuya Y, Okabe H, Yamamoto T., 1998. "Whale Hageman factor (factor XII): prevented production due to pseudogene conversion." Thromb Res. 1998 1 April;90(1):31-7.
Matt Inlay, 2002. "Evolving Immunity." In TalkDesign.org.
Nic J. Matzke, 2003. "Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum." In TalkDesign.org.
John H. McDonald A reducibly complex mousetrap.
Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin. Redundant Complexity:A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry. East Tennessee State University.
Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, Adami C., 2003. "The evolutionary origin of complex features." Nature. May 8 2003;423(6936):139-44.
William A. Dembski, 2005. ""Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by Michael Shermer in How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (2003).
Nowak quoted. Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32
Willam A. Dembksi . Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural Theology? From Dembski's designinference.com
Beth McMurtrie, 2001. "Darwinism Under Attack." The Chronicle Of Higher Education.
The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories. Stephen C. Meyer. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239. August, 2004.
Wesley R. Elsberry, 2004. "Meyer's Hopeless Monster." In The Panda's Thumb.
Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington. September, 2004.
AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Richard Sternberg, 2004. "Procedures for the publication of the Meyer paper."
"Clarifications Regarding the BSG, Bryan College, and Richard Sternberg."
Richard Sternberg, 2004. Alleged Office of the Special Counsel letter to Sternberg
Pim Van Meurs. October 2005. Panda's Thumb: "Rhe statement based on the OSC letter to Sternberg presents the ‘findings’ in an incorrect light. No official findings or conclusions were presented as far as I can tell. The OSC lacked jurisdiction and the museum was never given a chance to respond."
"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Discovery Institute. What is Intelligent Design?
Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design," The New Republic, August 22 2005.
Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32

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