Intelligent Design is a Quest for the Supernatural

By the very nature of its approach, "intelligent design" cannot be satisfied with a "designer" who is part of the natural world. Such a "designer" would not answer the basic question its advocates raise: it would not explain biological complexity as such. The only "designer" that would stop their quest for a "design" explanation of complexity is a "designer" about whom one cannot ask any questions or who cannot be subjected to any kind of scientific study--a "designer" that "transcends" nature and its laws--a "designer" not susceptible of rational explanation--in short: a supernatural "designer."

Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, "intelligent design" is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one "candidate for the role of designer" need apply. Dembski himself--even while trying to deny this implication--concedes that "if there is design in biology and cosmology, then that design could not be the work of an evolved intelligence." It must, he admits, be that of a "transcendent intelligence" to whom he euphemistically refers as "the big G."

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Submitted by Joe G on Sep 15, 2008.

Even the anti-IDists require something beyond nature to explain the origin of nature. Natural processes only exist in nature and therefor cannot account for its origins.

ID is NOT an argument about complexity and it certainly does NOT state that complexity can only arise from complexity.

ID is about FUNCTIONAL complexity.

The bottom line is we do exist and there is only ONE reality behind our existence. If you listen to the anti-ID side our existence is due to many accidents- first cosmic and then genetic.

Is that scientific? How can we test that premise? What predictions does it make?

IOW it is very funny what PvM offers up as science and out of the other side of his mouth rejects ID without consideration.

Submitted by PvM on Sep 15, 2008.

So ID is about complexity and function but that merely describes what I outlined already. Something has function and science does not understand how said function arose so we call it 'design'. Still an argument that adds nothing to 'we don't know' and in fact, as formulated is inherently unreliable.

--Joe
OW it is very funny what PvM offers up as science and out of the other side of his mouth rejects ID without consideration.
--

It's not only funny but contradicted by what I have said on this forum. And note that I am not addressing the claim of it being science, after all that would allow the ID proponent to sidetrack the discussion by pointing out the 'demarcation problem'. What I am arguing is far harder for ID to respond to namely the fact that it is scientifically speaking without content.

What to see an example? How does ID explain the bacterial flagella? How does it compare to scientific hypotheses?

Good luck

Submitted by Joe G on Sep 17, 2008.

How does the anti-ID position explain the bacterial flagellum? "It just evolved". If you think there is a different explanation then please post it.

BTW ID explains the BF the same way an archaeologist would set out to explain any artifact. However by your "logic" archaeology is a useless endeavor akin to giving up. Why couldn't nature, operating freely build Stonehenge?

PvM:
So ID is about complexity and function but that merely describes what I outlined already. Something has function and science does not understand how said function arose so we call it 'design'. Still an argument that adds nothing to 'we don't know' and in fact, as formulated is inherently unreliable.
----

However you don't say we don't know. You say we don't know but a designer wasn't required.

And again the design inference relies on observations, data, and experience. And as with all scientific inferences future research can either confirm or refute that inference.

That is how science operates.

Submitted by PvM on Sep 17, 2008.

I understand the ad hominem approach chosen by Joe, after all, what is the alternative? Showing that ID really lives up to what Joe claims it is?

--Joe G
And again the design inference relies on observations, data, and experience. And as with all scientific inferences future research can either confirm or refute that inference.

That is how science operates.
---

Actually the design inference relies on the absence of these to infer something they call 'design' based not upon a positive hypothesis, but rather based on an eliminative approach called the 'explanatory filter' which concludes that lacking a scientific explanation we should infer 'design' even though design cannot compete with our ignorance, and even though design still may include a natural designer such as variation and selection. In other words, ID is a placeholder where, lacking sufficient explanations, it argues, nay insists that we call it 'design' just because it looks designed. The overlap with Paley should be self evident but things get worse when ID proponents attempt to validate the approach by claiming that this is how science works.

In fact, this is NOT how science works, as can be trivially shown by noticing that ID refuses to constrain its designer by such scientific approaches as used in criminology which include means, motives, opportunity, as well as eye witnesses, physical evidence and circumstantial evidences. No, ID cannot rely on such because, by relying on what science has come to identify as 'rarefied' design, it has effectively chosen an approach which cannot even compete with 'we don't know' as it provides no positive hypotheses.

So let's expose the scientific vacuity of ID once again:

How does ID explain the genetic code/bacterial flagella and how does its 'explanation' compares to how science explains these?

The lack of explanations from ID, combined with its silly name calling, should be sufficient evidence of its scientific vacuity.

Submitted by Lee Bowman on Sep 11, 2008.

"By the very nature of its approach, "intelligent design" cannot be satisfied with a "designer" who is part of the natural world."

Define "natural world". Prior to 1950 there were only 97 known elements. Several decades earlier, photons were unknown, or at least 'unproven'. By the mid 1960's, physicists realized that their prior concept of matter being composed of the fundamental protons, neutrons, and electron, was insufficient to explain the myriad new particles being uncovered. Prior to evidences, it was met with skepticism, and some of them were referred to as quacks; and thus came 'quarks'.

ID addresses evidences for designed structures, mechanisms and synergistic systems in biology. Hypothesizing intervening agencies is more difficult, and irrelevant to the ID synthesis.

You at the institute state that the designer could not be natural. I disagree, since everything that interacts with known matter (in this case bioforms), would likely exist within the universe, to enable it to interact. It could well be external, if space is multidimensional, but it's not a requirement. The basis for you claim is a fall back on the religious point of view for the master designer, but has no scientific evidence or merit on its own. You conclusion, based on you meritless allegation of supernaturality or transcendency, is therefore pointless.

Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne did a piece for the Guardian in which one of them, probably Dawkins, stated, " ... any God capable of creating a bacterial flagellum (to say nothing of a universe) would have to be a far more complex, and therefore statistically improbable, entity than the bacterial flagellum (or universe) itself ... "

What kind of logic is that? Is it improbable to be more complex than 45 proteins in one package? Or even worse, to be more complex than the universe to create it? What is the evidence for those assertions?

Since an ant is more complex than a flagellum, I assume that one could put together a flagellum, even if God couldn't.

"Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, "intelligent design" is inherently a quest for the supernatural."

No, it's to define, and detect (or falsify) design in biosystems, and in so doing, possibly modify evolutionary theory. While it's true that some advocate, and seek to validate, a young earth hypothesis, that is far from what ID hypothesizes.

Ayn Rand rejected religion, and by extension theism, more for political reasons than logical inferences. She believed in objectivism and rational thought. So do I, but I also see the evidence of, and the logic for design.

So who designed the designers? I dunno, how do you assemble spirit energy?

Submitted by PvM on Sep 11, 2008.

==Bowman

ID addresses evidences for designed structures, mechanisms and synergistic systems in biology.
==

Where design basically means that science has yet to explain these exciting new observations. However, note that ID is by definition ill equipped to provide any explanation beyond 'poof'. Such is the fate of appealing to the supernatural which explains anything and thus really nothing.

Submitted by Robert Crowther on Sep 9, 2008.

Debater Jay Richards answers this question quite clearly in a short video at: www.discovery.org/v/19 . The folks at ARI should watch and listen.

Submitted by SidAirfoil on Sep 18, 2008.

"Who designed the designer?" is a valid and important point, and IDs fatal flaw. Jay Richards argues that not knowing "Who designed the designer?" does not prove that there was no designer. Just as design can be inferred from Mount Rushmore (his example) without knowing anything about who designed it or where they came from in turn, so the complexity of life demonstrates design even though we know nothing of the designer except that he/she/they/it exists.

Fine. I agree that lack of knowledge concerning the designer does not prove he doesn't exist. I only argue that by IDs OWN ARGUMENT (that complexity requires intelligent design), the complex intelligent designer itself MUST ALSO HAVE BEEN designed, leading to a near-infinite regression that Richards himself acknowledges. Richards then argues that each person may have his own explanation concerning how the "First Designer", be it god, an advanced alien species, or matter itself (his example), came into existence.

But no matter how you explain the existence of a First Designer, the explanation must either hypothesize complex intelligence in the ABSENCE of a previous designer, or it must hypothesize a supernatural god that who doesn't have to obey ID's rules. Assuming that you IDers are not hypothesizing god (which would make this a theological debate, and make ID creationism-in-sheep's-clothing), you must then be suggesting that the First Designer would have been complex enough to design the next designer in the chain without being designed itself. Does your theory allow for the existence of a natural, but complex and intelligent being that was not itself designed? If not, then we have an infinite regression. If so, why not hypothesize that Man is that being, and that we just don't yet understand how its possible?

Sid

Submitted by PvM on Sep 9, 2008.

We may disagree as to the ability of ID proponents to explain the ultimate source of complexity. Since ID argues that complexity can only come from more complexity, the original source of the complexity found in our universe has to be caused by something even more complex, leading to the inevitable question of who designed this higher form of complexity.
Claiming that "it's turtles all the way down" and that the original source of complexity has always existed is not a scientific claim.

Intelligent Design is a Quest for the Supernatural

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