Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?

• “No”

  

  “Intelligent Design is in Fact Religiously Based”

• “Objection”

  

  “’Who Designed the Designer?’ is a Red-Herring Objection to ID”
  

Intelligent Design is in Fact Religiously Based

Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Expert Verified | See Profile

Recommend (15) Comments (43)

Their viewpoint is not religiously based, they insist, because it does not require that the "intelligent designer" be God. "Design," writes another leading proponent, William Dembski, "requires neither magic nor miracles nor a creator." Indeed, "design" apparently requires surprisingly little of the "designer's" identity: "Inferences to design," contends Behe, "do not require that we have a candidate for the role of designer." According to its advocates, the "designer" responsible for "intelligent design" in biology could be any sort of "creative intelligence" capable of engineering the basic elements of life. Some have even seriously nominated advanced space aliens for the role. Their premise seems to be that as long as they don't explicitly name the "designer"--as long as they allow that the "designer" could be a naturally existing being, a being accessible to scientific study--that this somehow saves their viewpoint from the charge of being inherently religious in character.

Imagine we discovered an alien on Mars with a penchant for bio-engineering. Could such a natural being fulfill the requirements of an "intelligent designer"?

It could not. Such a being would not actually account for the complexity that "design" proponents seek to explain. Any natural being capable of "designing" the complex features of earthly life would, on their premises, require its own "designer." If "design" can be inferred merely from observed complexity, then our purported Martian "designer" would be just another complex being in nature that supposedly cannot be explained without positing another "designer." One does not explain complexity by dreaming up a new complexity as its cause.

Next Argument

"No" Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

• It's Peddled as Science
  11
• Intelligent Design is in Fact Religiously Based
  15
• Intelligent Design is a Quest for the Supernatural
  13
• It's Bait and Switch
  11

"No" National Center for Science Education

• Intelligent Design is a Religiously Motivated Attack on Science
  10
• Scientists See No Scientific Merit in ID
  8
• ID is a Relabeling of Creationist Attacks on Science Education
  6
• Teaching ID in the Public Schools Infringes Constitutional Rights
  6
• Academic Freedom isn’t a License to Present Non-Science like ID
  9

"No" AUSCS

• Intelligent Design Is Unconstitutional
  5
• Public Schools Are Not Supposed To Promote Religion
  6

"Yes" Discovery Institute

• ID Uses Scien. Method; Infers Design by Testing Positive Predictions
  7
• Intelligent Design Has Scientific Merit in Paleontology
  6
• Any Larger Implications Do Not Disqualify ID From Having Merit
  5
• ID Does Not Address Religious Claims About the Supernatural
  6
• ID is Constitutional and has Educational and Legal Merit
  6
• ID Promises To Open Up New Avenues of Scientific Research
  5

"Yes" Michael Behe

• Detecting Design is a Matter of Physical Evidence and Logic
  6
• Darwin's Mechanism Doesn't Produce Design
  4
• The Sophisticated Nanotechnology of the Cell Reeks of Design
  4

"Yes" Jay W Richards PhD

• Is Intelligent Design Science?
  5
• Is There Merit for ID in Cosmology, Physics, and Astronomy?
  5
• Isn’t ID Just a Sneaky Way to Get God into the Public Square?
  7

Most Objections

• Intelligent Design Is Unconstitutional
  5
• Public Schools Are Not Supposed To Promote Religion
  6
• Intelligent Design is in Fact Religiously Based
  15
• It's Peddled as Science
  11
• Intelligent Design is a Quest for the Supernatural
  13
• It's Bait and Switch
  11
• Intelligent Design is a Religiously Motivated Attack on Science
  10
• Scientists See No Scientific Merit in ID
  8
• ID is a Relabeling of Creationist Attacks on Science Education
  6
• Teaching ID in the Public Schools Infringes Constitutional Rights
  6
• Academic Freedom isn’t a License to Present Non-Science like ID
  9
• ID Uses Scien. Method; Infers Design by Testing Positive Predictions
  7
• ID Does Not Address Religious Claims About the Supernatural
  6

Intelligent Design?

• Yes
• No

View Results