Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?

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In my opening statements I argued that ID inescapably appeals to the supernatural, which thereby removes it from the realm of rational, scientific inquiry and places it squarely into that of faith-based, religious doctrine.

The Discovery Institute’s response is based on a complete misunderstanding of the argument. DI’s writer claims that I impose an “arbitrary rule that scientists can never detect design if the designer is complex.” He claims that this would lead to “preposterous outcomes” such as the refusal to accept archeological evidence of human carvings or cryptographic evidence of encrypted enemy radio codes. But I imposed no such rule and made no such argument at all.

If you read the argument carefully, you’ll see that it proceeds as follows:

- ID claims that design can be inferred merely from observed complexity (“specified complexity”)—i.e., that complexity is prima facie evidence for design.
- But on this premise, any natural being capable of designing the complex features of earthly life would exhibit sufficient complexity to require its own designer.
- Therefore, the alleged “designer” that ID claims to infer could not be a natural being.

The argument rests crucially on its first premise: that complexity implies design. And the absurd conclusions that DI’s writer draws from the argument all flow from that premise. But this is a premise upheld by the advocates of ID, not by me.

I don’t accept the premise that design can be inferred from complexity. Evolutionary theory shows how biological complexity can arise without intelligent direction, through the natural processes of variation and natural selection. Complexity, as such, is not evidence of design.

So the “preposterous outcomes” that DI’s writer attributes to my position do not follow. They are a logical expression of the basic premise of ID, not of any “arbitrary rule” of mine.

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I argued in my previous objection (“Artificial Wall Between ‘Design’ and ‘Designer’ is Unscientific”) that it is absurd to claim that one can study only “the effects of a designer” while roping off any consideration of the “designer” itself as out of bounds.

The DI’s writer claims that ID does this because it “limits its claims to what can be learned from the empirical data, meaning that it does not try to address religious questions about the identity or nature of the designer.” But why are questions about the “identity or nature” of something religious questions? Why would consideration of the “designer” necessarily introduce “religious discussions about theological questions”? Clearly, it is because his concept of the “designer” is a supernatural one—which was exactly what I was arguing.

By his own admission, the DI writer has declared that ID is indeed an inherently religious viewpoint, even in the attempt to deny it.