Friday, July 25, 2008

Follow the Evidence

I recently read this excerpt from a pamphlet produced on Intelligent Design and thought it was worth sharing.

"Many critics suggest that ID is an argument from scientific ignorance. This objection caricatures ID as arguing that because naturalists have failed to explain the origin of biological information and molecular machines, a “designer” must be posited to fill the gap in our current knowledge, yet this is not how the design argument is formulated. As ID philosopher of science Stephen Meyer writes, “Design theorists do not infer design because natural processes cannot explain the origin of biological systems, but because these systems manifest the distinctive hallmarks of
intelligently designed systems—that is, they possess features that in any other realm of experience would trigger the recognition of an intelligent cause.” The logical formulation here is positive, rather than negative. It begins with what is known, rather than what is unknown. ID starts with the observation that complex specified information (CSI) and irreducible complexity (IC) are known indicators of intelligent agent causation. Human beings, who are empirically observable designers, regularly produce designed systems such as written texts, computer programs, machines, etc. The technological advances of recent years have allowed scientists to look deep within life systems. To their amazement, the smallest units of life are not the simple blobs of jelly that early evolutionists predicted, but extremely complex IC systems full of CSI. The life systems now known to science are entirely analogous to the written texts, computer programs and machines produced by human designers. Scientists know that intelligent designers produce CSI. It is also known that natural mechanisms have not been observed to produce CSI. Based on what is known, ID theorists argue that an inference to an intelligent cause is the best current explanation for biological CSI and IC. The design inference is thus based on empirical evidence and rational analysis rather than ignorance.

The ID critic may still argue, “Okay, so we do not know how nature can produce CSI or IC on its own, but maybe one day we will.” Anti-ID theorists can argue that eventually we will discover how reams of genetic information arose by purely naturalistic means, and eventually we will show how molecular machines can be built through some sort of Darwinian process; therefore, to posit intelligent design is premature. However, if this is the argument against ID, then it must be understood that it is the naturalist who is making an argument rooted in ignorance and is hopeful for something that is not yet known. It turns out that the gap-argument against ID is itself a gap-argument."

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