?People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.? ?Blaise Pascal, The Art of Persuasion

The Theory of Intelligent Design and The Philosophy of Science

The media and the evolutionists seem to be unaware of or to conceal the following foundational, and perhaps shockingly revealing, framework of the theory of intelligent design. William Dembski, one of the leading proponents of the theory, has explicitly and boldly declared:

?Intelligent design does not require organisms to emerge suddenly or to be specially created from scratch by the intervention of a designing intelligence. To be sure, intelligent design is compatible with the creationist idea of organisms being suddenly created from scratch. But it is also perfectly compatible with the evolutionist idea of new organisms arising from old by a gradual accrual of change. What separates intelligent design from naturalistic evolution is not whether organisms evolved or the extent to which they evolved but what was responsible for their evolution? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 178).

In response to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Dembski in regards to the issue of teaching IDT in school clarifies further that ?intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form,? but that the theory ?leaves that as a possibility? www.arn.org). He says that ?intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as ?common descent.?? Furthermore, in The Design Revolution Dembski stated that design is compatible with orthogenesis en.wikipedia.org), Aristotelian entelechy en.wikipedia.org), Stoic world-soul www.iep.utm.edu), and Rupert Sheldrake?s morphogenetic field en.wikipedia.org) (Dembski 180). Of course, he may be motivated to present IDT as a secular science in order to get the idea, consistent with his religious view of creation, into the classroom. But his personal motivations and metaphysical preconceptions are entirely irrelevant in assessing the scientific legitimacy of the idea. The fact that we should instead attend to is that the design-theoretic framework itself is immune from a priori metaphysical conceptions.

If this foundational framework of the theory has been a surprise, it is understandable. The public propaganda founded on straw arguments against the scientific enterprise of intelligent design has been well propagated. Few seem to know what the theory is and is not.

Intelligent design has been relentlessly chastised for being religion or creationism masquerading as science. One of the foremost misconceptions is that intelligent design requires sudden creation of living organisms by supernatural or divine action. The facts are very much to the contrary as the scientific theory of intelligent design makes rather modest proposals and by no means invokes supernatural or divine intervention. IDT does not require or assume any of the following:

- God or some other supernatural or transcendent entity exists.
- God or some other supernatural or transcendent entity interacts with the natural world.
- At various spatiotemporal locations/instances through natural history, God or some other supernatural or transcendent entity suddenly created living organisms from scratch.
- Living organisms gradually evolved over the long course of natural history from a common ancestor (common descent).

All the theory holds is that ?material mechanisms are capable of only limited evolutionary change and that any substantial evolutionary change would require input from a designing intelligence? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 178). The crucial question for IDT is ?not whether organisms emerged through an evolutionary process or suddenly from scratch but whether a designing intelligence made a discernible difference ? regardless of how organisms emerged? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 178).

Dembski submits in the response to Scott that ?if our best science? substantiates that living things gradually evolved over the long course of natural history from a common ancestor, then IDT ?can live with this result and indeed live with it cheerfully.? He cautions, however, that discontinuities in the fossil record (most notably, the Cambrian Explosion) are ?more difficult to square with common descent.? He splits apart the distinction between common descent and the mechanism for the descent as follows:

?Darwinism is not identical with evolution understood merely as common descent. Darwinism comprises a historical claim (common descent) and a naturalistic mechanism (natural selection operating on random variations), with the latter being used to justify the former. According to intelligent design, the Darwinian mechanism cannot bear the weight of common descent. Intelligent design therefore throws common descent itself into question but at the same time leaves open as a very live possibility that common descent is the case, albeit for reasons other than the Darwinian mechanism.?

Although problems such as Haldane?s dilemma, Cambrian Explosion, and the phylogenetic presumptions of the universal tree of life make common descent intractable to account for, it is not common descent per se that IDT conclusively rejects outright. Rather, the contention is that the entirely undirected and non-telic (naturalistic) mechanism (random mutation and natural selection) cannot propel common descent. It is ?possible? for common descent to be ?driven by telic processes inherent in nature (and thus by a form of design)? (Dembski, Teaching Intelligent Design, www.arn.org). Still, design leaves open the possibility that the similarities in organisms are due to common design rather than common descent since ?designed objects like your TV, radio, and computer share common components because designers frequently recycle ideas and parts? (Dembski, Teaching Intelligent Design, www.arn.org). This reiterates my point that certain similarity, homology, or commonality among living organisms is not conclusive evidence in favor of common descent and in refutation of common design. In short, IDT offers no conclusive resolution regarding the issue of common descent.

Dr. Kelley Ross in the Department of Philosophy at Los Angeles Valley College has written an article in opposition to the theory of intelligent design www.friesian.com). I feel that a few of Ross? remarks are comparable to but more stern than those of Saif, so I thought it would be instructive to merge Ross? key remarks into my response to Saif?s objections.

>> And I counter that ID is the insult to our intelligence --- ID theorists are the ones want to end scientific inquiry into the topic. They wish the throw up their hands and claim "We cannot know, it is the hand of God (or intelligent designer, whatever)." -Saif

This is a well-publicized straw version of the argument for intelligent design. Design theorists do not claim, ?We do not know and cannot know how this happened. Therefore, an intelligent designer did it.? Dembski considers IDT ?a theory of information? where ?information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as a proper object for scientific investigation? (Dembski, Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information, www.arn.org). He calls this positive indicator of design ?specified complexity? or ?complex specified information? (CSI). Irreducible complexity is a special case of CSI. It is from this positive inferential evidence that we conclude design, not by throwing up our hands in ignorance.

>> All the while. scientists are plugging away at the theory and continually adding to its richness, explaining away ambiguities and discovering new evidence. For example, whenever ID theorists make a particular claim such as irreducible complexity (and claim they cannot move forward with any explanation), scientists come up with thorough explanations of the phenomena. ?Saif

How much did evolutionary ?scientists? add to the richness of their theory by relying on argument by ignorance (i.e., ?junk DNA, vestigial organs, and atavisms?)? Were ?junk DNA, vestigial organs, and atavisms? not considered ?new evidence? to add to the richness of evolutionary theory? Is such evolutionary ?garbage? still considered evidence for the theory? Refer to the discussion of ?vestigial organs? and "atavisms" in ?Purported Evidence for Evolution? in Part 1 of the rebuttal.

The Internet buffoons at Talk Origins and other websites do not qualify as ?scientists come up with thorough explanations of the phenomena? of irreducible complexity. Cite a peer-reviewed, scientific journal article that you believe shows in detail how irreducible complexity might arise by the non-teleological, Darwinist mechanism of numerous, successive, slight modifications propagated by random mutations and natural selection.

>> We now know that macroscopically, gravity is propagated by gravity waves (traveling at the speed of light), and we also strongly suspect that at the quantum level, the gravitational interaction is mediated by particles called gravitons --- thus Newton's statement reflected the lack of development in gravitational physics at the time. Of course, if in Newton's time physicists mistakenly threw up their hands claiming that this interaction was due to an intelligent designer, we may never have developed a fuller theory of gravity. ?Saif

Newton?s contemporaries would have been mistaken and indeed would have been guilty of god-of-the-gaps argument or argument by ignorance in claiming that gravitational attraction was due to continuous intervention by an intelligent designer. Why so? It is because gravitational attraction (or any other phenomenon of attraction such as electromagnetic attraction) is not a positive indicator of intelligent agency, viz, CSI or irreducible complexity.

Those who raise these objections at least make one thing clear: they are not well versed in the theory of intelligent design. In this case of the argument by analogy with gravitational attraction, the opponents fail to realize or just do not know that IDT assigns intelligent causation only to those phenomena that exhibit CSI or irreducible complexity. For instance, if I see a pulsar, a rotating neutron star that emits strong electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio waves at very specific, regular intervals, as a design theorist I cannot make the conclusion that the frequency of radio emissions signifies extraterrestrial intelligence, God, or intelligent designer unless I demonstrate that the sequence or timing of pulses and pauses exhibits CSI. In fact, a pulsar?s radio emissions have been legitimately explained by naturalistic mechanisms. A neutron star, collapsed remnant of a supernova, has extremely intense magnetic fields. Whenever the strong magnetic pole of the rotating pulsar sweeps past an observer?s line of sight, strong pulses of radiation are ejected. Prior to this naturalistic explanatory discovery, design theorists would not have thrown up their hands and said, ?We do not know how pulsars emit strong radio pulses at such regular intervals. Therefore, God must be sending the pulses, or there must be an extraterrestrial intelligence out there.?

>> I agree that life must either be designed or not (or restated, either naturalistic or supernaturalistic). ?Saif

Design does not necessarily mean supernaturalism. It is inaccurate to conflate design with supernaturalism. A designed object can be the work of an embodied designer (intelligent agency confined to the space-time dimension) or of an unembodied (supernatural) designer (intelligent agency not confined to the space-time dimension). The mere presence of design does not necessarily imply an unembodied designer or supernaturalism.

The proper epistemological contrast in design theory is not between natural and supernatural causes but rather between ?undirected natural causes on the one hand and intelligent causes on the other? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 189). Intelligent causes guide natural causes to accomplish outcomes that undirected natural causes by themselves cannot accomplish. Undirected natural causes constitute some combination of chance (e.g., random mutations) and necessity (e.g., natural law or natural selection). Chance and necessity constitute naturalistic or materialistic causations. The theory of intelligent design maintains that CSI is an empirically detectable sign of intelligence. An intelligent cause is not necessarily supernatural (e.g., Intel?s microprocessor or Microsoft Windows software is a product of intelligent cause that is not supernatural). All IDT can infer from CSI is intelligent cause. It is presently not possible to empirically demonstrate whether the cause of biological CSI was supernatural.

>> The denial of "natural" causes can only mean the introduction of "supernatural" causes, teleology, etc. This can only mean (1) that the laws of nature are suspended or (2) that the laws of nature are inadequate to explain the phenomena, and a particular kind of supernatural cause is the only alternative. Now, the suspension of the laws of nature is, by definiton, a miracle. It is not surprising that such a notion would accompany theistic belief, but by its very nature it cannot be part of science. ?Ross

If naturalistic causes are inadequate in explaining a given phenomena, then it does not imply that ?a particular kind of supernatural cause is the only alternative.? Again, think Intel and Microsoft. If naturalistic causes are inadequate in explaining the origin of the microprocessor in your computer or of the software code running Windows, then it does not imply that ?a particular kind of supernatural cause is the only alternative.? All it implies is that some intelligent cause was responsible for the origin of these systems that show signs of intelligence. The proper contrast in design theory is between undirected natural causes and intelligent causes, not between natural and supernatural causes.

Think of it this way. Imagine that there is an extraterrestrial intelligence (ET) on some planet 2 billion light years from Earth. Assume that this ET is unaware that the human civilization exists and that the ET is incognizant of possible technologies that another civilization might employ. Imagine that we take a Lexus luxury SUV and one of the latest models of Dell desktop computers with Intel?s microprocessor and Microsoft Windows, scan them into a teletransporter, and ship them out to the planet, unbeknownst to this ET. If ET were to find Lexus SUV and Dell computer, how should they use the scientific method to explain the origin of these objects? Assume that they are unaware that another civilization has teletransported these objects to their planet and that they know nothing about teletransportation. Now, given that ET finds that ?the laws of nature are inadequate to explain the phenomena,? is it prudent for them to conclude, therefore, that ?a particular kind of supernatural cause is the only alternative?? Or, is it scientific for ET to infer intelligent cause from certain positive, empirical signs of intelligent cause? I use this example to hone the design-theoretic concept that the proper epistemological contrast is between undirected natural causes and intelligent causes, not between natural and supernatural causes.

If design involves the suspension of natural laws and ?the suspension of the laws of nature is, by definiton, a miracle,? does that knock down the scientific legitimacy of the design inference from a certain telltale sign of intelligence? First, let us ask, ?What is a miracle?? If you come to think of it, it is not so easy to define a miracle. The philosopher David Hume defined a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent" www.bartleby.com). However, other definitions of miracles do not necessarily invoke divine intervention. A miracle, in the classical sense, has been something that arouses awe or amazement. In fact, the word ?miracle? is derived from the Latin word miraculum, which means ?something wonderful.? A statistically unlikely, yet ?wonderful,? event is also sometimes considered a miracle (e.g., surviving a fatal car crash, recovering from life-threatening, late stages of cancer, or winning a mega lottery). Still yet, miracle is also defined as ?counterfactual substitution? in that natural laws were about to bring outcome X, but instead outcome Y (miracle) occurred.

Second, let us consider whether a miracle, if one occurred in the counterfactual substitution sense, affects the scientific legitimacy of design theory. Dembski argues in The Design Revolution that the intelligent design of the bacterial flagellum does not require a miracle in the counterfactual substitution sense. But even if it did, would design detection itself be outside the bounds of the empirical method of science? I think not because knowledge of the miracle?s causal antecedents is not required in applying the design-theoretic reasoning. Dembski makes the valid point that ?if the event that constitutes a miracle (i.e., a counterfactual substitution) clearly exhibits marks of having been intelligently designed, it could issue in a design inference that convincingly implicates design even though its precise causal antecedents may be unclear? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 186).

>> Indeed, with a supernatural cause, science need never have started. That is because if a supernatural cause can be invoked, then laws of nature are entirely unnecessary in the first place. If a supernatural cause means an omnipotent Creator, then the problem is just that this explains too much. Why is the sky blue? Because God made it that way. Why is there a bright red line in the spectrum of the Sun? Because God put it there. As they would have said in the Middle Ages, all this testifies to the marvelous design and aesthetic of God. Indeed, Islamic Occasionalism simply held that God was the direct cause of everything that happens. This eliminated need for laws of nature at all. ?Ross

Ross jumps wide argumentative chasms with unjustified leaps in inference, leaps unwarranted by the modest empirical evidence of design. The reasoning jumps from design to supernatural to ?omnipotent Creator? to the broad conclusion that natural laws would no longer be necessary as explanatory framework. IDT does not make these unwarranted and unscientific leaps except for the modest empirically justified, scientific inference from CSI to intelligent design. All IDT infers from the empirical evidence of CSI is intelligent design; IDT cannot tell whether the intelligent agent was supernatural or whether the agent was in fact an ?omnipotent Creator.? Furthermore, to invoke design is not to discard natural laws as legitimate explanatory framework for other non-CSI phenomena such as blue sky, star?s spectrum, black hole, pulsar?s radio emissions, and continental drift.

>> Just as with Scientific Creationism, this new approach has pretentions or ambitions to being part of mainstream science ... ?Ross

The philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, Rene Descartes, best known for his famous quotation cogito ergo sum or "I think, therefore I am," is regarded as one of the key figures in the development of the scientific method and of the scientific revolution. Descartes presented four precepts of the scientific method in his treatise Discourse on the Method www.literature.org). Descartes was also a firm believer in God. In fact, he offered ontological proofs for the existence of God in the same treatise. It is obvious that Descartes had certain metaphysical pretensions, yet he seems, at least in retrospect, to have proposed a pristine, if only rudimentary, scientific method unaffected by his preconceived metaphysics. Max Planck, the founder of quantum mechanics, publicly stated that God is everywhere. Einstein, with a philosophical objection to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, scorned at the theory with his famous remark, ?God does not play dice with the universe.? Therefore, scientists have had philosophical preconceptions, and based on such unscientific foundations they have clashed their egoes with others. Likewise, Newton, Mendel, Galileo, Kelvin, and even Muslim scientists of the post-Muhammad Islamic empire had preconceived philosophical notions, yet they were, at least in retrospect, vanguards of their era?s science.

The private beliefs and the scientific works of past scientists show that there is a notable difference between science, as an empirical endeavor and a theoretical methodology, and a scientist who inevitably carries preconceived metaphysical baggage. A scientist carrying metaphysical baggage nonetheless can legitimately practice science free of such baggage. In many instances it is inevitable for a scientist to have a certain philosophical worldview or motivation in proposing a particular scientific paradigm. At the same, the scientist?s theory itself can remain entirely devoid of such human preconception.

Likewise, the proponents of IDT may carry certain metaphysical preconceptions, yet may propose a theory, which itself, as an epistemological framework, remains free of such preconceptions. Therefore, it is incorrect that the ?approach has pretensions or ambitions.? It is not the epistemological approach per se that has metaphysical preconceptions; it is only the scientist?s private mind that carries the baggage. Strictly speaking, a scientific theory (e.g., Big Bang, general relativity, quantum mechanics, neural correlates of conscious free will) may have philosophical implications, not a priori metaphysics.

>> Since Intelligent Design implies an "intelligence" and a "designer," it is a theory of purpose and intention. It thus requires the existence of something that can possess intelligence, intention, and purpose. ?Ross

Design detection is certainly not a ?theory of purpose and intention? because the intentionality of the designer is of no evidential significance for the design inference. If it were so, I feel that detecting design would be something like an exercise in psychology, rather than research on origins. Instead, design detection, devoid of the need to get into the mind of the designer, simply looks for the effects of intelligence. IDT does not require design detection to incorporate or to exclusively be a ?theory of purpose and intention.? IDT observes, "What are the characteristics of design from our everyday human-made objects such as software, semiconductor electronics, machines, factories, and automobiles?" Luskin says it succinctly that "design theorists begin with observations of what intelligent agents produce in their designs, to help them recognize and detect design in the natural world" www.caseyluskin.com). Therefore, the theory of intelligent design is completely independent of the analysis of the designer's psychology, intentions, motivations, origin, and attributes.

Although Dembski has identified the ?intentionality problem? (what was the intention of the designer in producing a given designed object) as one of the follow-up research problems emanating from the design paradigm, he has reserved the question strictly for spheres outside of science (Dembski, Teaching Intelligent Design, www.arn.org).

>> Plato's theory avoids problems that arise with a Creator God. For a Creator God, as it happens, is expected to do what is best -- if the theistic attributes of God are going to be omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. If such a God does not look to the Forms as the standard of what is good, then the good would have to be just whatever he does, which renders characterizing him as "good" trivial and pointless. This is the ancient antinomy between God's goodness and God's omnipotence. To Kant, such antinomies are what happen when we attempt to reason about transcendent objects. And there are more. For instance, if we accepted Plato's theory, we might want to ask, "Why are the Forms as they are?" We could then propose God as the Creator of the Forms. This gets us back to the antinomy of goodness and omnipotence, but it also suggests a new one. Why can't we ask, "Why is God the way he is?" If we ask for a cause for the laws of nature, and then a cause for the World of the Forms, why not a cause for God? Why isn't he caused by something? If the answer is that God is the "First Cause" (Aristotle's idea), then we must ask (1) why have a God rather than some other kind of First Cause? and (2) why must there be a first cause rather than a infinite series of causes? The first objection is that we do not have sufficient reason to conceive a First Cause as a personal God rather than as something else (like the Forms), while the second objection is that the choice between a First Cause and an infinite series is just, indeed, a classic Kantian antinomy of metaphysics (the Fourth). We do not have sufficient reason to choose between an unconditioned cause and an infinite series of causes. ?Ross

What a waste of language! Imagine Ross being the ET in our teletransporter, thought experiment. Would this dialogue about God, origin of God, goodness, omnipotence, antinomies, infinite causal regressions, Aristotle?s First Cause, and other irrelevant subjects even touch the issue of the origin of the Lexus SUV and the Dell computer on ET?s planet? If Ross were the ET, I concede that Earthlings would be ravishly entertained by the silly behavior of this ET.

>> While some anti-Darwinians, like Ann Coulter, say that "Design in the universe may well be explained by something other than God" this is a dishonest assertion, since the original philosophical arguments from design were arguments for the existence of God, and there is no doubt, and no reason for doubt, that people like Coulter believe that the "intelligent designer" is God. ?Ross
>> If it is not God as the designer or the engineer, what is it going to be? Zeus? Marduk? -Ross

I will respond to Ross? objections in conjunction with Saif?s related objection below that it is ?disingenuous? to use the term ?intelligent agent" instead of ?God.?

>> As an aside, I think the way that ID proponents use the words 'intelligent agent' instead of God is disingenuous, when everyone knows that they mean God, and only God. -Saif

I pose the following two questions for those who are well versed in the theoretical framework of IDT. The opponents of IDT who do not even know how CSI is said to positively point to design would probably fare better with even more lame and even more baseless rants that intelligent design is young-earth creationism or Biblical genesis.

Why could the proponents of IDT not possibly include atheists or agnostics? Is there any logical reason why atheists or agnostics could not be advocates of the theoretical framework of the information theory of intelligent design?

In fact, did you know that the advocates of IDT actually do include atheists or agnostics such as David Berlinski, who has no religious faith or conviction? Yet, Berlinski has written in favor of IDT. The set of all proponents of IDT and the set of all atheists or all agnostics are not mutually exclusive sets regardless of whether there currently exist any atheists or agnostics who support IDT. Therefore, it is a false and indeed a disingenuous assertion that ?everyone knows that they mean God, and only God.? Only the uninformed ?know? such disingenuous falsehood; the facts are very much to the contrary. The proponents of IDT have the right to associate the designer with God as per their religious beliefs. Since the association is considered philosophy, what they mean by intelligent designer is immaterial in judging the legitimacy of their scientific theory, which only studies the signs or effects of intelligence. IDT does not study the intelligent agency itself, i.e., psychology, intentions, motivations, origin, and attributes of designers or divinities.

The theory of intelligent design relies strictly on the scientific method of inquiry to infer design. The current technological tools (microscopes, telescopes, satellites, spacecrafts, robots, sensors, microprocessors, computer simulations, gamma ray detectors, x-ray visions, etc.) that the scientific method uses to study the universe and the living things only allow the scientist to infer the presence of the features characteristic of a designer's handiwork. Helpless the tools are in identifying the actual identity of the designer, however. Therefore, it is a philosophical argument to infer ?God? from the mere presence of the features characteristic of a designer's handiwork. The proponents of IDT stringently adhere to the scientific method, and, hence, refrain from labeling the designer ?God? in the scientific spheres.

Using the generic term ?intelligent designer? instead of ?God? is by no means disingenuous. Rather, it is sincere and pristine science to infer some intelligent designer from a certain infallible indicator of an intelligent being. Scientific evidence does not justify an inferential leap from ?some intelligent designer? to ?God.? Science, given present technology, cannot answer what or who God is, let alone confirm how many gods exist. A religious scripture or a philosophical crystal ball, not science, expounds on the attributes of beings that science cannot study. The inference is justified by religious or philosophical analysis. However, it is scientifically justified to infer intelligent design and, hence, some (undefined) intelligent designer.

I suggest that science, in tandem with ontological anti-realism, consider the intelligent designer as merely a regulative principle that facilitates scientific understanding of the world. I define a regulative principle as an idea that helps us make scientific sense out of the world even though the idea may not be objectively real or be an object of direct experience. Anti-realists deny the objective reality of unobservable entities such as electrons, quarks, wave-particle duality of light, and strings. They believe that such entities are merely theoretical constructs that help us make scientific sense out of the world, but that such constructs do not tell us anything about the underlying objective reality.

I will use three examples to illustrate the concept of a regulative principle:

1. Immanuel Kant in Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science oll.libertyfund.org) reasoned that absolute space had been presupposed by certain motions of matter. He explained that since absolute space is not itself an object of experience, absolute space must be represented as a ?mere idea? that guides our scientific practice. Absolute space may be used as a regulative principle in the appropriate context of non-relativistic, Newtonian physics.

2. Barring potential enlightenment from the burgeoning string theory or theory of everything, is the collapse of the wave function of quantum mechanics objectively real? Yet, does it help us make some scientific sense out of the world? Is not the collapse of the wave function a regulative principle?

3. Human beings can distinguish different wavelengths or frequencies of visible light with the result being that they can purportedly see a ?colorful world.? However, the colorful world is an illusion for we have no reason to believe that the external world is in fact colored. The visual center of the human brain merely interprets the visible light?s frequencies as colors. Still, we can make sense out of the world by making reference to colors as a regulative principle. If I say, ?It is a lovely rainbow,? you might reciprocate. We go about our normal lives and conduct experiments with reference to colors even though the external world may not in reality be the colorful imagery that it appears to be. A colorful cosmos, which may not exist in the objective sense, may more appropriately be considered a regulative principle.

Likewise, science may consider the intelligent designer as merely a regulative principle.

>> Besides, if you admit the possibility of a different intelligent agent (say an advanced ET), the question of the ET's origin arises. -Saif

The dispute is about the origin of certain features of the natural world, not about the origin of ET and other potential designers. The question of the origin of potential designers such as ET, alien civilization, God, gods, and Satan is entirely irrelevant to the logistics of the debate on evolution and IDT.

Darwinists relentlessly raise this completely irrelevant question, diverting attention from the original and the actual issue at stake. I feel that Richard Dawkins? hypothetical response to the original and the actual issue, ?How many Darwinists does it take to screw in a light bulb?,? fittingly demonstrates how Darwinists divert their opponents from the original and the actual issue. They do so by inventing, as follows, the irrelevant subject of the origin of the designers:

?Richard Dawkins: To say that it took a Darwinist to do the screwing in of the light bulb is to explain precisely nothing. The obvious question becomes: Who did the screwing to create the Darwinist screwer? And who did the screwing to create that screwer? There would have to be an infinite regress of screwers. And if you invoke some invisible, mystical Unscrewed Screwer (for which we have no credible evidence) to start the whole thing off, why not just say that the light bulb screwed itself in and be done with it??

Dawkins? explanation is pointless in answering the very question at stake: how many Darwinists does it darned take to screw in a light bulb? Dawkins has merely sidetracked the question into a completely irrelevant subject. Likewise, the question of ET?s origin is an irrelevant subject that sidetracks the original and the actual issue of the origin of certain features of the natural world. Since a scientific theory does not have all the answers in one full swing, it is reasonable, even if unrealistic, to regard the issue of the origin of the designer as an outstanding problem pending potential, future scientific research. But it is unscientific to dismiss the design inference outright simply since the origin of the designer cannot be explained.

>> Since you also seem to have a problem with complexity arising from simpler systems, I'd like to ask how you deal with the issue of an infinite regress of increasingly complex creators? Doesn't this make ID hypothesis rather untenable from the start? ?Saif

It is wise not to be a Screwed Up Screwer like Dawkins. See my response to the earlier comment.

>> Finally, methodological naturalism is necessary because if we invoke supernatural causation, we cannot use that framework to make any further predictions, since supernaturalism is unpredictable almost by definition. ?Saif

First, IDT does not require that the designer be supernatural or transcendent, and not an embodied designer constricted to the spatiotemporal dimension. Second, it is a tautology that all entities (natural and supernatural) that possess free will are unpredictable. But so what? Does that thwart the design detection scheme? Design theory looks for the effects of intelligence or for the phenomena that positively point to intelligence. The designer, an entity that may be predictable (automaton) or unpredictable (free will), is itself not the subject of design research. Thus, the apprehension about the designer?s unpredictability is unfounded. Third, that the supernatural is unpredictable is itself a philosophical understanding derived from religious views about the nature of the supernatural. How can science make that philosophical assumption? How can science make the assumption that the supernatural has freedom of will and that the supernatural is not an advanced and sophisticated automaton? What evidence does science have that the supernatural even exists? Certainly, IDT does not prove or assume that the supernatural exists.

For an illustration of how the theory uses the scientific method to make predictions, see Casey Luskin?s page on intelligent design www.caseyluskin.com). Such predictions are not thwarted by the possibility that the designer, an entity with free will, may be unpredictable.

>> Refuting the possibility of ID is impossible since it is unfalsifiable. ?Saif

I will first rehash Karl Popper?s esteemed standard for scientific theories. According to Popper in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, a scientific theory must be highly falsifiable in principle while being consistently unrefuted by the evidence in practice. A better theory is one that scientists have assiduously tried to falsify, only to end in vain. In short, the greater the degree to which a theory resists falsification attempts in practice, the more substantiated the theory.

Now that it has been clarified in Part 3 that cosmic systems are not irreducibly complex, let us re-visit the falsification conditions for IDT and evolution:

?The claim of ID is that ?NO unintelligent process could produce this system? the claim of Darwinism is that ?SOME unintelligent process could produce this system.? To falsify the first claim, one need only show that at least one unintelligent process could produce the system. To falsify the second claim, one would have to show the system could not have been formed by ANY of a potentially infinite number of possible unintelligent processes, which effectively IMPOSSIBLE to do!? ?Asif

The theory of evolution thus resists falsification on principle whereas IDT remains sensitive to falsification. In Popper?s sense of falsification, IDT would be considered a superior theory.

>> And whether you like it or not, we MUST work under the assumption of methodological naturalism, or else science loses its predictive power. ?Saif

Without a doubt, methodological naturalism has historically kept science on the straight path of empirical evidence and has prevented supernatural, occult, and superstitious explanations from illegitimately explaining away naturalistic phenomena. Without the discipline of methodological naturalism, there definitely would have been a variety of unscientific, ?you got stranded in a snow storm because the black cat crossed your path? sort of, explanations today. I categorically concede that the disciplined restraint of methodological naturalism is crucial for restraining science from straying into the irrational.

However, methodological naturalism suffers one notable drawback in that it makes the unproven assumption that science can only study the effects of causations based on natural law and chance. By means of a pristinely scientific approach, what if there is an empirical technique to detect the effects of intelligent cause? Why should we make the a priori assumption that science can only study the effects of necessity and chance but not design? Therein lies the imperfection in methodological naturalism, a drawback that impedes the growth of science.

In keeping with the free spirit of scientific inquiry, the solution to get around this self-inflicted barrier is to go to nature itself and see if there are things that exhibit signs of design. Given the possibility of empirically discovering designed objects, design offers the opportunity to study nature with an open mind. In contrast, methodological naturalism excludes outright, like a dogma, the opportunity to approach nature with a possibility of learning something new and exhilarating.

One of the fears is that invoking design is opening up Pandora?s box in that everything can then get explained away by God, gods, Jesus, Satan, demons, angels, ghosts, fairies, witches, spirits, genie in the bottle, etc. But such fears are unfounded. As I have argued, intelligent design does not invoke supernatural explanations and only makes a modest inference from positive evidence of design. Therefore, since the design paradigm retains the discipline of methodological naturalism, design theory does not throw science astray off the path of empirical evidence.

Going back to the teletransporter story of ET, imagine that ET restricted itself to methodological naturalism and dogmatically resisted from considering the Lexus SUV and the Dell computer as designed objects, all for the sake of the unproven assumption that science can only study the effects of necessity and chance but not design. Would they impede the growth of science? Is that not insisting on being illiterate by refusing to expand the epistemological horizon? How would another ET, who might have developed robust design detection techniques, compare to this dogmatically illiterate ET? All else being equal, which ET would be considered a more advanced civilization? Which ET would be more likely to have robust techniques for detecting designed, extraterrestrial radio signals from outer space? Which ET would be more equipped with the know-how and the tools to detect design? Which ET would be more likely to better fathom the many mysteries of the cosmos? Which ET would be a more curious mind? A genius mind? I do not argue that the design-phobic ET would be the loser in the answer to each of these questions. I merely want to stress the point that dogmatically (for no good scientific reason) excluding design from science impedes scientific growth and indeed artificially restricts the Einsteinian potential of the human mind.

By the way, Dembski presented mathematically intensive design detection schema in The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory) www.designinference.com). The prestigious Cambridge University Press published the scholarly and peer-reviewed monograph as part of the Cambridge studies in probability, induction, and decision theory. The audience for the The Design Inference includes ?forensic scientists, SETI researchers, insurance fraud investigators, debunkers of psychic phenomena, origin-of-life researchers, intellectual property attorneys, investigators of data falsification, cryptographers, parapsychology researchers, and programmers of (pseudo-) random number generators? (Dembski, The Design Inference xii). I emphasize the intended audience for the book to demonstrate that the design inference is real and that it can be used in practical problem-solving efforts in everyday design detection issues other than origin of life. I see no valid and unbiased reason why the same design detection principles might not apply to the problem of origins.

Theistic Evolution

>> And, evolution does not have to be atheistic because one can still claim that God set the initial conditions of the universe, with evolution part of the package. Or that God was the driving force behind each instance of speciation (while still using the TOE's mechanism). ?Saif

Given even theistic evolution (i.e., God exists, created the universe and chance-based and natural laws, and then backed off to let nature autonomously run), IDT would still maintain that ?material mechanisms are capable of only limited evolutionary change and that any substantial evolutionary change would require input from a designing intelligence? (Dembski, The Design Revolution 178). Of course, the design paradigm does not assume that God, if one exists, created chance-based and natural laws. I merely show that even if certain religious beliefs entail theistic evolution, then the theory of intelligent design would still maintain that God?s laws are incapable of generating CSI and that an intelligent agency is necessary to output CSI.

Evidence for Design

I decline to address one of the most crucial issues: evidence for design. I refuse to furnish a response to the objections below that there exists no positive evidence for design and that design is simply an anti-evolution argument. The reason is that in order to belabor a response, I will need to elucidate design concepts, design detection methods, and advanced probability and information theory ? a response worth a book publication. Fortunately, such subjects have been explored in the writings of Dembski, Behe, Meyer, and others. Besides, it is futile to hope for a constructive dialogue with opponents who have refused to consult the pertinent literature on design detection schema and who have consequently developed these ill-informed objections.

>> And since ID possesses no positive evidence, we have no clear reason to favor it over these other theories, even if the TOE is proven false. ?Saif
>> there is no positive evidence for ID. ID theorists (they are not scientists) have only come up with half-baked attacks on the TOE, that's it. That is not evidence for ID - even disproving one of the tenets of the TOE would not logically lead one to ID. There are other competing theories. As for the issue of an intelligent agent (relating to my views), let's just keep it at this: In my view, the theory of evolution is very likely to be correct. ?Saif
>> Indeed. However, so far your arguments have been purely negative --- you are trying to refute evolutionary theory. This does not constitute evidence for ID itself; now, since you havfe mentioned now that you do not agree with my stance, I am curious as to what positive evidence you have been holding back. ?Saif
>> We have seen all throughout the history of science that naturalistic explanations have been repeatedly found for phenomena previously assumed to be supernatural (while, through the passage of time we no longer have any remaining examples of clear supernatural causation --- all of them have been superceded by naturalism). Thus, we can see inductively that closing to the door to further possible naturalistic mechanisms regarding life origins is a foolhardy approach. ?Saif

I thus conclude my rebuttal and appreciate the audience for thoughtfully bearing with me through this admittedly protracted response. Please share constructive criticism or any other information or ideas on the subject of origins. Thanks for reading.

Cordially,
Nadeem

References

Descartes, Rene. Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1637 www.literature.org).

Dembski, William A. ?Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information.? Access Research Network. 15 November 1998. 13 February 2007 www.arn.org).

________. ?Teaching Intelligent Design: What Happened When.? Access Research Network. 27 February 2001. 16 February 2007 www.arn.org).

________. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998.

________. The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, 2004.

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume). Oxford University Press: USA, 2006 www.bartleby.com).

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891 (translated to English by Ernest Belfort Bax) oll.libertyfund.org).

Luskin, Casey. ?CaseyLuskin.com Home Intelligent Design.? 2006. 15 February 2007 www.caseyluskin.com).

Popper, Karl R. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge: London, 1963.

Ross, Kelley L. ?Scientific Naturalism and Intelligent Design.? The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series. 2006. 15 February 2007 www.friesian.com).

Rubarth, Scott. ?Stoic Philosophy of Mind.? Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. 14 February 2007 www.iep.utm.edu).