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Is IDT religious? Atheologian , May 08, 2002

It is sometimes claimed that IDT isn't religious, because the Designer mustn't necessarily be supernatural. But then we have these four options (there might be more, of course):

Life's complexity arose by:
(1) evolution;
(2) pure chance (e.g., many atoms collided and voila!);
(3) action of natural designer;
(4) action of supernatural designer.

Surely (1) and (3) are naturalistic, in the sense that they do not involve any miracles. I'm still not sure about the scientific value of (3), but the issue is rather unimportant right now. (2) could be said to be fit into a naturalistic framework, but I think that it looks more like a miracle (I will call an extremely improbable event a "natural miracle"). And (4) is what most (if not all) IDists have in mind when they talk about the Designer. I will try to sort these options by their accord with the principle of parsimony:

(1) evolution (supernatural: no; designer needed: no; "natural miracles" needed: no);
(3) action of natural designer (supernatural: no; designer needed: yes; "natural miracles" needed: no);
(2) pure chance (supernatural: no; designer needed: no; "natural miracles" needed: yes);
(4) action of supernatural designer (supernatural: yes; designer needed: yes; "natural miracles" needed: no);

It seems that the hypothesis of a supernatural designer is even less parsimonious than pure chance. Therefore, if IDT provides the answer to the question "How did life's complexity arise?", it can only be answer (3). But the natural designer needs to be designed too. So, it logically follows that either there was an infinite chain of natural designers (which is extremely improbable), or there was first designer, who had to be supernatural. A supernatural designer logically follows from IDT. Therefore, IDT is religious. But not only that: it is less parsimonious than the "pure chance" hypothesis.

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Intelligent Design in the science classroom campbell@kontiki.com Dec 12, 2002

What I do not understand is that the only things that we know that are "intelligently designed" are things made by humans. These objects have the property of reduced complexity with respect to their component parts in their natural state. For example, refined metals are far simpler in composition and density than the same material found in nature.

Natural things are far more complex, if not infinitely so, than "designed" objects, yet IDers claim that complex objects are more likely to have been designed.

Just don't quite understand the argument, it seems to be contradictory on its face.

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Intelligent Design in the science classroom Gallien , Joe Apr 18, 2002

In Ohio, a controversy has arisen pertaining to the allowance of Intelligent Design into the science classroom. What is Intelligent Design? It is the premise that life is the direct result of an intelligent source but it does not concern itself with the designer just the design. Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism. It is NOT based on any religious doctrine. It IS based on what scientists observe when peering through today’s powerful microscopes.

As Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin’s Black Box: ”Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.

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