Stephen E. Jones

My frequently asked questions (FAQs): Snswers to objections about intelligent design (ID)

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The following are my answers to objections to intelligent design (ID). This is a work-in-progress.

1. What is Intelligent Design (ID)?
2. Is ID creationism?
3. Objections to ID
1. `ID does not explain the origin of the designer'
2. `ID cannot be falsified'
3. `ID is not science'
• Is an attempt by Darwinists to eliminate rivals
• ID makes testable scientifiic claims
• Failure of demarcation criteria of what is, and is not, "science"
• Science uses intelligent design explanations
• If it is scientific to claim there is no design in nature (as Darwinism does) then it is scientific to claim that there is design in nature
• Darwinism claims to have scientifically falsified design
• Darwinism treats ID as a rival scientific theory
• Other sciences treat ID as a rival scientific explanation
4. `ID is an argument from ignorance'
5. `ID is merely the Bible's story of creation camouflaged in scientific language'

1. Objections to ID

1. `ID does not explain the origin of the designer'

This is an argument that Richard Dawkins has used:

"I know of only two alternatives to Darwinism that have been offered as explanations of the organised and apparently purposeful complexity; of life. These are God ["an intelligent Designer"] and Lamarckism. I am afraid I shall give God rather short shrift. He may have many virtues: no doubt he is invaluable as a pricker of the conscience and a comfort to the dying and the bereaved, but as an explanation of organised complexity he simply will not do. It is organised complexity we are trying to explain, so it is footling to invoke in explanation a being sufficiently organised and complex to create it." (Dawkins R., "The Necessity of Darwinism," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.130-132, p.130)

"To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or 'Life was always there', and be done with it." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, p.141)

"Modern theologians of any sophistication have given up believing in instantaneous creation. The evidence for some sort of evolution has become too overwhelming. But many theologians who call themselves evolutionists, for instance the Bishop of Birmingham ... smuggle God in by the back door: they allow him some sort of supervisory role over the course that evolution has taken, either influencing key moments in evolutionary history (especially, of course, human evolutionary history), or even meddling more comprehensively in the day-to-day events that add up to evolutionary change. We cannot disprove beliefs like these, especially if it is assumed that God took care that his interventions always closely mimicked what would be expected from evolution by natural selection. All that we can say about such beliefs is, firstly, that they are superfluous and, secondly, that they assume the existence of the main thing we want to explain, namely organized complexity. The one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity. If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!" (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, p..316. Emphasis original)

But if science was required to explain everything along an infinite regress, before it could explain something, then there could be no scientific explanation of anything new:

"Dawkins criticizes design for committing an unacceptable regress in which the designer in turn needs to be explained. The problem with this criticism is that it can be applied whenever scientists introduce a novel theoretical entity. When Ludwig Boltzmann introduced his kinetic theory of heat back in the late 1800s and invoked the motion of unobservable particles (what we now call atoms and molecules) to explain heat one might just as well have argued that such unobservable particles do not explain anything because they themselves need to be explained. " (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1999, pp.253,255)

It is an exaggeration and a Fallacy of False Dilemma Dawkins' claim that a statement which does not explain everything, therefore explains nothing. "It is ... illogical to reject a ... starting point simply because it is a starting point, and therefore rests upon something whose origin is unexplained" since it is the very "nature of explanation is that one thing is explained on the basis of something else which is taken for granted" :

"There is a lot of middle ground, however, between a statement that `explains precisely nothing' and a statement that does not explain everything. Admittedly, the naked statement that `God created life' does not explain very much, but neither does the naked statement that `life somehow evolved.' That is why the validity or invalidity of the neo-Darwinian mechanism (or some precisely specified materialist alternative) is such an important question for theology and philosophy, as well as science. If I say that `the first life form was designed by intelligence,' my statement explains something, even if I can say nothing about the identity of the designer or the means by which the design was executed. What it explains (if it is true) is that we are on the wrong road if we are seeking to discover how life can be made without a designing intelligence. Detailed truth builds upon basic truth. If we base our research on counterfactual assumptions we are likely to be heading up a blind alley. It is also illogical to reject a basic starting point simply because it is a starting point, and therefore rests upon something whose origin is unexplained. The nature of explanation is that one thing is explained on the basis of something else which is taken for granted, and the chain of explanation must either end at some point or go around in an endless circle." (Johnson P.E., "How Can We Tell Science from Religion?," Paper delivered at the Conference on the Origin of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Sponsored by the International School of Plasma Physics in Varenna, Italy, July 28-31, 1998. Access Research Network, 1998)

Dawkins' argument is fatal to evolution (for starters), because then "to explain the origin of species by invoking natural processes is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of natural processes" and indeed (as above) it "generates a regress that would effectively destroy any possibility of any explanation for anything" (my emphasis):

"As Dawkins sees it ... any appeal, whether direct or indirect to divine activity logically short-circuits the entire process. The argument goes as follows. The object is to explain the existence of organized complexity life, the eye, echolocation and so forth. But `a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity of the world...must already have been vastly complex in the first place.' [Dawkins R., `The Blind Watchmaker,' Norton: New York, 1987, p.316]. Thus to appeal in any way to any deity presuppose the very thing-complexity-whose explanation is at issue. This, Dawkins thinks, gets us nowhere at all. As Dawkins sees it, `explanations' of complexity that appeal to a deity already possessing complexity will be completely vacuous unless we can take the next step and provide an explanation for the deity's complexity. ... Dawkins seems to be presupposing that if explanations are not ultimate they are vacuous. .... He seems to be assuming that no origin has been explained unless the ultimate origin of anything appealed to in the explanation has also been explained. In addition to being mistaken, that principle is surely as dangerous for the naturalist as for the theist. To take the parallel case, one could claim that to explain the origin of species by invoking natural processes is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of natural processes. And, of course, attempts to explain natural processes by invoking the big bang or anything else- will generate an exactly similar problem with anything appealed to in that explanation. Any explanation has to begin somewhere, and the principle that no explanation is legitimate unless anything referred to in the explanation is itself explained immediately generates a regress that would effectively destroy any possibility of any explanation for anything." (Ratzsch D.L., "The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL, 1996, pp.191-192. Emphasis in original)

Therefore, Dawkins' argument commits the Fallacy of Special Pleading, i.e. "to apply a double standard: one for ourselves ... and another (a stricter one) for everyone else." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason, 1990, pp.145-146); "having it both ways ... ignoring or twisting the facts to his own advantage." (Fearnside W.W. & Holther W.B., "Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument," 1959, p.108); "a common fault in argument arising from the influence of prejudice which may be employed deliberately as a dishonest trick, but which more usually is the result of the speaker being himself blinded by his prejudices." (Thouless R.H., "Straight and Crooked Thinking," 1973, pp.156-157) [top]
2. `ID cannot be falsified'

This is not so. Since ID is the scientific theory that intelligent causation is necessary to explain certain features of the natural world, then for any feature which ID claims that intelligent causation was necessary, all that is required to falsify ID at that point is to produce a plausible explanation of how that feature was produced solely by unintelligent causes.

For example, to falsify leading ID theorist Mike Behe's claim that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex and so required intelligence to assemble it, all that is required is to demonstrate how an unintelligent process (like Darwinian natural selection of random mutations) could plausibly have assembled it:

"In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin's Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can't be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum-or any equally complex system--was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.(1) How about Professor Coyne's concern that, if one system were shown to be the result of natural selection, proponents of ID could just claim that some other system was designed? I think the objection has little force. If natural selection were shown to be capable of producing a system of a certain degree of complexity, then the assumption would be that it could produce any other system of an equal or lesser degree of complexity. If Coyne demonstrated that the flagellum (which requires approximately forty gene products) could be produced by selection, I would be rather foolish to then assert that the blood clotting system (which consists of about twenty proteins) required intelligent design." (Behe M.J., "Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design: Response to Critics," Discovery Institute, July 31, 2000. Emphasis original)

In fact some Darwinist critics claim they already have falsified ID, which makes the claim that ID is both falsified and unfalsifiable a self-contradictory absurdity:

"Coyne's conclusion that design is unfalsifiable, however, seems to be at odds with the arguments of other reviewers of my book. Clearly, Russell Doolittle (Doolittle 1997), Kenneth Miller (Miller 1999), and others have advanced scientific arguments aimed at falsifying ID. (See my articles on blood clotting and the "acid test" on this web site.) If the results with knock-out mice (Bugge et al. 1996) had been as Doolittle first thought, or if Barry Hall's work (Hall 1999) had indeed shown what Miller implied, then they correctly believed my claims about irreducible complexity would have suffered quite a blow. And since my claim for intelligent design requires that no unintelligent process be sufficient to produce such irreducibly complex systems, then the plausibility of ID would suffer enormously. Other scientists, including those on the National Academy of Science's Steering Committee on Science and Creationism, in commenting on my book have also pointed to physical evidence (such as the similar structures of hemoglobin and myoglobin) which they think shows that irreducibly complex biochemical systems can be produced by natural selection: "However, structures and processes that are claimed to be ‘irreducibly' complex typically are not on closer inspection." (National Academy of Sciences 1999, p. 22) Now, one can't have it both ways. One can't say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it. Either it is unfalsifiable and floats serenely beyond experimental reproach, or it can be criticized on the basis of our observations and is therefore testable. The fact that critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against ID (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable." (Behe M.J., "Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design: Response to Critics," Discovery Institute, July 31, 2000)

Actually, the boot is on the other foot. It is not ID which is unfalsifiable but Darwinism, since if attempts to falsify ID (by demonstrating how unintelligent processes could produce the claimed design) fail, committed Darwinists will not then conclude that Darwinism is false and ID is true, but they will then, as a last resort, appeal to unknown (and even unknowable) unintelligent processes :

"Kenneth Miller announced an `acid test' for the ability of natural selection to produce irreducible complexity. He then decided that the test was passed, and unhesitatingly proclaimed intelligent design falsified ('Behe is wrong'; Miller 1999, 147). But if, as it certainly seems to me, E. coli actually fails the lactosesystem `acid test,' would Miller consider Darwinism to be falsified? Almost certainly not. He would surely say that the experiment started with the wrong bacterial species, used the wrong selective pressure, and so on. So it turns out that his `acid test' was not a test of Darwinism; it tested only intelligent design. The same one-way testing was employed by Russell Doolittle. He pointed to the results of Bugge et al. (1996) to argue against intelligent design. But when the results turned out to be the opposite of what he had originally thought, Professor Doolittle did not abandon Darwinism. It seems then, perhaps counterintuitively to some, that intelligent design is quite susceptible to falsification, at least on the points under discussion. Darwinism, on the other hand, seems quite impervious to falsification. The reason for that can be seen when we examine the basic claims of the two ideas with regard to a particular biochemical system like, say, the bacterial flagellum. The claim of intelligent design is that `No unintelligent process could produce this system.' The claim of Darwinism is that `Some unintelligent process (involving natural selection and random mutation) 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 is effectively impossible to do. I think Professor Coyne and the National Academy of Sciences have it exactly backwards. A strong point of intelligent design is its vulnerability to falsification. (Indeed, some of my religious critics dislike intelligent design theory precisely because they worry that it will be falsified, and thus theology will appear to suffer another blow from science. See, for example, (Flietstra 1998).) A weak point of Darwinian theory is its resistance to falsification. What experimental evidence could possibly be found that would falsify the contention that complex molecular machines evolved by a Darwinian mechanism?" (Behe M.J., "Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design: Response to Critics," Discovery Institute, July 31, 2000. Emphasis original) [top]

3. `ID is not science'
• Is an attempt by Darwinists to eliminate rivals

It is a long-standing tactic of Darwinism to eliminate rivals rather than show its theory is true:

"The primary problem with the [Neo-Darwinian modern evolutionary] synthesis is that its makers established natural selection as the director of adaptive evolution by eliminating competing explanations, not by providing evidence that natural selection among 'random' mutations could, or did, account for observed adaptation ... Mayr remarked, 'As these non-Darwinian explanations were refuted during the synthesis ... natural selection automatically became the universal explanation of evolutionary change (together with chance factors).' Depriving the synthesis of plausible alternatives, which seemed such a triumph, in fact sowed the seeds of its faults." (Leigh E.G., Jr, "The modern synthesis, Ronald Fisher and creationism," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 14, No. 12, December 1999, pp.495-498, p.495) [top]

• ID makes testable scientifiic claims [top]
• Failure of demarcation criteria of what is, and is not, "science"

Leading philosopher of science Larry Laudan, in the context of the 1982 Arkansas creationism trial, was critical of the use of demarcation criteria to rule out even creation-science as "science", since the question, "what makes a belief scientific?" has proven to be "intractable" and the question should be, "What makes a belief well founded?":

"Through certain vagaries of history, some of which I have alluded to here, we have managed to conflate two quite distinct questions: What makes a belief well founded (or heuristically fertile)? And what makes a belief scientific? The first set of questions is philosophically interesting and possibly even tractable, the second question is both uninteresting and, judging by its checkered past, intractable. If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like `pseudoscience' and `unscientific' from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. As such, they are more suited to the rhetoric of politicians and Scottish sociologists of knowledge than to that of empirical researchers. Insofar as our concern is to protect ourselves and our fellows from the cardinal sin of believing what we wish were so rather than what there is substantial evidence for (and surely that is what most forms of `quackery' come down to), then our focus should be squarely on the empirical and conceptual credentials for claims about the world. The `scientific' status of those claims is altogether irrelevant." (Laudan L., "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem," in Ruse M., ed., "But is it Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, 1996, p.349)

Professor Steven Goldberg, Chairman of the Department of Sociology, City University of New York, agrees, observed that "The search for a rigorous criterion for demarcating the scientific .. has been a major quest in the philosophy of science in this century" and "it is now generally accepted that we can never have [such] a perfectly rigorous demarcation criterion":

"The search for a rigorous criterion for demarcating the scientific from the metaphysical and ungroundable has been a major quest in the philosophy of science in this century. Some would even say that the discovery of an ironclad method for severing the scientific from the metaphysical is the very purpose of the philosophy of science. Nonetheless, it is now generally accepted that we can never have a perfectly rigorous demarcation criterion. Similarly, it is generally agreed that science can never have at its disposal a method for arbitrating competing scientific theories possessing the persuasive force that logic possesses in mathematics. It may be that both the demarcation criterion and the method of arbitration owe their impossibility to the fact that science, unlike mathematics, does not derive its truthfulness solely from its own internal consistency, but from an external system (`nature') as well." (Goldberg S., "When Wish Replaces Thought: Why So Much of What You Believe Is False," Prometheus Books: New York NY, 1992, p.155) [top]

• Science uses intelligent design explanations [top]
• Darwinism claims to have scientifically falsified design [top]
• If it is scientific to claim there is no design in nature (as Darwinism does) then it is scientific to claim that there is design in nature
  Darwinsts again commit the fallacy of special pleading (double standard), when they say it is "science" to claim that there is no design in nature, e.g.:

  "Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong. The analogy between telescope and eye, between watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," W.W Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, p.5. Emphasis original)

  and "non-science" or "religion" to claim that that there is design in nature. But, as Johnson points out, "if you have a question, the answer yes and the answer no to the question are still in the same subject area":

  "Clearly if you have a question, the answer yes and the answer no to the question are still in the same subject area. So if the affirmation `Yes, natural selection can create as much as is needed,' is science, then the no answer -- `No, the evidence does not support that' -- is science, too. I vigorously assert that this is not two subjects but one subject: what does the evidence show and not show about natural processes? ... It can't be that the yes answer is science and the no answer is religion.'" (Johnson P.E., "Evolution and the Curriculum: A Conversation with Phillip Johnson and Gregg Easterbrook," September 1999, Ethics and Public Policy Center: Washington DC, February 2000, No. 4)

  Note that Dawkins admits above that Paley's design argument was "informed by the best biological scholarship of his day." Darwinists thus seek to rewrite history in their favour, such that what was once considered to be "science" is not (and never was) "science". But then nothing (including Darwinian evolution) could be "science" because with the march of scientific knowledge, in the future even what is though to be "informed by the best biological scholarship" of the day, may be declared to not have ever been "science"! [top]

• Darwinism treats ID as a rival scientific theory [top]
• Other sciences treat ID as a rival scientific explanation [top]

To be completed. [top]

4. `ID is an argument from ignorance'

ID is not an argument from ignorance. The fallacy of argument from ignorance (or appeal to ignorance) is believing "that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false" (my emphasis):

"Argumentum ad Ignorantiam (argument from ignorance) The fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam ... is committed whenever it is argued that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false, or that it is false because it has not been proved true. But our ignorance of how to prove or disprove a proposition clearly does not establish either the truth or the falsehood of that proposition." (Copi I.M., Introduction to Logic," [1953], Macmillan: New York, Seventh Edition, 1986, pp.94-95)

"The fallacy of appeal to ignorance [The Latin name of this fallacy is argumentum ad ignorantiam] is an argument that uses an opponent's inability to disprove a conclusion as proof of the conclusion's correctness. By shifting the burden of proof outside the argument onto the person hearing the argument, such an argument becomes irrelevant. One's inability to disprove a conclusion cannot by itself be regarded as proof that the conclusion is true." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990, p.214)

This (in its various guises) may be the most common objection to ID, its popularity being due to its success in shutting down discussion about it:

"In attributing design to biological systems, isn't intelligent design just arguing from ignorance? THIS IS PERHAPS THE MOST COMMON OBJECTION against intelligent design, and it goes by many names: argument from ignorance, argument from silence, argument from personal incredulity, god-of-the-gaps, negative argumentation, argument by elimination, eliminative induction, failure to provide a positive alternative and so on. The underlying concern here is that design theorists argue for the truth of design simply because design has not been shown to be false. In arguments from ignorance, the lack of evidence against a proposition is used to argue for its truth. Here's a stereotypical argument from ignorance: `Ghosts and goblins exist because you haven't shown me that they don't exist.' The argument-from-ignorance objection has been spectacularly successful at shutting down discussion about intelligent design. In fact, among Western intellectuals it functions like a mantra. One merely repeats it whenever the question of design is raised. ... And thus design is refuted. Perhaps that's why Australian philosopher Alan Olding, in commenting on the persistent use of the argument-from ignorance or god-of-the-gaps objection against the work of Michael Denton and Michael Behe, writes, `The phrase "god of the gaps" is nothing more than a question-begging insult meant to stop the flow of argument before it has barely started." (See his article "Maker of Heaven and Microbiology," Quadrant, January-February 2000.)" (Dembski W.A., "The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design," Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2004, pp.213-214. Emphasis original)

For example, ID citics like Pennock (leaving aside his disingenuous conflation of ID with "creationism" and the falsehood that ID claims the designer is "God" ) falsely accuse IDists like Behe of simply claiming that "Science cannot explain X" and therefore "God is the explanation":

"When we consider Behe's criticisms in light of this consistent pattern, his book becomes particularly significant in that it indicates just how far creationists have had to retreat to find significant explanatory gaps in evolutionary theory. Behe is certainly correct that molecular biology has identified a host of new and heretofore unappreciated puzzles for evolutionary biologists. That they have yet to solve, or in many cases even to begin to address these puzzles, however, is mostly the unsurprising result of the fact that molecular biology is still a very new subdiscipline. Many of the most significant molecular techniques that are now allowing biologists to look inside the black box of the cell were developed just in the last decade or two. The opening of this final box has indeed revealed a new level of complexity that has yet to be explained. But what should we conclude from our ignorance about such matters? Should we applaud and encourage the new generation of graduate students in molecular biology who are now eagerly turning their attention to investigating, and perhaps discovering the solutions of these puzzles? Or should we, as Behe and other creationists suggest, judge that these explanatory gaps are uncrossable by evolutionary or any natural theory and conclude that intervention by a divine intelligent designer is the only possible explanation? We will return to a further examination of supernatural explanation and the creationists' proposed inference to intelligent design ... but here I hope the conclusion to draw is obvious. All the creationists' challenges that `Science cannot explain X' are nothing but what philosophers call `arguments from ignorance.' To point out that we are ignorant of the scientific explanation of X is hardly good reason to conclude that God is the explanation." (Pennock R.T., "Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism," MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1999, Fourth printing, pp.171-172)

But ID does not simply claim that "Science cannot explain ...". ID's primary claim is that there is positive evidence for intelligent causation in nature:

"Notice, however, that the sharp edge of this critique is not what we do not know, but what we do know. Many facts have come to light in the past three decades of experimental inquiry into life's beginning. With each passing year the criticism has gotten stronger. The advance of science itself is what is challenging the nation that life arose on earth by spontaneous (in a thermodynamic sense) chemical reactions." (Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories," [1984], Lewis & Stanley: Dallas TX, 1992, Second Printing, p.185. Emphasis in original.)

"Indeed, the whole point of Michael Behe's irreducible complexity and my own specified complexity is that these are empirical features of mundane objects that reliably signal intelligent causation. Whether these mundane objects trace their causal histories through mundane or transcendent designers is irrelevant. When we see irreducible complexity or specified complexity, we know that an intelligent cause has been present and acted even if we know nothing else. This is not an argument from ignorance. Behe and I offer in- principle arguments for why undirected natural causes (i.e., chance, necessity or some combination of the two) cannot produce irreducible and specified complexity. Moreover we offer sound arguments for why intelligent causation best explains irreducible and specified complexity. " (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1999, pp.276- 277. Emphasis original)

We routinely infer intelligent causation based on what we know from our uniform experience that unintelligent causation cannot do:

"From observable features of the natural world, intelligent design infers to an intelligence responsible for those features. The world contains events, objects and structures that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes and that can be adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes. This is not an argument from ignorance. Nor is this a matter of personal incredulity. Precisely because of what we know about undirected natural causes and their limitations, science is now in a position to demonstrate design rigorously. " (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1999, p.107)

"Intelligent design is the systematic study of intelligent causes and specifically of the effects they leave behind. From certain observable features of the world (i.e., signs), intelligent design infers to intelligent causes responsible for those features. The world contains events, objects and structures that exhaust the explanatory resources of natural causes and that can be adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes. This is not an argument from ignorance. Precisely because of what we know about natural causes and their limitations, science is now in a position to demonstrate intelligent causation rigorously. Briefly, intelligent design infers that an intelligent cause is responsible for an effect if the effect is both complex and specified." (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1999, p.47)

For example, the bacterial flagellum's rotary motor has all the appearances of a machine that in our uniform experience only intelligence can make:

"Next Scott and Branch bring up the old chestnut about ID amounting to an `argument from ignorance,' relying upon `a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: Lacking a natural explanation, we assume intelligent cause.' Comment: Lacking a natural explanation of Mount Rushmore, are we making an argument from ignorance by inferring that an intelligent cause is behind it? The design inference is not an argument from ignorance. It's not just that we eliminate natural explanations (by which biologists mean explanations that involve no intelligent causation), but that in eliminating natural explanations we find features that in our experience are only the result of intelligent causation. Consider, for instance, the bacterial flagellum. This is a little outboard rotary motor on the backs of certain bacteria. It includes a propeller, a hook joint, a drive shaft, O-rings, a stator, and a bidirectional acid powered motor. We are seeing here a machine of the sort that in our experience only intelligence can produce. What's more, the biological community has come up empty on how systems like this could emerge apart from intelligence. This is not an argument from ignorance. This is an argument from what we know about the causal powers of intelligence and the shortfall of unintelligent causes." (Dembski W.A., "Commentary on Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch's `Guest Viewpoint: "Intelligent design" Not Accepted by Most Scientists,'" ISCID, 2 July, 2002. http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.07.Scott_and_Branch.htm)

ID is therefore based not on an argument from ignorance, but an inference to the best explanation:

"An Argument from Ignorance? Against all that has been said, many have maintained that this argument from information content to design constitutes nothing more than an argument from ignorance. Since we don't yet know how biological information could have arisen we invoke the mysterious notion of intelligent design. Thus, say objectors, intelligent design functions not as a legitimate inference or explanation but as a kind of place holder for ignorance. And yet, as Dembski has demonstrated (Dembski 1998, 9-35, 62-66) we often infer the causal activity of intelligent agents as the best explanation for events and phenomena. Moreover, we do so rationally, according to objectifiable, if often tacit, information and complexity theoretic criteria. His examples of design inferences from archeology and cryptography to fraud detection and criminal forensics-show that we make design inferences all the time, often for a very good reason (Dembski 1998, 9- 35). Intelligent agents have unique causal powers that nature does not. When we observe effects that we know only agents can produce, we rightly infer the antecedent presence of a prior intelligence even if we did not observe the action of the particular agent responsible. ... While admittedly the design inference constitutes a provisional, empiricallybased conclusion and not a proof (science can provide nothing more), it most emphatically does not constitute an argument from ignorance. Instead, the design inference from biological information constitutes an `inference to the best explanation.' Recent work on the method of `inference to the best explanation' (Lipton 1991; Meyer 1994b, 88-94) suggests that determining which among a set of competing possible explanations constitutes the best depends upon assessments of the causal powers of competing explanatory entities. Causes that have the capability to produce the evidence in question constitute better explanations of that evidence than those that do not." (Meyer S.C., "The Explanatory Power of Design: DNA and the Origin of Information," in Dembski W.A., ed., "Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1998, pp.138-139)

Nevertheless, having said all the above, ID's critics conveniently forget that even the argument from ignorance can be valid where "if a certain event had occurred, evidence for it would have been discovered by qualified investigators" and if it is not, that is "positive proof of its nonoccurrence":

"A qualification should be made at this point. In some circumstances it can safely be assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence for it would have been discovered by qualified investigators. In such a case it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its nonoccurrence. Of course, the proof here is not based on ignorance but on our knowledge that if it had occurred it would be known. For example, if a serious security investigation fails to unearth any evidence that Mr. X is a foreign agent, it would be wrong to conclude that their research has left us ignorant. It has rather established that Mr. X is not one. Failure to draw such conclusions is the other side of the bad coin of innuendo, as when one says of a man that there is `no proof' that he is a scoundrel. In some cases not to draw a conclusion is as much a breach of correct reasoning as it would be to draw a mistaken conclusion." (Copi I.M., Introduction to Logic," [1953], Macmillan: New York, Seventh Edition, 1986, p.94) [top]

5. `ID is merely the Bible's story of creation camouflaged in scientific language'

To be completed. [top]

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