Stephen E. Jones

Projects: A comparison of Intelligent Design Theory with Anti-Design theory

A Comparison of Intelligent Design Theory with Anti-Design Theory
No.	Predictions	Design Theory	Anti-Design Theory	Comments
1.	Living things appear to be designed	Yes	No	Even opponents of Design like Dawkins 1 and Crick 2 admit that living things appear to be designed.
2.	The universe appears to be designed to support life.	Yes	No	Modern science has revealed the universe appears to be highly fine-tuned to support life. 3
3.	The universe and man's mind appear to be co-designed so that man can understand the underlying mathematical laws of the universe.4	Yes	No	Even non-supporters of Design have called this "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." 5
4.	No theory which denies design will ever be fully satisfactory.	Yes	No	Today, 140 years after Darwin published his Origin of Species, no fully naturalistic evolutionary theory is satisfactory. Naturalistic evolutionists today are divided into several conflicting groups, including the strict Neo-Darwinians (e.g. Dawkins, Maynard Smith, Williams), the Punctuationists (e.g. Gould, Eldredge), Complexity Theorists (e.g. Kauffman), and the Structuralists (e.g. Goodwin).
References: 1 "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.1). Return to text 2 "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." (Crick F.H.C., "What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery", [1988], Penguin Books: London, 1990, reprint, p.138) Return to text 3Davies P.C.W., "The Accidental Universe", [1982], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1983; Barrow J.D. & Tipler F.J. "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle", [1986], Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1996, reissue; Greenstein G., "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos", William Morrow & Co: New York NY, 1988; Leslie J., "Universes", [1989], Routledge: London, 1996, reprint; Gribbin J. & Rees M., "Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology", Bantam Books: New York, 1989; Ross H.N., "The Fingerprint of God: Recent Scientific Discoveries Reveal the Unmistakable Identity of the Creator," [1989], Promise Publishing Co., Orange CA, 1989, Second Edition, 1991. Return to text 4Davies P.C.W., "The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning," [1992] Penguin: London, 1993, p150; Davies P.C.W., "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science", in Templeton J.M, ed., "Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator", Continuum: New York NY, 1994, p.54 Return to text 5 "It is hard to avoid the impression that a miracle is at work here...The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." (Wigner E.P, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 13, 1960, pp.1-14, in Denton M.J., "Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe", Free Press: New York NY, 1998, pp.259-260) Return to text

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