"SJAB1958" <balfres@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131915892.614791.96840@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

What is the very foundation of the concept of 'Intelligent Design'?

That depends on whether "the very foundation" means the motives ID
proponents have for advocating ID, or the grounds they offer for their
ideas. If you mean the first, then of course the wish to provide a
"scientific" grounding for their theological beliefs is that foundation. If
you mean the second, though, then it gets trickier; in principle, ID is not
a theory about biology, but about how one can recognize "design" without
either having a theory about the designer, or affecting any ideas you might
have about that designer.

It is the claim that a supernatural being is responsible for
'designing' the universe.

I would say that the grounds of ID "theory" is that god-of-the-gaps
arguments are respectable, if you dress them up in enough equations and
polysyllabic hand-waving. After all, ID holds that one can validly invoke a
"designer" if one can somehow rule out all known natural causes, working in
known ways (even if the ways known to you are not all the ways known to
experts), rather than have to consider unknown nonteleological causes and/or
known causes working in unknown ways. In practice, determination that
"design" exists can be even simpler: demand a detailed "naturalistic"
explanation, and if the requested level of detail is not supplied *right
this minute*, declare that design is indicated.

Note that, to prevent theological ideas from being exposed to falsification
(if, e.g. the sort of design we detect in nature is not notably compatible
with an illimitably competent, benevolent Designer), ID proponents must
argue that their "theory" offers no insight into the nature of the Designer.
He might not be supernatural. "He" might in fact be "they." He (or She or
It or They) might no longer be existent, or might never have had any
interest in the moral, spiritual, or physical welfare of the designed
entities.

Now, it is probably true that if you can rule out "mindless causes" or "law
and chance" as explanations of something, you can rule out all
non-supernatural designers. After all, one might posit a chain of unguided
natural causes that produced an Intelligence without any "irreducibly
complex" or even "specified complex" parts -- but then, if such designers
produced us (or our IC/SCI parts), then "law and chance" *can* produce
IC/SCI through indirect pathways. As Daniel C. Dennett noted in
distinguishing between "skyhooks" (supernatural pathways to outcomes) and
"cranes" (indirect naturalistic pathways to outcomes), the evolution of
intelligence is potentially the biggest "crane" in biology: humans
themselves have genetically engineered organisms that are extremely unlikely
ever to have evolved on their own (e.g. bacteria that produce human
insulin).

This is scientifically untestable and cannot be falsified.

Well, I would say that if you can posit a testable hypothesis about the
Designer, He is (in the sense required by science) a "natural being," not a
"supernatural one." But, again, ID seems dedicated to keeping ideas about
the Designer away from testability. In principle, one could falsify the
claims that specific structures are really IC/SCI: if you can evolve it in
the lab, or even show step-by-step how it could have evolved, you could show
that, e.g. the bacterial flagellum is not "designed." But this would only
refute a single piece of "evidence;" given the definition of IC/SCI
(basically, something that can't evolve), showing that some structure can
evolve merely shows that it was never truly IC/SCI, and does not address the
underlying ID claim.

Indeed, as a recent article on the Panda's Thumb pointed out, in the absence
of any ideas of how or why the Designer intervenes, one cannot be sure
either that He did not intervene to prevent something from evolving when
"naturalistically" it would have, or that He did not intervene to help
evolution along in the lab experiment. If one can't know what His motives
or powers are, one can't tell whether or not any experimental outcome
reflected His intervention.

Philosophically, it is at best a belief and purely subjective, at worst
it is 'mere opinion' and is not subjective or objective.

-- Steven J.

It is the claim that a supernatural being is responsible for
'designing' the universe.

This is scientifically untestable and cannot be falsified.

Philosophically, it is at best a belief and purely subjective, at worst
it is 'mere opinion' and is not subjective or objective.

I believe that God created Heaven and Earth. I believe by faith. I have
never claimed otherwise. Faith does not require proof. (In fact, proof is
the opposite of faith). But science *does* require proof. It's fair, for
me to ask for proof from evolutionists because evolution isn't supposed to
be a faith. So when I ask an evolutionist when and how it happened, as a
scientist he can be honest and say "I don't know", or he can try to baffle
me with ***** (because he doesn't know). When he tries to baffle me
with *****--I have the right to question it, because what he says is
supposed to be *science*. If he claims he believes by faith, that's fine.
I don't believe it, but I would say he has the right to believe it.

You might think this is unfair--I can't help that--it's the difference
between faith and science. One does not need proof--the other does.

And I do believe in *real* science. I have no problems with verifiable,
actual, *real* science.

I believe that God created Heaven and Earth. I believe by faith.

... I do believe in *real* science. I have no problems with verifiable,
actual, *real* science.