Smart design

This article deals with a form of creationism. For generic "intelligent design" arguments, see Telelogic argument.

The analogy of the watchmaker is a teleological argument that argues that the design involves a designer. He has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument of design", where he has been used to argue for the existence of God and the intelligent design of the universe.

The intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument in favor of the existence of a universal Creative Intelligence, which would be a proof in favor of the existence of God. Its supporters use scientific knowledge and present it as "scientific theory" based on evidence about the origins of life.

Proponents of this creationist position claim that "certain characteristics of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not by a blind process such as natural selection." ID is a form of anti-evolution creationism natural science, which purports to present a "scientific view", but which really lacks scientific empirical support and does not offer verifiable or supportable hypotheses, so it is not considered a science. The three most important authors of identification are undoubtedly Michael Behe, William Dembski and Stephen Meyer. The main proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, an ideologically right-wing think tank based in the United States.

Although the phrase "intelligent design" had previously appeared in theological discussions of the design argument, the first publication of the term intelligent design in its current use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People (On Pandas and People), a 1989 textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was replaced in drafts of the book after the 1987 United States Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, which outlawed the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Intelligent Design movement, supported by the Discovery Institute, advocated for the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the biology curriculum of schools. This led to the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in which United States District Judge John E. Jones III, ruled that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot be decoupled from its creationist, and therefore religious, background" and that its promotion by the school district therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,

ID presents two main negative arguments against evolutionary explanations: irreducible complexity and specified complexity. These arguments claim that certain features – biological and informatics, respectively – are too complex to be the result of natural processes. As a positive argument against evolution, ID proposes the analogy between natural systems and human artifacts, a version of the design argument for the existence of God. Proponents then conclude by analogy that these features are evidence of evolution. design.

Other less extreme belief positions, such as theistic evolution, and close scientific examination have refuted claims that evolutionary explanations are inadequate and this premise of intelligent design – that evidence against evolution constitutes evidence of design – has been criticized as a false dichotomy. Despite criticism from the scientific community, which rejects the pseudoscientific position presented by Intelligent Design, proponents of Intelligent Design still maintain that if it were "a scientific theory based on evidence about the origins of life that defies the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science", although they admit that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.

History

Origin of the concept

In 1910, evolution was not a topic of major religious controversy in the United States, but in the 1920s the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in theology resulted in fundamentalist Christian opposition to the teaching of evolution and in the origin of modern creationism. The teaching of evolution was effectively suspended in national public schools until the 1960s, and then when evolution was reintroduced into the curriculum, there were a number of court cases in which attempts were made to to make creationism taught alongside evolution in science classes. Young Earth Creationists (YCTs) promoted creation science as "an alternative scientific explanation of the world in which we live." This often invokes the argument from design to explain the complexity of nature as proof of God's existence.

The argument from design, the teleological argument, or 'argument from intelligent design', has been advanced in theology for centuries. It can be briefly summarized as "Where complex design exists, there must have been a complex design." designer; nature is complex; Therefore, nature must have had an intelligent designer'. Thomas Aquinas presented it in his fifth proof of God's existence as a syllogism. In 1802, William Paley presented in Natural Theology examples of intricate purpose in organisms. His version of the watchmaker analogy argued that, just as a watch has evidently been designed by a craftsman, so the complexity and adaptation observed in nature must have been designed, and the perfection and diversity of these designs show that the designer is omnipotent, the Christian God. Like creation science, intelligent design focuses on Paley's religious argument for design, but while Paley's natural theology is open to deistic design through Based on God-given laws, intelligent design seeks scientific confirmation from repeated miraculous interventions in the history of life. Creation science foreshadowed intelligent design's arguments of irreducible complexity, even citing the bacterial flagellum. In the United States, attempts to introduce creation science into schools led to judgments that it is religious in nature and therefore cannot be taught in public school science classes. Intelligent design also presents itself as science and shares other arguments with creation science, but avoids literal Biblical references to things such as the Flood story, the Genesis story, or the use of Bible verses to date the Earth..

Barbara Forrest writes that the intelligent design movement began in 1984, with the book The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories.: Reappraisal of Current Theories), co-authored by creationist and chemist Charles B. Thaxton and two other authors, and published by Jon A. Buell's Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Thaxton gave a lecture in 1988 called "Sources of the Information Contained in DNA", which attracted creationists such as Stephen C. Meyer.

In March 1986, an analysis by Meyer used information theory to suggest that the messages carried by DNA in the cell exhibited "specified complexity" by intelligence and must have originated from an intelligent agent. In November 1986 that year, Thaxton described his reasoning as a more sophisticated form of Paley's argument from design. In the 1988 lecture 'Sources of the Information Contained in DNA', he said that his view of intelligent origin is compatible with metaphysical naturalism and supernaturalism.

Intelligent Design avoids identifying or naming the intelligent designer – it merely asserts that there must be one (or more) – but movement leaders have claimed that the designer is the Christian God. If this lack of The specificity of designer identity in public debates is a genuine feature of the concept or whether it is merely a stance taken to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from science teaching has been a matter of much debate among scholars. supporters and critics of intelligent design. The trial Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District held that it was the latter case.

Origin of the term

Since the Middle Ages, religious discussion of the "argument from design" or "teleological argument" in theology, with its concept of 'intelligent design', it has persistently referred to the theistic creator God. Although ID advocates chose this provocative label for their proposed alternative to evolutionary explanations, they have deemphasized its religious background and denied that ID is natural theology, while continuing to present ID as supporting the argument for the existence of God.

While supporters of intelligent design have pointed to previous examples of the phrase intelligent design that they claim were non-creationist and faith-based, they have failed to show that these usages had any influence on who introduced the label to the intelligent design movement.

Variations of the phrase appeared in CTJ publications: a 1967 book co-written by Percival Davis referred to the "design according to which basic organisms were created". In 1970, A. E. Wilder-Smith published The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution, which advocated the Paley's design argument with computational calculations of the improbability of genetic sequences, which he said could not be explained by evolution, but instead requires "the abhorred necessity of divine intelligent activity behind nature"; and that "the same problem would be expected to assail the relationship between the designer behind nature and the intelligently designed part of nature known as man". In a 1984 article, as well as his affidavit in Edwards v. Aguillard, Dean H. Kenyon defended creation science by stating that "biomolecular systems require intelligent design and insights. engineering", citing Wilder-Smith. Creationist Richard B. Dicha used the phrase "creative design" in Origins: Two Models: Evolution, Creation (Origins: Two models: evolution, creation, 1976) and in Origins: Creation or Evolution (Origins: Creation or Evolution, 1988) wrote that "while evolutionists are trying to find unintelligent ways for life to come about, the creationist insists that intelligent design must have been there in first place". The first consistent use of the term, defined in a glossary and claimed to be distinct from creationism, was in Of Pandas and People. /i>), co-written by Davis and Kenyon.

Of Pandas and People

Use of the term "creationism" in front of "intelligent design" in the book draft series Of Pandas and People.

The most common modern use of the word "intelligent design" as a term intended to describe a field of inquiry began after the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1987 in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism is unconstitutional in the school science curriculum public.

A Discovery Institute report says that Charles B. Thaxton, editor of Pandas, had picked up the phrase from a NASA scientist and thought "that's just what I need, it's a good engineering term". In drafts of the book, over a hundred uses of the root word "creation", as "creationism" and "creation science", were changed, almost without exception, to "intelligent design", while "creationists" was changed to "defenders of design" or, in one case, "cdefenders of designers" (cdesign proponentsists) [sic]. In June 1988, Thaxton gave a lecture entitled "Sources of the information contained in DNA" in Tacoma, Wash., and in December he decided to use the tag & # 34;intelligent design & # 34; for his new creation movement, Stephen C. Meyer attended the conference and later recalled that the term "intelligent design ..." arose from it.

Of Pandas and People was published in 1989, and in addition to including all current ID arguments, it was the first book to make systematic use of the terms "intelligent design" and "design advocates", in addition to the phrase "design theory", define the term intelligent design in a glossary and describe it as something other than creationism. Thus, it represents the start of the modern intelligent design movement. "Intelligent Design" it was the most prominent of about fifteen new terms he introduced as a new lexicon of creationist terminology to oppose evolution without using religious language. It was the first place where the phrase "intelligent design" it appeared in its current primary usage, as asserted by its publisher Jon A. Buell and stated by William A. Dembski in his expert witness report for Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has criticized the book for presenting all the basic arguments of proponents of intelligent design and being actively promoted for use in public schools before any research had been done to support these arguments. Although presented as a scientific textbook, philosopher of science Michael Ruse considers the contents "worthless and dishonest". An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union described it as a tool policy aimed at students who don't "know science or don't understand the controversy over evolution and creationism." One of the authors of the scientific framework used by California schools, Kevin Padian, condemned it for its "subtext," "intolerance of honest science" and "incompetence".

Concepts

Irreducible complexity

The concept of irreducible complexity was popularized by Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box (The Black Box of Darwin, 1996).

The term "irreducible complexity" was introduced by biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box (Darwin's black box, 1996), although he had already described the concept in his contributions to the 1993 revised edition of Of Pandas and People. Behe defines it as "a single system made up of several complementary parts that interact to contribute to the basic function, removing any part causes the system to stop working effectively". In their own words:

"The irreducibly complex and closely matched systems are huge obstacles to Darwinian evolution because they cannot be joined directly by improving a given function in many steps, as would the Darwinian gradualism, where the function works by the same mechanism as the complete structure. The only possible resource for a gradualist is to speculate that an irreducibly complex system could have joined through an indirect route (...) However, the more complex a system is, the more difficult it is to imagine such indirect scenarios, and more examples of irreducible complexity that we find, the increasingly less persuasive indirect scenarios become. "

(Behe, 1998)

Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap to illustrate this concept. A mousetrap is made up of several interacting parts—the base, the bar, the spring, and the striker—all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. Removal of any part destroys the function of the mousetrap. Proponents of intelligent design argue that natural selection could not create irreducibly complex systems, since the selection function is present only when all the parts are assembled. Behe argues that irreducibly complex biological mechanisms include the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.

Critics point out that the irreducible complexity argument assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary and therefore could not have been added sequentially. They argue that something that is initially only advantageous may later be necessary while changing other components. Furthermore, they argue, evolution often proceeds by altering pre-existing parts or removing them from a system, rather than including them. This is sometimes called the "scaffold objection" by analogy with a scaffold, which can support a construction of "irreducibly complex" until it is complete and able to stand on its own. Behe has acknowledged the use of "sloppy prose" and that his “argument against Darwinism is meaningless as logical proof.” Irreducible complexity has remained a popular argument among proponents of intelligent design; in the Dover trial, the court held that "Professor Behe's claim of irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community."

Specified complexity

In 1986, Charles B. Thaxton, a physical chemist and creationist, used the term "specified complexity" of information theory when he asserted that the messages carried by DNA in the cell were specified by intelligence and must have originated from an intelligent agent.Intelligent design's concept of & # 34;specific complexity & # 34; was developed in the 1990s by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William A. Dembski. His book No Free Lunch uses information theory and mathematics to show that life is the result of intelligent design. Dembski states that living organisms contain what he calls "complex specific information"; that "the Darwinian mechanism is incapable of producing".

Dembski claims that when something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., it is both complex and "specified"), it can be inferred that it was produced by intelligent cause (i.e., designed) in rather than being the result of natural processes. He provides the following examples: & # 34; A single letter of the alphabet is specific without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specific. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.” He claims that the details of living things can be characterized in a similar way, especially the “patterns” of living things. of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

William A. Dembski proposed the concept of specific complexity.

Dembski defines complex specific information (CSI) as anything with a probability of occurrence of less than 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ by (natural) chance. Critics say this makes the argument a tautology: the specified complex information cannot occur naturally because Dembski has so defined it, so the real question becomes whether or not the IEC actually exists in nature.

Stephen Meyer has been in charge of adapting Claude Shannon's information theory to the context of intelligent design. For that purpose, Meyer has established symmetries between information and Dembski's complexity specification criterion. Meyer describes Dembski's work this way:

"We know that the information, whether, say, in hieroglyphics or radio signals, always comes from a smart source... Therefore, the discovery of digital information in DNA provides strong bases to infer that intelligence played a causal role in its origin."

(Meyer 2006)

Behe's irreducible complexity arguments have received more publicity than Dembski's more theoretical arguments involving information theory, as they have been more difficult for people to understand.

The conceptual soundness of Dembski's specified complexity/IEC argument has been discredited in the scientific and mathematical communities. Specified complexity has not yet been shown to have wide applications in other fields, as Dembski claims. John Wilkins and Wesley R. Elsberry characterize the "explanatory filter" of Dembski as a discarder because he eliminates explanations sequentially: first regularity, then chance, finally choosing the default design. They argue that this procedure is flawed as a model for scientific inference because the asymmetric way in which it treats different possible explanations makes it prone to false conclusions.

Richard Dawkins, another critic of intelligent design, argues in The God Delusion (2006) that letting an intelligent designer explain improbable complexity only postpones the problem, since such a designer would have to be at least as complex. Other scientists have argued that evolution by selection is better able to explain the observed complexity, as it is evident with the use of selective evolution to design certain electronic, aeronautical, and automotive systems that they are considered too much trouble. complexes for "intelligent designers" humans.

Universe in Tune

Proponents of intelligent design have also occasionally appealed to broader theological arguments outside of biology, most notably an argument based on fine-tuning the universal constants that make matter and life possible and that they cannot be attributed to each other. just by chance. These include the values of the fundamental physical constants, the relative strength of the nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity between fundamental particles, as well as the mass ratios of these particles. Proponents of intelligent design and Center for Science and Culture fellow Guillermo González argue that if any of these values were even slightly different, the universe would be dramatically different, making it impossible for many chemical elements and features of the universe to form, such as galaxies. Proponents therefore argue, an intelligent life designer was needed to ensure that the required features were present to achieve that particular result.

Scientists have generally responded that these arguments are poorly supported by existing evidence. Victor J. Stenger and other critics say that intelligent design and the weak form of the anthropic principle are essentially a tautology; in their view, these arguments amount to the claim that life is capable of existing because the universe is capable of supporting life. The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument from the lack of imagination for assuming that other forms of life are not possible. Life as we know it could not exist if the circumstances were different, but a different kind of life could exist instead. Several critics also suggest that many of these variables appear to be interconnected, and calculations by mathematicians and physicists suggest that the emergence of a universe similar to ours is quite likely.

Intelligent Designer

The contemporary intelligent design movement formulates its arguments in secular terms and intentionally avoids identifying the intelligent agent(s) it postulates. Although they do not say that God is the designer, the designer is often implicitly hypothesized to have intervened in a way that only a god could. Dembski, in The Design Inference (1998), speculates that an alien culture might meet these requirements. Of Pandas and People proposes that SETI illustrates a call for intelligent design in science. In 2000, philosopher of science Robert T. Pennock suggested that the Raelian UFO religion is a real-life example of an extraterrestrial intelligent designer stance that "makes many of the same bad arguments against evolutionary theory as the creationists". The authoritative description of intelligent design, however, expressly states that the universe shows characteristics of having been designed. Acknowledging the paradox, Dembski concludes that "no strictly physical intelligent agent could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life." Leading proponents have stated to supporters that they believe the designer is the Christian God, to the exclusion of all other religions.

Beyond the debate over whether intelligent design is scientific, several critics argue that the existing evidence makes the design hypothesis seem unlikely, regardless of its status in the world of science. For example, Jerry Coyne asks why a designer "would give us a way to make vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of his enzymes"; (see pseudogene) and why a designer would not "stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species". Coyne also points to the fact that "the flora and fauna on these islands resemble those of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different" as evidence that the species were not put there by a designer. Earlier, in Darwin's Black Box, Behe had argued that we are simply incapable of understanding the designer's motives, so these types of questions cannot be answered definitively. Rare designs might, for example, '... have been placed there by the designer for a reason – for artistic reasons, for variety, to highlight, for some as-yet-unnoticed practical purpose – or they might not'. Coyne responds that in light of the evidence "life is not the result of intelligent design, but evolution; or the intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to look as if it had evolved".

Intelligent design advocates like Paul Nelson sidestep the problem of bad design in nature by insisting that we simply haven't grasped the perfection of design. Behe cites Paley as his inspiration, but differs from Paley's expectation of perfect creation and proposes that designers do not necessarily produce the best possible design. Behe suggests that, like a parent who doesn't want to spoil a child with fancy toys, the designer may have multiple reasons for not prioritizing engineering excellence. He says that "Another problem with the imperfection argument is that it depends critically on a psychoanalysis of the unnamed designer. However, the reasons why a designer would or would not do something are virtually impossible to know unless the designer specifically tells you what those reasons are'. This reliance on the designer's unexplained motives makes intelligent design scientifically verifiable. Retired UC Berkeley law professor, author, and intelligent design advocate Phillip E. Johnson proposes an essential definition that the designer creates for a purpose, illustrating that he believes AIDS was created to punish immorality and is not caused by HIV, but such reasons cannot be tested by scientific methods.

Asserting the need for a complexity designer further raises the question "What designed the designer?" Proponents of intelligent design say the question is either irrelevant or outside the scope of intelligent design. Richard Wein responds that "...scientific explanations often create new unanswered questions". But, in evaluating the value of an explanation, these questions are not irrelevant. These must be balanced against the improvements in our understanding that the explanation offers. Invoking an inexplicable being to explain the origin of other beings (us) is little more than a question of principle. The new question posed by the explanation is just as problematic as the question the explanation purports to answer". Richard Dawkins sees the claim that the designer need not be explained as a cliché of completion thinking. In the absence of observable evidence and measurable, the very question "What designed the designer?" it leads to an infinite regress from which advocates of intelligent design can only escape by resorting to religious creationism or logical contradiction.

Movement

The Discovery Institute Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture used posters based on The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. Later he used a less religious image, then he was renamed Centre for Science and Culture.

The intelligent design movement is a direct outgrowth of the creationism of the 1980s. The scientific and academic communities, along with the United States federal court, view intelligent design as either a form of creationism or an offspring which is closely intertwined with traditional creationism; and several authors refer to it explicitly as "intelligent design creationism".

The movement is based at the Center for Science and Culture, founded in 1996 as the creationist arm of the Discovery Institute to promote a religious agenda that called for major social, academic, and political change.. The Discovery Institute's intelligent design campaigns have been organized primarily in the United States, although efforts have been made in other countries to promote ID. Movement leaders say ID exposes the limitations of scientific orthodoxy and the secular philosophy of naturalism. They argue that science should not be limited to naturalism and should not require the adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that rejects out of hand any explanation that includes a supernatural cause. The overall goal of the movement is to "reverse the stifling hold of the materialist worldview" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science in consonance with Christian and theistic convictions".

Phillip E. Johnson stated that the goal of intelligent design is to shape creationism as a scientific concept. All of the major proponents of ID are members or staff of the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture. Almost all of the ID concepts and the associated movement are products of the Discovery Institute, which guides the movement and follows its wedge strategy while running its Teach the Controversy campaign and its other related programs.

Major advocates have made conflicting statements regarding ID. In statements directed at the general public, they say that intelligent design is not religious; when addressing conservative Christian supporters, they assert that ID has its foundation in the Bible. Recognizing the need for support, the Discovery Institute affirms its Christian and evangelical orientation:

Along with an approach in the influencing opinion trainers, we also try to build a popular base of support between our natural electorate, namely, Christians. We will do this mainly through apologetic seminars. We intend that these annimen and equip believers with new scientific evidence to support faith, as well as "popularize" our ideas in culture in general.

Barbara Forrest, an expert who has written extensively on the movement, describes this as due to the obfuscation of its agenda as a matter of Discovery Institute policy. She has written that the "activities [of the movement] betray an aggressive and systematic agenda to promote not only intelligent design creationism, but also the religious worldview that underlies it."

Religion and main proponents

Although the movement's arguments for intelligent design are framed in secular terms and intentionally avoid proposing the identity of the designer, most of ID's leading proponents are avowedly religious Christians who have held that, in their view, the designer proposed in ID is the Christian conception of God. Stuart Burgess, Phillip E. Johnson, William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer are evangelical Protestants; Michael Behe is a Catholic and Jonathan Wells is a member of the Unification Church. Non-Christian proponents include David Klinghoffer, who is Jewish; agnostics Michael Denton and David Berlinski; and Muzaffar Iqbal, a Pakistani-Canadian Muslim. Phillip E. Johnson has argued that cultivating ambiguity, through The use of secular language in arguments that are carefully sculpted to avoid connotations of theistic creationism is a necessary first step in ultimately reintroducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson explicitly calls on ID advocates to obfuscate their religious motivations in this way while avoiding Intelligent Design being identified as "just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message". Johnson emphasizes that "...the first thing to do is take the Bible out of the discussion... This is not to say that Biblical issues are not important; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialistic prejudice from scientific reality".

The strategy of deliberately disguising the religious intent of intelligent design has been described by William A. Dembski in The Design Inference. In this work, Dembski lists a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options for the designer's identity; however, in his book Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, 1999), Dembski states:

Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if his practitioners have no idea about him. The practice of a scientific theory can undoubtedly be exercised without resorting to Christ. But the conceptual solidity of theory in the end can only be found in Christ.

Dembski also stated: "ID is part of God's general revelation [...] Not only does intelligent design rid us of this ideology [materialism], which stifles the human spirit, but also, in In my personal experience, I have found that it opens the way for people to come to Christ". Both Johnson and Dembski cite the Bible's Gospel of John as the foundation of intelligent design.

Barbara Forrest argues that such statements reveal that mainstream proponents view Intelligent Design as essentially religious in nature, and not merely a scientific concept that has implications with which their personal religious beliefs coincide by chance. She writes that they are closely allied with the ultra-conservative Christian Reconstructionism movement. Lists the connections of (former and current) Discovery Institute members Phillip E. Johnson, Charles B. Thaxton, Michael Behe, Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, and Francis J. Beckwith to major Christian Reconstructionist organizations, and the scope of the funding provided to the Institute by Howard Ahmanson, Jr., a leading figure in the Reconstructionist movement.

Reaction of the other creationist groups

Not all creation organizations have embraced the intelligent design movement. According to Thomas Dixon, "Religious leaders have also spoken out against ID." An open letter affirming the compatibility of the Christian faith and the teaching of evolution, originally written in response to the controversies in Wisconsin in 2004, has now been signed by more than ten thousand clergymen of different Christian denominations across the United States. In 2006, the director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit astronomer George Coyne, condemned ID as a kind of 'crude creationism'; which reduces God to a mere engineer". Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe, a proponent of Old Earth creationism, believes that efforts by ID proponents to divorce the concept from Biblical Christianity they make their hypothesis too vague. In 2002, he wrote: "Winning the design argument without identifying the designer produces, at best, an incomplete origins model. Such a model makes little or no positive impact on the community of scientists and other academics [...]...the time is right for a direct approach, a single leap to the origins struggle. The introduction of a scientifically verifiable, Biblical-based model of creation represents such a leap".

Similarly, two of the world's most prominent young earth creationist organizations have tried to distinguish their views from those of the intelligent design movement. Henry M. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), wrote in 1999 that ID 'even if well-intentioned and effectively articulated, will not work! It has often been tried in the past and has failed, and will fail today. The reason it won't work is because it's not the biblical method. According to Morris: "Evidence for intelligent design...must be followed by or accompanied by a strong presentation of authentic biblical creationism if it is to be meaningful and enduring." In 2002, Carl Wieland, then of Answers in Genesis (AiG), criticized defenders of the design who, while well-meaning, "left the Bible out of it'" and therefore they were unwittingly complicit in the modern rejection of the Bible. Wieland explained that "The main 'strategy' of AIG is, in a bold but humble way, to call the church back to its biblical foundations... [so] we do not consider ourselves part of this movement nor do we fight against it".

Reaction of the scientific community

The consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science and has no place in a science curriculum. The US National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science, because they cannot be verified by the methods of science". The National Science Teachers Association of the United States and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have called it pseudoscience. Others in the scientific community have denounced their tactics, accusing the ID movement of fabricating bogus attacks on evolution, misinforming, misrepresenting science, and marginalizing those who teach it. More recently, in September 2012, Bill Nye warned that creationist views threaten science education and innovation in the United States.

In 2001, the Discovery Institute published advertisements under the title A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism (A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism), stating that the listed scientists had signed this statement expressing his skepticism:

We are skeptical of statements on the capacity of random mutation and natural selection to explain the complexity of life. A careful examination of evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.

The ambiguous statement does not exclude other known evolutionary mechanisms and most of the signatories were not scientists in the relevant fields, but as of 2004 the Institute stated that the growing number of signatures indicated growing doubts about evolution among scientists The statement formed a key component of the Discovery Institute's campaigns to present intelligent design as scientifically valid by claiming that evolution lacks broad scientific support, and members of the Institute continued to cite the list until at least 2011. As part of a strategy to counter these claims, scientists organized Project Steve which gathered more signatories named Steve (or variants) than the Institute's petition and a counterpetition, A Scientific Support for Darwinism (Scientific support for Darwinism), which quickly obtained a similar number of signatures.

Surveys

Several polls were conducted prior to the December 2005 decision in Kitzmiller School District v. Dover that sought to determine the level of support for intelligent design among certain groups. According to a 2005 Harris Poll, 10% of adults in the United States view human beings as "so complex that they require a powerful force or intelligence to help create them". Although the Zogby polls commissioned by the Discovery Institute show greater support, these polls suffer from considerable flaws, including having a very low response rate (248 out of 16,000), being conducted on behalf of an organization with a manifest interest in the result of the survey and contain leading questions.

A series of US Gallup polls from 1982 to 2008 on "Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design" has found support for "Humans have developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, but God guided the process" 35-40%, while "God created human beings in virtually their present form once in the last 10,000 years or so" ranged from 43 to 47% and "Humans have developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, but God had no role in the process" changed from 9 to 14%. The surveys also listened to responses to a series of more detailed questions.

Complaints of discrimination against ID advocates

There have been allegations that ID advocates have faced discrimination, such as being denied positions or being harshly criticized online. In the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Expelled: Intelligence is not allowed, 2008) the host Ben Stein presents five alleged cases. The film argues that the upper echelons of mainstream science, in a "scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation's laboratories and classrooms," crack down on academics who believe they see evidence of intelligent design in nature or criticize the evidence for evolution. Research into these allegations resulted in alternative explanations for the perceived persecution.

The film portrays intelligent design as motivated by science, rather than religion, though it does not give a detailed definition of the phrase or attempt to explain it on a scientific level. Aside from briefly addressing the issues of irreducible complexity, Expelled examines it as a political issue. The scientific theory of evolution is portrayed by the film as a contribution to fascism, the Holocaust, communism, atheism, and eugenics.

Expelled has been used in private screenings for lawmakers as part of the Discovery Institute's DI campaign for Academic Freedom bills. Critical screenings were restricted to churches and Christian groups, and in a special pre-release screening, one interviewee, PZ Myers, was denied admission. The American Association for the Advancement of Science describes the film as dishonest and divisive propaganda aimed at introducing religious ideas into public school science classes, and the Anti-Defamation League has denounced the film's accusation that evolutionary theory influenced the Holocaust. The film includes interviews with scientists and academics who were tricked into participating by misrepresenting the film's theme and title. Skeptic Michael Shermer describes his experience of being repeatedly interrogated about the same question without context as "surreal."

Criticism

Scientific criticism

ID proponents seek to keep God and the Bible out of the discussion and present intelligent design in the language of science, as if it were a scientific hypothesis. For a theory to qualify as scientific, is required to be:

• Coherent
• Parsimonious: parco in its entities or proposed explanations (see the Navaja de Occam).
• Useful: describes and explains observed phenomena and can be used in a predictive manner.
• Empirically verifiable and false: potentially confirmable or refutable by experimentation or observation.
• Based on multiple observations: often in the form of controlled and repeated experiments.
• Corregible and dynamic: modified in the light of observations that do not support it.
• Progressive: refine previous theories.
• Provisional or attempt: it is open to experimental verification and does not affirm certainty.

For any theory, hypothesis, or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet most, and ideally all, of these criteria. The fewer criteria it meets, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a few or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any meaningful sense of the word. Typical objections to defining Intelligent Design as a science are that it lacks coherence, violates the parsimony principle, is not scientifically useful, is not falsifiable, is not empirically verifiable, and is not correctable, dynamic, progressive, or provisional.

ID proponents seek to change this fundamental basis of science by eliminating "methodological naturalism" of science and its replacement by what the leader of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, calls "theistic realism". They argue that naturalistic explanations fail to explain certain phenomena and that supernatural explanations provide a very simple and intuitive explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Many followers of ID believe that "scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to eliminate theism from public life, and they see their work in promoting intelligent design as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres.

The failure to follow the procedures of scientific discussion and submit work to the scientific community that stands up to scrutiny has weighed against the acceptance of intelligent design as valid science. The intelligent design movement has failed to publish a properly peer-reviewed paper. in support of the ID in a scientific journal and has failed to publish peer-reviewed research or information. The only article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that argued in favor of intelligent design was promptly withdrawn by the publisher for circumventing the journal peer review standards. The Discovery Institute says that several DI papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals, but critics, largely members of the scientific community, reject this claim, stating that journals proponents of intelligent design have founded their own peer-reviewed journals that lack impartiality and rigor, composed entirely of supporters of intelligent design.

Additional criticism comes from the fact that the phrase "intelligent design" makes use of an assumption of the quality of an observable intelligence, a concept that has no definition with scientific consensus. ID proponents assume that the characteristics of intelligence are observable without specifying what the criteria for measuring intelligence should be. Critics say that the methods of design detection proposed by ID advocates are radically different from conventional design detection, undermining the key elements that would make it possible as a legitimate science. Proponents of intelligent design, they say, are proposing both the search for a designer without knowing anything about that designer's abilities, parameters, or intentions (which scientists do know in the search for the results of human intelligence), and the denial of the very distinction between natural/artificial design that allows scientists to compare complex designed artifacts in the context of the kinds of complexity found in nature.

Behe's examples of irreducible systems have been criticized giving explanations for their occurrences. Francis Collins, leader of the "Human Genome Project," has argued that gene duplication may explain the coagulation system. Kenneth Miller showed that the bacterial flagella is a variation of a system whose primary function is not associated with moving through space, but rather attacking and performing cell detoxification.

William Dembski's arguments on information theory have received a series of extensive criticisms. These range from certain nuances to more serious objections. Among them are that: digital information is nothing more than the usual genetic information that encodes the characteristics of life that lead to high fitness, the result of natural selection; no scientist has proposed that any complex object evolved spontaneously and randomly; the law of conservation of information does not apply to natural selection in a population; the No Free Lunch law is not relevant to the evolution of genomes; mutations are not instantly lethal; there is no empirical evidence and artificial selection was not considered.

Among a significant proportion of the general population in the United States, the primary concern is whether conventional evolutionary biology is compatible with belief in God and the Bible and how this subject is taught in schools. The campaign Teach the Controversy promotes ID while trying to discredit evolution in US public high school science subjects. The scientific community and organizations science education have responded that there is no scientific controversy about the validity of evolution and that the controversy exists only from the point of view of religion and politics.

Criticism of believers in God

In the same way, the position of intelligent design has been criticized by positions of believers, who despite believing in God, do not consider evolution as a wrong theory, and try to establish a union or rapprochement between the belief in a God and scientific laws. Among these positions that make up evolutionary creationism, the position of theistic Evolution stands out.

Arguments from ignorance

Eugenie C. Scott, along with Glenn Rama and other critics, has argued that many issues raised by proponents of intelligent design are arguments from ignorance. In the argument from ignorance, it is wrongly argued that lack of evidence for one position constitutes proof of the truth of another position. Scott and Rama say that ID is an argument from ignorance because it depends on a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: in the absence of a natural explanation for specific aspects of evolution, we assume an intelligent origin. They argue that most scientists will answer that what is unexplained is not inexplicable and that "we don't know yet"; is a more appropriate response than invoking a cause outside of science. In particular, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to imply a false dichotomy, where evolution or design is the correct explanation, and any perception of evolutionary failure becomes an error. victory for design. Scott and Rama also claim that the supposedly novel contributions proposed by proponents of intelligent design have not served as a foundation for any productive scientific research.

In his conclusion to the Kitzmiller trial, Justice John E. Jones III wrote that "ID is at bottom based on a false dichotomy, namely, that as long as the theory of evolution is discredited, ID upheld. This same argument had been made in support of creation science in the case McLean v. Arkansas (1982), which found the false premise of a " 34;two-model approach" it was "forced dualism". Behe's argument from irreducible complexity makes negative arguments against evolution, but does not make any positive scientific arguments for intelligent design. It does not allow scientific explanations to continue to be discovered, as has been the case in several examples previously presented as alleged cases of irreducible complexity.

Possible theological implications

Advocates of intelligent design often insist that their claims do not require a religious component. However, several philosophical and theological questions naturally arise from ID's claims.

Proponents of intelligent design attempt to scientifically demonstrate that features such as irreducible complexity and specified complexity do not arise through natural processes, and therefore require repeated direct miraculous interventions by a Designer (often a Christian concept of God).. They reject the possibility of a designer working simply by setting natural laws in motion in the beginning, as opposed to theistic evolution (to which even Charles Darwin was open). Intelligent design is different in that it asserts repeated miraculous interventions in addition to designed laws. This is in contrast to other major religious traditions of a created world in which God's interactions and influences do not act in the same way as physical causes. The Catholic tradition makes a careful distinction between ultimate metaphysical explanations and secondary natural causes.

The concept of direct miraculous intervention raises other potential theological implications. If such a Designer does not intervene to alleviate suffering, though capable of intervening for other reasons, some deduce that the Designer is not omnibenevolent (see problem of evil and related theodicies).

In addition, the repeated interventions imply that the original design was not perfect and final, and therefore presents a problem for anyone who believes that the Creator's handiwork was perfect and final. Proponents of intelligent design try to explain the problem of bad design in nature by insisting that we have simply failed to understand the perfection of design (for example, by proposing that vestigial organs serve unknown purposes), or by proposing that designers do not necessarily produce the best design they can and do they may have unknown motives for their actions.

God of the voids

Intelligent design has also been described as a God-of-the-gaps argument, which takes the following form:

• There is a vacuum in scientific knowledge.
• The gap is filled with acts of God (or intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or intelligent designer).

A God-of-the-gaps argument is the theological version of the argument from ignorance. A key feature of this type of argument is that it merely answers outstanding questions with (often supernatural) explanations that are not verifiable and are themselves ultimately the subject of unanswerable questions. Historians of science note that the The astronomy of the first civilizations, although amazing and incorporating mathematical constructions far above any practical value, turned out to be misdirected and of little importance for the development of science because they failed to investigate more carefully the mechanisms that drive celestial bodies across the sky. It was the Greek civilization's first practical science, though not yet a mathematically oriented experimental science, but nonetheless an attempt to rationalize the world of natural experience without recourse to divine intervention. In this historically motivated definition of science any appeal to an intelligent creator is explicitly excluded because of the paralyzing effect it can have on scientific progress.

Situation in the United States

Kitzmiller Trial

Kitzmiller Area School District v. Dover was the first direct challenge brought in US federal court against a public school district that demanded the presentation of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism and that the school board's policy therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Eleven parents of students in Dover, Pennsylvania, sued the Dover Area School District over a lecture the school board required to be read aloud in ninth-grade science classes when teaching evolution. The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), and Pepper Hamilton LLP. The National Center for Science Education acted as consultants to the plaintiffs. The defendants were represented by the Thomas More Law Center. The lawsuit was tried in a bench trial from September 26 to November 4, 2005 before Judge John E. Jones III. Kenneth R. Miller, Kevin Padian, Brian Altera, Robert T. Pennock, Barbara Forrest, and John F. Haught served as plaintiffs' expert witnesses; while Michael Behe, Steve Fuller and Scott Minnich were on defense.

On December 20, 2005, Judge Jones issued his 139-page decision on fact and conclusions, ruling that "ID (intelligent design) is nothing less than the progeny of creationism [...] a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism and not a scientific theory" and concluded by declaring it "unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom" of the Central District of Pennsylvania. The eight Dover school board members who voted for the intelligent design requirement were defeated in the November 8, 2005 election by rivals who opposed teaching intelligent design in a science class, and the current president of the school board indicated that he did not intend to appeal the sentence.

In his decision on the question of fact, Justice Jones made the following condemnation of the Teach the Controversy strategy:

... Moreover, the supporters of the DI have tried to avoid the scientific scrutiny that we have now determined that it cannot resist defending it dispute, but not the DI itself, should be taught in science classes. This tactic is in the best insincere case, and in the worst a loop. The objective of the intelligent design movement is not to encourage critical thinking, but to instigate a revolution that would supplant evolutionary theory with DI.

Reaction

Judge Jones himself foresaw that his ruling would be criticized, saying in his decision that:

...Those who disagree with our ruling will probably qualify it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred, since this is obviously not an activist court.

On the contrary, this case came to us as the result of the activism of a disinformed faction of a school council, with the help of a law firm of national public interest eager to find a case that feels constitutional precedent about the I, who in combination led the board to adopt an unwise policy and in the unconstitutional fund. The impressive folly of the Board ' s decision is evident when considered in the context of events that have now been fully revealed through this trial. Students, parents and teachers in the Dover Area School District deserved better than being dragged to this legal voragine, with its resulting absolute loss of monetary and personal resources....

As Jones had predicted, John G. West associate director of the Center for Science and Culture said:

Dover's ruling is an attempt by a federal activist judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even avoid criticism of Darwinian evolution through government censorship rather than open debate, and it will not work. He has merged the position of the Discovery Institute with that of the Dover school board, and completely misinterprets the intelligent design and motivations of the scientists who investigate it.

The press noted with interest that the judge is "a Republican and a parishioner".

The decision has subsequently been scrutinized for flaws and conclusions, in part by supporters of intelligent design with the aim of avoiding future court defeats. In the winter of 2007, the Montana Law Review published three articles. In the first, David K. DeWolf, John G. West, and Casey Luskin, all of the Discovery Institute, asserted that intelligent design is a valid scientific theory, the court of Jones should not have addressed the question of whether this was a scientific theory and that the Kitzmiller decision will have no effect at all on the development and adoption of intelligent design as an alternative to standard evolutionary theory. In the second Peter H Irons responded, arguing that the decision was extremely well reasoned and spells the death knell for intelligent design efforts to introduce creationism into public schools, while in the third DeWolf, et al. responded to the issues raised by Irons. However, fear of a similar lawsuit has resulted in other school boards abandoning the intelligent design proposal to "teach the controversy".

In April 2010, the American Academy of Religion issued Guidelines for the Teaching of Religion in K-12 Public Schools in the United States, which included advice that the science of creation or Intelligent design should not be taught in science classes, as these 'represent competing worldviews outside the realm of science which is defined as (and limited to) a method of inquiry based on the collection of observable evidence and measurable subject to specific principles of reasoning". However, they, as well as other "worldviews" that focus on speculations about the origins of life, represent another important and relevant form of human inquiry that is well studied in literature or social science courses. Such study, however, must include a diversity of worldviews that represent a variety of religious and philosophical perspectives and must avoid privileging one view as more legitimate than the others".

Situation outside the United States

Europe

In June 2007, the Council of Europe Committee on Culture, Science and Education issued a report, The dangers of creationism in education. i>), which states that "Creationism in any of its forms, like "intelligent design", is not based on fact, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for the science classes". In his description of the dangers posed to education by teaching creationism, he described intelligent design as "anti-science" and involving "blatant scientific fraud" and "intellectual delusion" that "blurs the nature, objectives and limits of science" and links it along with other forms of creationism to denialism. On October 4, 2007, the Council of the Parliamentary Assembly of Europe passed a resolution declaring that schools should "resist the presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion," including the "intelligent design", which he described as "the latest and most refined version of creationism", "presented in a more subtle way". The resolution emphasizes that the purpose of the report is not to challenge or combat a belief, but to "warn against certain tendencies to pass off a belief as science."

In the UK, public education includes religious education as a compulsory subject and there are many religious schools that teach the ethos of particular denominations. When it was revealed that a group called Truth in Science had distributed DVDs produced by Illustra Media featuring members of the Discovery Institute advocating for design in nature and which it claimed were used by 59 schools, the Department of Education and Skills (DfES) stated that "neither creationism nor intelligent design is taught as a subject in schools and is not specified in the science curriculum" (part of the National Curriculum, which does not apply to independent schools or education in Scotland). The DfES subsequently stated that "Intelligent Design is not a recognized scientific theory, so it is not included in science curriculum', but left the way open for it to be explored in religious education in relation to different beliefs, as part of a curriculum established by a local Religious Education Standing Advisory Council. In 2006, the Curriculum and Qualifications Authority produced a model unit of "Religious Education" where students can learn about religious and non-religious views on creationism, intelligent design, and evolution by natural selection.

On June 25, 2007, the UK Government responded to an electronic petition saying that creationism and intelligent design should not be taught as science, although teachers are expected to answer students' questions in the standard framework of established scientific theories. A detailed "Creationism Teaching Guide" government for schools in England. It says that "Intelligent Design lies entirely outside of science," has no scientific principles, or explanations, to support it and is not accepted by the scientific community. Although it should not be taught as science, "Any question about creationism and intelligent design that arises in science classes, for example as a result of media coverage, could provide the opportunity to explain or explore why they are not considered scientific theories and, in the proper context, why evolution is considered a scientific theory". However, "Teachers of subjects such as RE, history or citizenship can deal with creationism and intelligent design in their lessons".

The British Center for Science Education lobby group aims to "counter creationism in the UK" and has been involved in lobbying the UK government in this regard. The Northern Ireland Department of Education says the curriculum offers an opportunity for alternative theories to be taught. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – which has ties to fundamentalist Christianity – has been campaigning for intelligent design to be taught in science classes. A former UDP member of Parliament, David Simpson, has asked the education minister for guarantees that students will not lose grade points if they give creationist or intelligent design answers to scientific questions. In 2007, Lisburn City Council voted in favor of a recommendation from the DUP to ask post-primary schools what their plans are to develop teaching materials related to "creation, intelligent design and other origin theories".

Dutch education minister Maria van der Hoeven's plans to "stimulate an academic debate" on the issue in 2005 drew severe opposition from the public. After the 2006 election, Hoeven was succeeded by Ronald Plasterk, described as a "molecular geneticist, staunch atheist, and opponent of intelligent design". In reaction to this situation in the Netherlands, the director general of the Flemish Secretariat for Catholic Education (VSKO) in Belgium, Mieke Van Hecke, stated that: "Catholic scientists already accepted the theory of evolution long ago. time and intelligent design and that creationism has no place in Catholic schools in Flanders. It is not the task of politics to introduce new ideas, that is the task and goal of science".

Australia

The state of intelligent design in Australia is somewhat similar to that of the UK (see Education in Australia). In 2005, the Australian Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, floated the idea that intelligent design should be taught in science classes. Widespread outcry caused the minister to quickly admit that the proper place for intelligent design, if it were to be taught, would be in religion or philosophy classes. The Australian chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ distributed a DVD of the Discovery documentary Institute Unlocking the Mystery of Life (2002) to secondary schools in Australia. The president of one of the country's leading private schools supported the use of the DVD in the classroom at the discretion of teachers and directors.

Relationship with Islam

Muzaffar Iqbal, a notable Pakistani-Canadian Muslim, signed the Discovery Institute's petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Ideas similar to intelligent design have been considered respected intellectual options among Muslims and in Turkey many intelligent design books have been translated. In Istanbul, the local government sponsored public meetings promoting intelligent design in 2007, and David Berlinski of the Discovery Institute was the keynote speaker at a meeting in May 2007.

Relationship with ISKCON

In 2011, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust publishing house of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) published an intelligent design book titled Rethinking Darwin: A Vedic Study of Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Rethinking Darwin: A Vedic Study of Darwinism and Intelligent Design). The book includes contributions from intelligent design advocates William A. Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Michael Behe, as well as Hindu creationists Leif A. Jensen and Michael Cremo.

Further reading