Despite the fact that evolution offers an explanation for
DNA, the
bacterial flagellum, the
eye, and
blood clotting, you and others still have yet to show why the complexity of
these phenomena indicates intelligent design.
I consider Talk Origins to be a biased newsgroup. But that’s fine for what it offers – opinions and conjectures.
For myself, it’s far from convincing. But more than just myself, here is a list of scientists who disagree with the claims of evolutionary theory:
dissentfromdarwin.org/
I think the “intelligently designed artifacts” analogy is faulty.
I can repeatedly observe the construction of an intricate watch, for example, at a local retailer and conclude that it is the result of “intelligent design” after watching the proprietor meticulously assemble it. Thus, when I observe this product (e.g. seeing others wearing watches) I can reasonably conclude that design is responsible because I have witnessed the process by which it is made. However, you and others haven’t proposed experiments that could be conducted or observations that could be made that would demonstrate how the complexity of natural phenomena, such as the eye, arose because of ID.
Yes, you can repeatedly observe the construction of a watch and conclude that an intelligent agent produced it. But importantly, you don’t debate whether it was produced by a random, molecular process. It’s not only because you’ve seen a watch built before, but because you know that a random process cannot produce a watch. In the same way, you do not repeatedly see pyramids built from huge rocks – nor have you ever seen a pyramid built to resemble those in Egypt. But you know that random, physical processes cannot produce those structures. Why? Because they exhibit marks of “design”. We conclude that the Egyptian pyramids were built by humans (some have proposed that they had help from other, perhaps extraterrestial forces) as the best, most reasonable answer. It’s not a debate about whether a random collection of atoms and molecules could arrange themselves as pyramids.
So, studying that, we see some “elements of design” in the pyramids. There is a precise coordination of elements and the appearance of “purpose” – the buildings serve a function.
The same kind of approach is used with SETI researchers when they evaluate sounds from space to determine if they came from an intelligent source. They’re looking for specified complexity in the sounds – something that indicates that it’s not the result of a random, natural process.
Additionally, there is another matter to consider. When researchers find fossils, they make inferences on what those fossils mean and where they came from and what they signal about evolutionary paths. But the fossils themselves are dead matter – they do not evolve. As Pope Benedict pointed out, we cannot take the natural history of the earth and bring it into a laboratory to produce experiments.
ID theorists can and do experiment on mutations. Michael Behe has done this in a very striking way, by seeking the limits to what evolutionary processes can actually produce.
Again, when we can observe function and design in nature, and we use human intelligence to reverse engineer the results (and in many cases use the design in nature for synthetic materials built with human design), then the inference that an Intelligent Agent was involved is reasonable and logically sound.
There are many experiments that can be used to falsify or validate ID. We have a source of intelligence to work with and on that basis, by analogy, we can observe what it produces. When we find similar structures in nature, we conclude that an intelligent agent (or agents) were likely involved there also.
There are some things which are only produced by intelligence, as far as we know. Language, for example, is not the product of physical laws. Thus, when we see coded language in nature, the most reasonable conclusion is that it was not the product of physical laws, but of intelligence.
