Intelligent Design: A Scientific Front for Religion

From The Discovery Institute: Genesis of 'Intelligent Design':

Two years ago, at a National Religious Broadcasters meeting, the Discovery Institute's Dembski framed the ID movement in the context of Christian apologetics, a theological defense of the authority of Christianity.

"The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ," Dembski said. "And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ [and] the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.... It's important that we understand the world. God has created it; Jesus is incarnate in the world."

Dembski's remarks in this meeting and a trend in his writing give evidence that his version of Intelligent Design is simply a ploy to teach religion, specifically Christianity, in the school system. Intelligent Design is simply a front to religion. As demonstrated by the previous quote by Dembski, one of the leading components of the movement, as well as what he wrote in his paper titled "The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design" (published in Debating Design by Dembski and Ruse, Cambridge Press 2004):

Intelligent Design...teaches that biological complexity is not exclusively the result of material mechanisms but also requires intelligence, where the intelligence in question is not reducible to such mechanisms (323).

Or in other words, the agent of intelligence is above natural mechanisms or essentially is God. Dembski has thus rehashed the First Cause argument of Aquinas to include an intelligent entity which is separate from the universe but still maintains interactions within it. Though plausible, this statement is not back with empirical evidence or even deduced nor induced by observable datum but asserted. Dembski continues on in the conclusion:

Science is supposed to give the full range of possible explanations a fair chance to succeed...[S]cience may not, by a priori fiat, rule out logical possibilities. Evolutionary biology, by limiting itself exclusively to material mechanisms, has settled in advance the question of which biological explanations are true, apart from any consideration of empirical evidence (329).

Utilizing natural mechanisms as the sole explanation is not an arbitrary assignment from authority, or a fiat. It is from the lack of supporting evidence of a transcendent intelligence. Namely, by the definition of the term itself we would be unable to neither observe nor comprehend such a specimen, and as such it would simply be speculation as opposed to evidentiary synthesis concerning the pathway of origins. What is worse is this speculation is based entirely off of propositional logic; the form of logic which some scientists would argue is the antithesis of the scientific method or just simply bad science.

The claim for intelligence is that there is specified complexity in life. The argument in Dembski's essay essentially relies upon the observation of complex systems, such as the bacterium flagellum or the existence of DNA and RNA transcription and translation processes, in order to be evidence of intelligent design. He argues that Darwinism takes natural explanations a prior, a position which is not objectively verifiable. He calls such a technique "armchair philosophy"; ironic, since it is not justifiable to see a complex system and sum it up as stemming from a purely intelligent source. As previously mentioned, this proposes that complex systems cannot be established without intelligence behind the formation. This is a dubious statement; snowflakes form complex patterns without the aid of intelligence. As well, natural crystals show signs of complexity; these structures came about via natural processes.

Dembski concludes with a quote from Darwin's Origin of Species: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." However, Dembski's position and the totality of Intelligent Design movement has a problem; namely, the problem is that it is not science but arm chair philosophy. The "facts" are based on dubious and weak propositions. His position is against the observation of natural known processes and predicting the combination or recombination of these naturally known process, as well as conceivable and evident ancient processes to give rise to new processes in a biological system. He argues that using unknown variables is simply unscientific. His position is simply summed up as since we have evidence of intelligent beings creating specified complexity, for example humans manufacturing machinery, and we extend this observation into the search of intelligent life, for example the SETI project scans deep space for electromagnetic activity that could be translated into possible communication, then why can not that extension be made into an intelligence which is not dictated by natural laws? The intelligence, by default, is transcendent of natural laws; as such, it is not affected by these laws which would leave a verifiable path of existence. Being organisms with a perspective subjected to such natural laws, we are limited to perceiving only that which exists in the realm we live in, namely one of natural processes and natural observances.

Science is then forced into the realm of naturalism as adding the variable of a transcendent intelligence becomes exceedingly complicated and speculative. Science cannot justify the position with the subjective claim of the existence of truthful specific complexity, especially considering the examples given in papers pushing specific complexity have been shown to not be complex or specific. Science cannot justify positing an unobservable as the general causation. Science is limited to positing causation on observables such as Newton's gravity or Maxwell's heat and electromagnetism. It is "armchair philosophy" to sit back and posit an intelligent designer without valid justification.

Dembski, combined with his previous quote from the article, is simply attempting to inject Intelligent Design into the education system. By first positing the logical possibility of an intelligence and by describing the intelligence as a being that transcends natural laws, he has essentially created the essence of God natural theologians had developed a millennia ago. This is a tactic that is clear, and one can only hope that our education system can maintain its protection from this unscientific, religiously motivated movement.