Intelligent Design, It doesn't even qualify as a theory!

[Guest Prescott Small]

 

Billboards For Reason

 

We are seeking assistance in getting our not for profit off the ground. Below is a sampling of some of our arguments:

 

Why Intelligent Design is, in fact, not a theory at all.

 

"One requirement of science is that it makes specific predictions, which can be tested in a laboratory." states geologist Robert Hazen "Another requirement is that it does not rely on supernatural or miraculous processes."

 

The primary case that intelligent design promotes is that life and the universe have systems that are so complex that they can only be explained by a creator. The very essence of that theory is completely un-testable.

 

The only test that stands up is if we can not explain it, it must have been designed.

 

If it was designed by "a creator" a single being or entity; whether that be God, an Alien or the Giant Spaghetti Monster then we are left without testing. The protocol for testing is to give up and stop researching because the answers to the question are to difficult to explain.

[Mr. Neil]

I've gradually come to the conclusion that this is the single best argument against Intelligent Design; even more so than simply saying that it's creationism in disguise. And the best way to demonstrate this is to ask the ID propenent explain Intelligent Design as though evolution had never been proposed. This effectively takes away his first tactic, which is to attack evolution. The ID propenent, caught with his pants down, will have no choice but to mumble his naked and meaningless conjecture, which effectively tells us nothing about the universe at all.

[HadouKen24]

ID works better as philosophy than science. In fact, that's kinda where it comes from. It's the old Paley's Watch argument reformulated and updated. And it's fortunately for its proponents not subject to a few of the weaknesses of Paley's Watch, but it doesn't manage to solve all of them. It's still relatively weak.

[Samurai Tailor]

I am not sure ID even works as philosophy. For it to work, non-natural design must be not only present but detectable. And it is the detectability criterion which, as far as I can tell, demands an empirical solution.

 

The DI has pretty much conceded that even, with their quasi-scientific efforts thrown almost entirely behind Dembski's mathematical CSI filter.