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<strong><span class="style3">ID Watch
In this section I will post a series of articles concerning ID/Creationism. ID is claimed to be distinct from Creationsm by its proponents and I will examine this claim in some detail as well as looking at scientific claims made by ID supporters.
ID (Intelligent Design)
Proponents definition
"Intelligent design is a theory for making sense of intelligent causes. As such, intelligent design formalizes and makes precise something we do all the time. All of us are all the time engaged in a form of rational activity that, without being tendentious, can be described as inferring design. Inferring design is a common and well-accepted human activity...There is no magic, no vitalism, no appeal to occult forces. Inferring design is common, rational and objectifiable."
(W.A. Dembski - Mathemetician and leading ID proponent)
Neutral definition
"Intelligent design (ID) is the concept that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute, say that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the origin of life."
(Wikipedia)
Creationism (Creation Science)
In Abrahamic religions, creationism or creation theology is the origin belief that humans, life, the Earth, and the universe were created by a supreme being or deity's supernatural intervention. The intervention may be seen either as an act of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) or the emergence of order from pre-existing chaos.
(Wikipedia)
Creationist views range from strict belief in the literal truth of Genesis to less rigid dogma which accepts some role for modern scientific development and acknowledges that Genesis is at least partly allegorical.
The various types of Creationist view are summarised here
Are ID and creationism distinct ?
Those who hold literal creation views reject all scientific theory which contradicts the account of creation in Genesis. This includes evolution; geological timescales and dating techniques (such as carbon dating); much of cosmology and it's account of the origins of the universe; the accepted interpretation of the fossil record and many other currently accepted scientific theories. The explanation for this diverse and widespread failure of the scientific community is hard to pin down. Dembski seems to think it is a consequence of the fact that modern science has strayed too far from Aristotle and his model of causation. Others posit a conspiracy of some sort. The truth is that if you genuinely believe that the world was created about 7000 years ago; that Noah really did build a 700 metre ship and really did survive a world-wide flood with breeding pairs of our current flora/fauna; and that the Bible is the literal and precise word of God and, therefore, infallible, then there is very little in modern science to offer succour to your world-view. The temptation to view this as a worldwide conspiracy or even the precursor of inevitable Divine Judgement, must be hard to resist.
At this point I would like to emphasise this difference between science and faith. Let us imagine that tomorrow morning we are greeted by the headline 'Noah's Ark Found!'. We further discover that a party of mountaineers have indeed found a fossilised wooden craft which appears to be between 5000 and 7000 years old and contains a suprising variety and amount of fossilised animal dung, together with a faded engraving on the tiller announcing 'Noah Was Ere'.
What would be the scientific response ? Well, there would certainly be some shocked scientists walking around for a while but very quickly we would want to know more about the craft and we would then try to work out how this altered the current understanding of the world. Scientists would be forced to accept the findings and incorporate them.
Let us now imagine that it was possible to generate a decisive piece of evidence for evolution/cosmology/geology rather than Noah. The problem is that most of us are pretty sure that was done decades, if not centuries ago. This is a central and crucial point. Scientific theory and method MUST change with observation. Religious belief cannot. Nothing science does will prove that the world is more than a few thousand years old to those who believe it is not.
Although proponents of ID claim that there is a distinction between their views and those of creationists this is not evident in practice. All of the leading proponents of ID are linked to the Discovery Institute which is a conservative Christian non-profit organisation set up in 1990. The Institute's primary thrust in terms of funding and resources are those political and cultural campaigns centering around intelligent design. Although members of the institute claim that it is not directly related to creationism/creation science, in practice this claim is at best a semantic quibble and at worst downright dishonesty. Most non-partisan observers would probably agree that 'Neo-Creationist' is a fair description of the institute - representing, as it does, a development of creationist theology rather than a distinct philosophy/theology. ID proponents frequently claim that ID is scientifically based and this is one major disctinction between it and creationism. This claim is examined in detail in the next section. My own belief is that ID does indeed make scientific statements about our world. The problem is that they are very bad science and the exponents are fundamentally incapable of good science since they prejudge the outcome (or rather the Bible does) of any experiment or theory that may conflict with doctrine.
Summary - for all practical purposes ID can be seen as a development of creationism, not a distinct theology/philosophy and this is highlighted when one examines the leading players in ID and their religious views.
Is ID Science ?
One of the leading proponents of ID - William Dembski - (a mathematical philosopher) set out much of the underpinning of ID in his book The Design Inference (1998).
The central theme of the book is the concept of the 'explanatory filter' which is Dembski's procedure for explaining the cause behind an observation. He asserts that each observation can have 3 possible causes - design, regularity or chance. These are mutually exclusive.
To decide which cause is correct Dembski states that one should start with regularity then chance and finally design. This works as follows:
If an observation (O) has a high probability (for example, observing that the sun rises at dawn), then one should accept regularity as the cause. If the probability is low and O is 'specified' then chance is rejected otherwise it is accepted. If chance and regularity are both rejected then design is accepted.
The word 'specified' refers to 3 mathematical 'tests' which are applied to the probability to rule out chance. These are known as CINDE (conditional independance), TRACT (tractability) and DELIM (delimitation).
I do not wish to embark on a lengthy and technical description of these 3 'specifiers' for two main reasons;
a) I am not a mathematician and I am not competent to critique theory presented by a mathematician in his own field;
b) there are many existing critiques of this part of Dembski's work by scientists/mathematicians more qualified and knowledgable - check below.
It is important to note that, as Dembski frequently points out, the book was subjected to peer review - it is one of the very few publications by ID proponents that actually has been peer reviewed. It is, however, equally important to note that the book was submitted to the Cambridge University Press as part of the Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory, and was, as such, peer reviewed by philosophers - not biologists or mathematicians.
More detailed and authororative critiques of the work can be found here :-
How Not to Detect Design - Branden Fitelson, Christopher Stephens, Elliott Sober (Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance - John S. Wilkins, Wesley R. Elsberry
Irreducible Complexity
After the work on explanatory filtering, the most important 'science' component of ID is the concept of irreducible complexity.
Put simply, the theory of evolution requires that organisms and their sub-systems evolve from simpler systems. If it could be shown that a particular organism or system contains vital components which are not adaptions and cannot have developed separately then evolutionary theory must fall because the 'irreducibly complex' system in question could not possibly have evolved the necessary components in one step. This means that the system and its components must have been designed. The leading proponent of IC in the ID community is Michael Behe - Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University USA.
At first sight this appears to be a valid and powerful test of evolutionary theory. Darwin himself was well aware of this and as any scientist should, drew attention to it as a test of his theory, thus;
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down".
(Charles Darwin, in The Origin of Species) Again I must, at this point, emphasise that I am not qualified or competent to make pronouncements in this area of evolutionary biology so I will, instead, summarise what I, as a non expert, think is the position leave the reader to do a quick google for more authoratitive critique.
Biologists have found that the examples of 'IC' cited by Behe do not stand up to scrutiny. I am not aware of any outstanding example of IC that has not been dealt with and shown to be misintereted. If there are such examples then I will happily retract that statement of course.
Conclusions
Basically the problem I have found with all proponents of ID is twofold; 1) Their lack of respect for and adherence to, conventions of debate and publication. The lobby is almost constantly guilty of fabrication, mis-quoting, quoting out of context or partial quoting and misleading and sometimes untruthful claims about scientific qualifications, status and expertise; 2) The conflict beween the most fundamental duty of a scientist and their apparent position.
Every scientist knows that experimental result should never be contaminated by personal preference, let alone prejudged before the start. Yet are we supposed to accept that messers Dembski and Behe, for example, stumbled across their fields of study in a disinterested search for truth ? Or is it, in fact, quite obvious that they are opponents in search of a theory rather than theorists in search of an opponent. Is it seriously suggested that there is any theoretical or experimental outcome that would persuade these men (and similar believers) that there view is wrong, that Genesis is in error and that modern science has got it pretty much correct ? Of course not. You do not change such a belief system with scientific evidence.
This means that any science that such believers partake in is, from the start, compromised. Even if they are scrupulously honest experimental scientists the work is tainted. It is simply unacceptible for any scientist to have a strong disposition (let alone an unshakable faith) in favour of one experimental outcome in advance of the experiment itself. This is why drugs are tested double-blind so that Doctors and patients cannot possibly influence results with preconceptions/placebo amplification/unconscious bias. Every scientist learns this in college.
Conclusions
1. ID/creationism does make claims which are falsifiable (the age of the Earth for example is, to all but YEC/ID followers, now established to be not several thousand but several billion years and were YEC/ID believers to be shown correct in their view then science would be devastated. So may different disciplines - from particle physics to palaeontology to molecular and genetic biology - would be found to be catastrophically and distinctly wrong in their posits, theories and working models. From a scientific perspective the posit that the Earth is several thousand years old is not sustainable).
So to the extent that ID makes falsifiable claims then it can justly said to be entering the realms of science. One problem is, however, that until ID proponents are prepared to accept that part of their work which has already been falisified, it is difficult to see what standard of scientific proof or arbitration could lead them to accept any falisification. Without falsifiability then the claim to science is unsupportable. We are back in the realms of non-science and metaphysics.
2) Assuming that this is incorrect and that ID proponents are perfectly willing and able to admit that their theories may be false - then one must look to their claims of scientific doubt in evolutionary biology, archeology, cosmology, plate techtonics, genetic science and so on. When one looks there is no serious conflict (other than the normal procession of science) in any of these fields. Even such conflict as one many find is not centred around creationist claims and beliefs. No serious archeologist or palaeontologist thinks the age of the earth is significantly less than 4 billion years. No serious evolutionary biologist or geneticist thinks that organisms were created rather than evolved. No serious scientists support the idea of a global flood sometime in the past - let alone a few thousand years ago.
There simply is no scientific support or corroboration for any of the YEC/ID tennets of faith and, as applies to other Abrahamic religions, no real support for any sort of creator until we remove him to the role of instigator rather than watchful shepherd. It is conceivable that some entity is responsible for the big-bang and all that brought about. After that point the role of the creator is entirely redundant and without scientific or historical support.
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ID Watch 
