Point 1:
"Robertson’s recent remarks may finally have done what scientists have so far failed to do: expose intelligent design as a religious-based scientific fraud."
Pat Robertson does not speak for the intelligent design movement. Since he sometimes makes weird comments, he is an easy straw-man.
Regarding the claim that ID is basically religious in nature, it is true that there is a pretty strong correlation between theists and ID supporters. However, this does not mean that the concept of ID is itself religious. Correlation does not imply causation.
In fact, ID actually abstracts out religion from the picture by simply trying to answer, "Are there tangible artifacts of design in nature?" This question is solidly in the natural realm and can be subjected to scientific analysis.
Point 2:
"Yet intelligent design has been roundly and nearly universally criticized by scientists and education professionals as failing to meet even the most basic criteria for scientific theories."
It is true that there are many more scientists that support Darwinism than support ID (yet, here is a poll where 60% of medical doctors support some form of intelligent design in nature). However, just because consensus supports Darwinism, this does not mean that evidence for ID should not be taken seriously. The evidence should be evaluated on its own merits.
The fact that there are some scientists who are willing go against consensus and put their academic careers in jeopardy to advance this notion of ID suggests that there may be significant merit to ID. Here are some prominent scientists who have supported some form of ID:
- Nobel Laureate Charles Townes
- Turing Award Winner Frederick Brooks
- The late Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley
Point 3:
"What looks designed to one viewer may look perfectly un-designed to another, and there’s no clear way to decide who’s right. Furthermore, it seems very clear that those with background religious commitments are more apt to see “design” all over the place, whether it’s there or not."The author makes a very good criticism here. What objective measures can we use to empirically evaluate the level of design in any object? More fundamentally, what is design? What is intelligence? Can design ever arise from a non-intelligent agency?
This is where we can apply statistical tests and probability theory. The act of designing can be viewed as a process that minimizes or contains chance activities in order to arrive at some sort of goal or purpose. Designs may also be characterized by patterns. If we see something in the world that exhibits patterns that are not explainable by natural stochastic processes, we can reliably infer design. The practice of design detection can be structured in an objective and mathematically rigorous manner. Design detection does not necessarily need to depend on a person's prior belief.
Point 4:
Showing the limitations of a branch of science is neither intellectually dishonest nor defeatist. Let me give an example. In computer science, there are a set of problems known as "Non-deterministic Polynomial time" (or NP for short). Nobody has found any general polynomial-time solution for these NP problems. The general intuition is that there is no solution, although nobody has been able to prove this one way or the other."For IDers to go further and claim evolution can’t possibly explain these systems—which is what intelligent design requires to get a foothold—is intellectually dishonest and defeatist. It’s impossible to know what we will and won’t be able to explain through evolutionary theory."
If a graduate student spent a significant amount of time trying to find the optimal solution for the Traveling Salesman Problem (which is NP), that student's advisor would probably be very angry at the student for wasting time on the problem. In this situation, would it be fair to suggest that the advisor is being defeatist for suggesting that working on an NP problem is a waste of time? No. Instead, this intuition that there is no solution to the NP problem allows the graduate student to work on more tractable problems.
Similarly, intelligent design does not need to be classified as defeatist for suggesting that there are fundamental limitations to Darwinian evolution. Instead, the intuition that drives intelligent design might allow scientists to work on more biologically tractable problems.
Furthermore, intelligent design could potentially enhance current scientific endeavors by providing a more cohesive underlying model. One example is the area of biomimetics, which is the practice of extracting useful design patterns from biology.
Conclusion:
I commend the Irvine Progressive for running a piece on intelligent design. I would encourage readers to compare that piece with an article that I wrote for the Irvine Review, titled "Darwin or Design?" It is important that one be familiarized with both sides of the debate so that one can make an informed decision about this important issue of origins.
