Intelligent Design is natural theology, plain and simple. Now you could make the argument that irreducible complexity is subjective or that it really proves nothing, I would be fine with that. My problem is that science itself is a philosophy, it's called epistemology or a theory of knowledge. What we 'know' about God is that he is Creator or Designer or we have no basis for faith, in the Christian sense, unless God is.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11: 1-3)
You think this knowledge is phony, that is the character of your rant. I personally find that attitude both biased and unchristian and thus psuedoscientific.
For someone who constantly complains about unfair debating tactics, mark certainly enjoys packing his arsenal with them. His pet peeve is that evolutionists use "equivocation" to muddy the water; but mark himself has employed that tactic in this post.
First he says:
Intelligent Design is natural theology, plain and simple.
After some irrelevant soliloquy about science as a philosophy he gets to the point:
What we 'know' about God is that he is Creator or Designer or we have no basis for faith, in the Christian sense, unless God is. ... you think that this knowledge is phony ... I personally find that attitude biased and unchristian ...
Can you see the equivocation? God has been redefined, in mark's thought, from the Creator to "the Creator who must have Designed life according to the criteria set out by the IDists". It is the kind of logical leap that is "refudiated"
by insightful quotes like these:
I believe there is a Mind who was before all things and through whom all things are held together (Colossians 1:17): I believe that Mind is the intelligence behind all that exists in the universe. Hence, I believe in intelligent design. Does that by definition then, place me in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement? No.
Why should Christians who believe in intelligent design nevertheless reject Intelligent Design? Here are three reasons, from specific to general:
1. Intelligent Design proponents' portrayals of "design" do not accurately reflect optimal design principles.
Note that I am not saying that "evolution produces suboptimal design" (a claim I find unhelpful at best and downright wrong at worst); I am saying that
IDists themselves, based on the design principles they see in nature, would never be employed as actual designers.
For example, they like to harp on irreducible complexity, because it is apparently unevolvable. Never mind the morass of evidence that IC traits in fact have evolved and do evolve. Is IC a universal trait of intelligent design? By no means. In fact, if anything, many applications call for multiple redundancy.
Imagine an irreducibly complex space shuttle or banking IT network, where the absence of one component renders the system unable to perform its intended function. Would you drive a car if its engine stopped working every time the window motors malfunctioned? Would you trust a co-worker who couldn't do any work every time one of his pencils went missing? On the other hand, there are two human designers who produced illustrious portfolios of irreducibly complex designs: Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg. And yet they weren't patented inventors, they were cartoonists. Their designs were caricatures precisely because they were irreducibly complex. Oh, they were cleverly designed, alright. But would you really want an automatic napkin wiper that depended on a lever tossing a cracker to a parrot?
What about specified complexity? Surely that is a mark of intelligent design? To answer that, one need only pay a visit to the Patent Office, where one will readily come across every unspecified design known to man (and which can be profited from). Do patent applications specify measurements and weights? Do they require exact blueprints and detailed schematics? Not often; because the power of the idea in a patent is often in its generality, and the implementation is left up to whoever wishes to make a fast buck. Also, visual art is notoriously unspecified: the same painting can be interpreted by any number of viewers in any number of ways. And yet, despite its deliberate vagueness, visual art is not only considered intelligent but also fundamentally human and creative.
Taking a look at life tells us that even these design concepts were not rigorously applied by the Intelligent Designer himself. It is telling that most IDists resort to bacteria as their showpieces: for how is any multicellular life-form irreducibly complex? Is it irreducibly complex for us to have two lungs and two kidneys? Is it specified for the same finger structure to be reused across the vertebrates for wings, fins, legs, and hands? Is it specified for keratin to be the stuff both of soft hair and hard, sharp claws?
The design metaphors used by IDists are inconsistent and unhelpful biologically, to say the least. And it is not just in biology that they are unhelpful:
2. The metaphor of design damages theistic viewpoints.
It is telling that Paley imagined himself coming across a watch in a heath, and from there postulating a watchmaker instead of interviewing one. The design metaphor focuses a lot more attention on the design than on the designer, and on creation as evidence rather than the revelation of the Creator. It is no accident that John Henry Newman responded to Paleyism negatively:
Observe, then, Gentlemen, that Physical Theology teaches three Divine Attributes [power, wisdom, and goodness], I may say, exclusively; and of these, most of Power, and least of Goodness. And in the next place, what, on the contrary, are those special Attributes, which are the immediate correlatives of religious sentiment? Sanctity, omniscience, justice, mercy, faithfulness. What does Physical Theology, what does the Argument from Design, what do fine disquisitions about final causes, teach us, except very indirectly, faintly, enigmatically, of these transcendently important, these essential portions of the idea of Religion? ... Indeed, a Being of Power, Wisdom, and Goodness, and nothing else, is not very different from the God of the Pantheist.
Isn't the whole point of the ID movement that design can somehow be assessed independently of any knowledge of the Designer? If not, it isn't science; but if it is, how can it possibly claim to help Christianity? In Christianity, the truth about God does not begin in artifacts and archeology but in contact with the Incarnate, crucified and resurrected Word.
Furthermore, ID denies the providence of God. Paley begins his argument thus:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer.
But is not the stone as much as the watch there by the will of God? Was it not along with the raw materials that became the watch created for the Son by the will of the Father through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Or do only the parts of creation that look like Rube Goldberg machines get to glorify God?
3. There are far better analogies for creation in the Bible than intelligent design.
To be fair, the Bible does describe intelligent design:
​​​​​​​​An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and casts for it silver chains.
​​​​​​​​He who is too impoverished for an offering
chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
to set up an idol that will not move.
Isa 40:19-20 (ESV)
That's hardly flattering! The "designed" rhetoric is used heavily against idols in the Prophets; in the Psalms, moreover, it is normally the wicked who scheme, plot, and plan. To be fair, Proverbs encourages prudence; nevertheless, on the whole, design is at best neutral and at worst a picture of human hubris in the face of divine patience.
So why use it as a metaphor for God's creative activity? It isn't very helpful. Mark likes to cite Hebrews 11:1-3, but the fact is that understanding the creation of the universe out of things unseen (which is something even TEs agree with) is only one paltry example in a long hallway of heroes of faith. God's engagement with the universe does not stop at creation, nor is it appropriate to use a metaphor in which the designer is irrelevant once the design is complete.
What is a better metaphor, then? I suggest we go back to the picture that the Bible uses: God as Father.
​​​​​​​​But now thus says the Lord,
he who created (bara) you, O Jacob,
he who formed (yatsar) you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine. ...
​​​​​​​​Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
​​​​​​​​I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
​​​​​​​​everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created (bara) for my glory,
whom I formed (yatsar) and made.
(Isa 43:1, 5-7, ESV)
Isaiah 43 concerns itself with the re-creation of the shattered people of God. Creation language is heavily recapitulated: both
bara and
yatsar are terms that have been used of both the universe and man in the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. And yet that would not have been the most endearing part of the prophecy: rather, the Israelites would have been encouraged to know that they were God's sons and daughters, and called by name and by His name.
There is ambiguity in the image of being "called by name": are the Israelites called by their own name, or by God's name? But if we use the image of parenthood, the ambiguity fits in neatly. On the one hand, children are called by their father's name; on the other hand, children each have their unique names, but they are also given by their fathers and so are also marks of family belonging.
Once we make that connection, we can see the image of parenthood in the Genesis 1 account of creation. For starters, the Spirit of God is
brooding over the waters in 1:2. That is a deeply maternal image, a picture of a hen covering her eggs or her chicks (which Jesus desired to do for Jerusalem in Luke 13:34). Next, God commands creation into existence. This is not just an act of power - creating - but also an act of love - naming. And on the one hand, He gives all things their own names, precious to Him; but at the end of each day He also calls them by His own name: He declares that they are "good".
Why is the image of parenthood more powerful than the image of design? Simply this: a complete design no longer needs its designer; however, children never outgrow their parents' love. God the Creator still sustains all things through the power of His word, His naming that gives all things meaning and existence. Just as children are free to make their own decisions, but still depends on the providence of their parents, so also the universe has been given the power to exist freely while constantly depending on God for its existence. And far better than design, parenthood accurately captures the loving heart of God:
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion
on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
(Isa 49:15, ESV)
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So there, some good reasons for Christians who believe in intelligent design to nonetheless reject Intelligent Design. Then again, try telling the school administrators that they need to devote equal time to the teaching of evolution and Planned Parenthood ...
