[MD] Intelligent Design

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mark,


> [Mark]
> Intelligent design does not require a God, but even that is despised by many
> scientists and teachers. It seems that the only thing that is appropriate is
> some nebulous randomness that progresses through chance.

Steve:
Intelligent design doesn't require a God but it does require a
designer. ID allows for the possibility that the designer could be an
omniscient and omnipotent being. If so, then it would be impossible to
detect design since an omnipotent designer could design something to
appear in every way like it was not designed. There would be no way to
distinguished designed from not designed if we allow for such
omnipotence. So ID with an omnipotent designer can not be science.

William James pointed out the problem with Creationism 100 years ago.
No matter what we observe we could hypothesize that it was designed to
be exactly that way. No conditions could ever point to more or less
evidence of intelligent design by an omnipotent being. In fact, even
if our observations were completely different, they would be no more
or less consistent with the hypothesis of ID than what we actually
observe. ID theory can't tell us how the world _is_ because it would
be no less true about any other imagined world that _ isn't_. It is
impossible to find evidence for or against the hypothesis of ID and it
is entirely irrelevant to science.

Best,
Steve