ID is Dead (Again)

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”

If that’s not enough to convince the reader that Elizabeth is no prophet, there’s aways other things we can point to.

UD is still chugging along, as is the Discovery Institute. Michael Denton has a new book coming out soon, as does Douglas Axe. BIO-Complexity continues to publish. More of the incredible design of the living world is being revealed daily.

ID Is Dead. But perhaps like the proverbial cat it has more than one life.

451 thoughts on “ID is Dead (Again)

  1. There is the small matter that, until someone can formulate some sort of testable hypothesis, “Intelligent Design” will remain a broken-down vehicle for promoting religious ideas as scientific.

  2. I would like to know what religious ideas folks here think ID is trying to promote as science. Meanwhile, it’s far from dead.

  3. Mung writes:

    BIO-Complexity continues to publish.

    Yes, I see. Two papers this year. The latest, by Doug Axe and Ann Gauger, appears to be attempting to use computer models to show biological evolution is impossible. This Sherlock Holmes approach isn’t an argument for “Intelligent Design” and using a dodgy map will get you lost in the real territory.

  4. Mung:
    I would like to know what religious ideas folks here think ID is trying to promote as science. Meanwhile, it’s far from dead.

    Rather it’s stillborn as science. That hypothesis?

  5. And Bernie is alive, too!

    See, he’s moving–when we jiggle him.

    Yeah, I don’t think the point was that ID can’t be poked and prodded so that it moves a bit. It lacks any vitality, any life force, any capability of driving science or of stirring interest in anything but apologetics. In the matter of science it was stillborn, to be sure, but as the appearance of science it had a brief life, if hardly a healthy one.

    What is more, Mung needs to learn that telling what the state of a movement is at the present time is not prognostication.

    Glen Davidson

  6. If it were alive it would be evolving, and not repeating arguments originated by Paley in 1803.

    Of course, advancement is considered a weakness by creationists. Look at how they sneer at all the corrections and modifications to Darwin’s hypotheses.

  7. BIO-Complexity continues to publish.

    Yup, two whole papers in 2015! One of which has both authors on the editorial board (often considered a no-no)! Gee, those 29 members of the editorial board must be really burdened with all that editorial work! What a terrific success!

    Geez, Louise, if any field of science boasted that their flagship journal “continue[d] to publish” and by “continue[d] to publish” they meant that they published .07 papers per member of the editorial board per year, they’d be laughed out of the pool. But not in ID. In ID the ID proponents take this as a mark of success.

    May you have continued success like that.

  8. If “not dead” means merely there are still people who cling to it, then yeah, ID is alive. Like flat-earthism, astrology, crystal-healers and so on. How proud you must be!

  9. In the Wedge Document, ID proponents kindly provided some benchmarks against which we can judge their progress. How would you say they’ve done, Mung?

    FIVE YEAR GOALS

    To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.

    To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.

    To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

    TWENTY YEAR GOALS

    To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.

    To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts.

    To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

    FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES

    A major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists (by 2003)

    Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion)

    One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows

    Significant coverage in national media:

    Cover story on major news magazine such as Time or Newsweek

    PBS show such as Nova treating design theory fairly

    Regular press coverage on developments in design theory

    Favorable op-ed pieces and columns on the design movement by 3rd party media

    Spiritual & cultural renewal:

    Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism

    Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s) Darwinism

    Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions

    Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God

    Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory

    Scientific achievements:

    An active design movement in Israel, the UK and other influential countries outside the US

    Ten CRSC Fellows teaching at major universities

    Two universities where design theory has become the dominant view

    Design becomes a key concept in the social sciences

    Legal reform movements base legislative proposals on design theory

  10. keiths quotes the Wedge Document:

    Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God

    But intelligent design creationism has nothing to do with religion. It’s all science.

  11. Alan Fox:
    There is the small matter that, until someone can formulate some sort of testable hypothesis, “Intelligent Design” will remain a broken-down vehicle for promoting religious ideas as scientific.

    That has already been provided, Alan, and it beats what your position has to offer. So I can see why you would want to act as if it doesn’t exist.

  12. Patrick:
    keiths quotes the Wedge Document:

    But intelligent design creationism has nothing to do with religion.It’s all science.

    What religion, Patrick? ID doesn’t require a belief in God. It doesn’t say anything about worship or service. There aren’t any prayers.

    So please tell us what ID has to do with religion

  13. shallit,

    And yet evolutionism doesn’t have any papers published, ever!

    Go ahead and look. There isn’t any way to test the claim that natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes can produce any protein complex. There aren’t any papers that support the idea.

  14. Alan Fox: Rather it’s stillborn as science. That hypothesis?

    Yes, evolutionism is stillborn and we have been waiting for that hypothesis for over 150 years

  15. petrushka:
    If it were alive it would be evolving, and not repeating arguments originated by Paley in 1803.

    Of course, advancement is considered a weakness by creationists. Look at how they sneer at all the corrections and modifications to Darwin’s hypotheses.

    Darwin’s hypotheses? He didn’t have any

  16. ID will be dead if evolutionists finally find some way to support their claims and actually support them. However to date they still don’t have a way to test those claims and their falsification requires one to demonstrate a negative. So they have a long, long way to go and ID isn’t going away any time soon. 😎

  17. Frankie: That has already been provided, Alan, and it beats what your position has to offer. So I can see why you would want to act as if it doesn’t exist.

    This is arrant nonsense, Frankie. There is no testable ID hypothesis. You haven’t provided one and neither has anyone else, neither here nor in any other location, in any book or paper or on a website.

    There is NO testable scientific hypothesis for “Intelligent Design”.

  18. I would like to know what religious ideas folks here think ID is trying to promote as science

    That there is a designer god who created the universe and life on earth for a purpose and that this god has managed to intervene in the development of life on earth countless times over billions of years despite having no body, no technology – no means of interacting with the world.
    ID will never die. YEC will never die. But ID has had several decades to make a reasonable case for itself and its failed utterly to do that.

  19. REW: That there is a designer god who created the universe and life on earth for a purpose and that this god has managed to intervene in the development of life on earth countless times over billions of years despite having no body, no technology – no means of interacting with the world.
    ID will never die.YEC will never die. But ID has had several decades to make a reasonable case for itself and its failed utterly to do that.

    ID does not require God. ID will never die because you cannot find anything to refute it! You can’t even support the claims of your position!

  20. Alan Fox: This is arrant nonsense, Frankie. There is no testable ID hypothesis. You haven’t provided one and neither has anyone else, neither here nor in any other location, in any book or paper or on a website.

    There is NO testable scientific hypothesis for “Intelligent Design”.

    1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.

    2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.

    3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.

    4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.

    That is the ID hypothesis regardless of how you feel about it and it beats anything that you can muster for evolutionism. That means your whining about it doesn’t matter as you cannot do any better.

  21. Frankie: Darwin used the word “Creator” in his book when referring to the OoL. By your “logic” evolution is creationism

    But I make no claims for OoL hypotheses. There are no well-supported OoL hypotheses because there is no remaining direct evidence of how life got started on Earth. Creation of the first life by some god is almost as well supported as any other theory. But Darwin’s theory kicks in when the first life on Earth appears. It is a theory of how life diversified from the first life. Darwin may have believed in a creator god for OoL for all I know and for all you know. Has nothing to do with the fact that his theory of evolution is overwhelmingly supported by evidence from a wide range of sources and disciplines.

  22. Frankie: I read it- no testable hypotheses were provided.

    This is such a ridiculously inane and idiotic statement that I’m struggling to reply within the rules of this site. Common Descent is an entailment of the theory of evolution. The nested hierarchies that result from common descent are found always in the right chronological strata and always confirmed by molecular phylogenetics. Stupid remarks like yours take seconds to bang out on a keyboard but a full reply takes time and effort which, I suspect, will be wasted.

  23. Alan Fox:
    Frankie,

    We’ve already dismissed this nonsense. It’s Sherlock Holmes argumentation.

    I know you dismissed it but it is still better than anything evolutionism can muster. And on an open and honest forum you would lose

  24. One person manages to come up with one statement in defense of the claim that “Intelligent Design” is a broken-down vehicle for promoting religious ideas as scientific.

    And it wasn’t even Alan Fox, who made the initial claim.

    That’s it?

    Maybe it’s anti-ID that is dead.

  25. Alan Fox,

    Has nothing to do with the fact that his theory of evolution is overwhelmingly supported by evidence from a wide range of sources and disciplines.

    And yet no one can find this “theory of evolution” so we can all read what it really says. And you have proven that there aren’t any positive cases to be made so how can there be a theory?

  26. Alan Fox: This is such a ridiculously inane and idiotic statement that I’m struggling to reply within the rules of this site. Common Descent is an entailment of the theory of evolution. The nested hierarchies that result from common descent are found always in the right chronological strata and always confirmed by molecular phylogenetics. Stupid remarks like yours take seconds to bang out on a keyboard but a full reply takes time and effort which, I suspect, will be wasted.

    Darwin didn’t say anything about nested hierarchies and Mayr said they are the antithesis of evolutionism. You don’t know what a nested hierarchy entails. Transitional forms would ruin any attempt at forming a nested hierarchy. Common Descent cannot be tested, Alan. There aren’t any hypotheses for NS producing Common Descent.

  27. Frankie: I know you dismissed it but it is still better than anything evolutionism can muster. And on an open and honest forum you would lose

    Issues of science are unlikely to be settled by a couple of random commenters to-and-fro’ing on a website. It is not a matter of winning and losing, it is a matter of evidence. I admire your ability to continue to maintain the line you do in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

  28. Alan Fox: Issues of science are unlikely to be settled by a couple of random commenters to-and-fro’ing on a website. It is not a matter of winning and losing, it is a matter of evidence. I admire your ability to continue to maintain the line you do in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

    There isn’t any evidence to the contrary, Alan. Your say-so is definitely meaningless. And yes it is a matter of evidence and there isn’t any evidence for natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes creating protein complexes or regulatory networks.

  29. Mung: Maybe it’s anti-ID that is dead.

    As ID sinks from view, so will ID skeptics be able to develop new hobbies.

  30. Alan Fox:
    Mung: Maybe it’s anti-ID that is dead.

    As ID sinks from view, so will ID skeptics be able to develop new hobbies.

    Why would ID sink from view? It has all the evidence and a means to be tested.
    One hobby won’t be to actually find support for the claims of their position.

  31. Mung:
    Alan, common descent is itself an evolutionary theory, not an entailment of the theory of evolution. And Darwin didn’t even get there first.

    I’ve no doubt other people had inklings before Darwin advanced his theory of natural selection. The history is interesting but what is important is the reality of the theory. And evidence refuting common descent would certainly falsify evolutionary theory so I disagree that common descent is not an entailment of the theory.

  32. Alan Fox: I’ve no doubt other people had inklings before Darwin advanced his theory of natural selection. The history is interesting but what is important is the reality of the theory. And evidence refuting common descent would certainly falsify evolutionary theory so I disagree that common descent is not an entailment of the theory.

    Common Descent cannot be tested. All alleged positive claims come from its assumption. So how can an untestable concept be a theory or even part of a theory?

  33. The religious approach to truth is well displayed in this thread. You simply SAY that you’re right. This is how all religions start (and splinter), since physical evidence has no bearing on whatever you declare.

    So here we read a stirring defense of ID (and really, the only one possible):
    Evolutionism has no evidence
    There is no theory of evolution
    ID is real science
    Darwin was wrong
    Darwin didn’t say what he said, he said what I SAID he said
    ID has all the evidence
    ID can be tested and falsified, but hasn’t been because it’s true
    ID scientists are doing real research

    and so on.

  34. Flint:
    The religious approach to truth is well displayed in this thread. You simply SAY that you’re right. This is how all religions start (and splinter), since physical evidence has no bearing on whatever you declare.

    So here we read a stirring defense of ID (and really, the only one possible):
    Evolutionism has no evidence
    There is no theory of evolution
    ID is real science
    Darwin was wrong
    Darwin didn’t say what he said, he said what I SAID he said
    ID has all the evidence
    ID can be tested and falsified, but hasn’t been because it’s true
    ID scientists are doing real research

    and so on.

    LoL! Just link to the theory and be done with it, then. Or admit you can’t and we will know why.

  35. Frankie

    So please tell us what ID has to do with religion

    Oh, how quickly they forget we actually have evidence against such silly claims from the religionists…

    Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools (P. Johnson 2003).

    Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory (Dembski 1999, 84)

    Johnson said he and most others in the intelligent design movement believe the designer is the God of the Bible (Maynard 2001)

    Several books on intelligent design are published by InterVarsity Press, which says of itself:

    Who is Intervarsity Press? We are a publisher of Christian books and Bible studies.

    Care to revise your statement there Joe?

  36. Robin,

    You are conflating what some people want to use ID for with ID itself.

    In his book “Signature in the Cell” Stephen C. Meyer addresses the issue of Intelligent Design and religion:

    First, by any reasonable definition of the term, intelligent design is not “religion”.- page 441 under the heading Not Religion

    “The Design Revolution”, page 25, Dembski writes:

    Intelligent Design has theological implications, but it is not a theological enterprise. Theology does not own intelligent design. Intelligent design is not a evangelical Christian thing, or a generally Christian thing or even a generally theistic thing. Anyone willing to set aside naturalistic prejudices and consider the possibility of evidence for intelligence in the natural world is a friend of intelligent design.

    and

    Intelligent design requires neither a meddling God nor a meddled world. For that matter, it doesn’t even require there be a God.

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