At the Intelligent Design site Uncommon Descent, a fellow named Sal Cordova discusses “Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID.” Here are his good reasons for rejecting it:
1. Absence of a Designer. I know I might get flak for this, but I think a good reason to reject ID is the absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer in operation today. With many scientific theories we can see the hypothesized mechanism in action, and this is quite reassuring to the hypothesis. For myself, I wrestle with the fact that even if ID is true, the mechanism might be forever inaccessible to us.
2. Lack of direct experiments. A designer may decide never to design again. That is consistent with how intelligent agents act. So even if the Designer is real, even if we’ve encountered Him once personally in our lives, the fact is we can’t construct experiments and demand He give us a demonstration.
3. Belief that some future mechanism might be discovered. This is always a possibility in principle.
I applaud Cordova for attempting to articulate a perspective opposite and opposed to the view he actually holds, yet these three reasons make up the second or third string , as far as I can tell.
To me, the best reasons to reject ID include the following:
- The theory gives little rigor or specificity to the concept of design. What actions, behaviors, or features fall under the term? How does design differ from pseudo-design? How does ID theory deal with challenges? For instance, if design means something like selecting and arranging materials, then where do these materials come from? Did the designer create them? If so, how? When? By what mechanism? The concept of design itself should make the top point of discussion on Uncommon Descent and in ID literature. Although I only casually follow the ID movement, I cannot see that the foundational term gets nearly the attention it should, and this makes a fatal problem for the theory.
- The theory falls short on defining the concept of an intelligent designer. I understand why ID theorists and proponents resist identifying the designer as a specific being. Yet even without identifying the designer, the theory can and must provide details about what the designer actually did, when, and in what manner. This content makes the central core of the theory, if it hopes to serve as theory. ID addresses primarily the origin of life on Earth: it argues that an intelligent designer created the materials and conditions (at least) for life on Earth to develop into what we see today. The problem here emerges from the creative act. The intelligent designer, as intelligent, must act intentionally and with understanding. Without intentionality and understanding, the descriptor “intelligent” cannot apply. Yet, this means that ID theory must address the designer’s intentions and understanding. But ID theory makes no such direct address, for reasons touched upon in item #3, below.
- Religious motivations govern the theory. Now, I do not mean to say that “ID is creationism in a cheap tuxedo” or some glib phrase. Surely, however, ID proponents view the theory’s compatibility with broad theism as essential. Equally important, ID proponents despise the monistic, naturalistic view under which much mainstream science operates — and has operated productively at that. Despite the protests of ID proponents, ID ultimately boils down to an embarrassed creationism, a creationism that wishes not present itself as such. This intrinsic duplicity makes ID persistently, pervasively suspect.
- The theory’s inferential argument makes a weak case. ID proponents argue that the warrant for ID comes from seeing intelligent design in other aspects of the world. Information, or functionally specific complex information (FSCO), serves as the critical concept here — we only see and know intelligent agents to have the capability to create FSCO, therefore we have sufficient justification to believe that an intelligent agent created life on Earth. Assuming I represent the argument correctly, as I have tried, the non-sequitur from creating FSCO to creating life seems obvious. What’s more, how does one measure the FSCO of a thing — biological or man-made — consistently? How does FSCO get created or destroyed? Both of these questions require unambiguous answers,. Although regulars at Uncommon Descent insist that ID proponents have shown ad nauseum how to measure FSCO, I would prefer to see a single, downloadable article focused on just this topic and nothing else. I cannot fathom why some ID proponent doesn’t make a simple table listing the relative FSCO of (1) a line of text, (2) a face on Mount Rushmore, (3) the Mona Lisa, (4) a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, (5) a frog, (6) a DNA segment, and so forth. Wouldn’t such a table be the most handy, compelling, and convincing demonstration that ID theory can work? How can ID proponents talk about FSCO and its creation/destruction without pointing to a document or reference where FSCO calculations abound for designed and not-designed things? To be useful, ID theory’s main inference ought to have unambiguous support from data; until ID proponents can point challengers and onlookers to independent data that supporting use of the design inference in the domain of origins of life, ID theory remains practically useless in that area.
I could go on, but ID’s problems stand out to all but the cognitively dissonant: a theory that can’t go too deep into its own principles without becoming incoherent; a rationalization of belief that vainly wants the credibility and authority of a science.
No one is fooled.
