Intelligent Design

 Intelligent Design

Del Retzch. Science and it's limit: The Natural Sciences in Christian perspective. Illinois: IVP Academic, 2000.

David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism. Ulysses Press, 2006.

Ralte, Rodinmawia. The Interface of Science and Religion: An Introductory Study. New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2017.

Intelligent design, according to which all organisms were created by the design of some higher intelligence (God). Intelligent design is a belief or theory that the complex structures of life cannot be explained by natural selection and random mutation as suggested by Darwin but must be explained by some force of willful design. The inner working of the cell its complexity requires a creative intelligent force to have set them in motion. Nature, as most saw it, was deliberately planned, directed, or designed. From that perspective, reasons, ideas, plans, thoughts, patterns, and design would all factor into the causal history, structure, and function of things, and thus any adequate scientific account of nature would have to involve reference to those factors.

Intelligent Design was based on William Paley’s work-Natural Theology (1802) where he argued that the intricate and delicate structure and workings of the watch show that it has been designed by a creative and intelligent watchmaker.

The idea that science can uncover evidence of deliberate design in the cosmos, and especially the idea that supernatural design can figure in truly scientific accounts of natural phenomena, subsequently fell on hard times.

Design: Concept Basics

        1. Artifacts. Activities of human agents typically leave visible traces on the world—traces we are generally able to recognize as resulting from human activity. we recognize that humans had a hand in that machine’s coming into existence. That recognition is based in part upon our knowing some things about nature’s capabilities and our recognition that nature unaided by agent activity would not or could not have produced any such phenomenon. Things that unaided nature could not or would not produce and in whose production finite agents (humans, aliens, whatever) played some role we classify as artifacts.

        2. Design. A design is an intentionally produced (or exemplified) pattern, where a pattern is an abstract structure that resonates, matches or meshes in certain ways with mind, with cognition.

        3. Agent activity. Since design involves the deliberate production of pattern, there is always agent activity somewhere in its history. There would have to be a direct agent activity somewhere, but in this case, it would be directed toward the making of the machine itself—or the machine that made the machine (or perhaps even further back).

        4. Gaps. Whenever humans, aliens, or other finite beings act to produce artifacts (or design), marks of that activity—counter flow marks— are left on the world somewhere or other. Gap-based inferences are foundational to our identification of artifacts as products of agent activity and in the case of human and alien activity are unproblematically legitimate.

 

Recognizing Finite Designedness

 Our recognition of finite designedness (design by finite agents) typically begins with a recognition of artifactuality, itself in turn-based upon recognition of counterflow marks. Sometimes those marks are visible in the end product.

 Of course, there is no guarantee that we can always identify design, always recognize designedness or always recognize artifactuality and counterflow. It is possible that we might confront cases where we were unable to tell whether we were dealing with a genuine artifact or some unusual natural phenomenon.

 

Supernatural Design

The general conceptual structure outlined above would apply fairly well to some instances of design produced by supernatural agents as well. It is in principle possible for a supernatural being to bring about virtually any artifact that we humans (or aliens) can.

Intelligent design (ID) movement exhibits a fair amount of diversity, but the center of gravity of the group is a rejection of methodological naturalism, at least as any sort of norm.

The Intelligent Design (or ID) movement was reinvigorated and began aggressively exercising its new political muscle, striving to bulldoze ID textbooks into public school classrooms. ID teaches that our universe and the life within it are too complex to have arisen without the guiding force of an Intelligent Designer. Although Creation science likewise believed that God was necessary to explain Nature's complexity, ID distinguishes itself from Creation science in one surprising and controversial way: Creation science taught that the Bible was literally true—both Old and New Testaments—whereas ID does not accept the literal truth of the entire Bible. Leaders of the current ID movement do seem to wholeheartedly embrace the New Testament, believing that Jesus literally walked on water, literally filled pigs with demons, literally cast a magic spell on a fig tree, literally rose from the dead, etc. But the voluminous writings of the preachers of ID leave no doubt that they do not believe the Old Testament in the same literal sense, if at all. ID openly accepts contemporary Big Bang cosmology, which, when discussed honestly, bears no similarity whatever to the six-day Creation Story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. By traditional Christian canon, therefore, the ID movement is a cult, because ID rejects historically accepted Bible teachings and interpretations. Instead, ID preaches modernistic revisionism, contrary to the doctrines of conventional, Bible-based Christianity.

 

Remarks on Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design doesn't attempt to recognize the wellspring of insight (regardless of whether it be God or UFOs or something different), by far most Intelligent Design scholars are theists. They see the appearance of design as the natural world as proof of the presence of God. There are, notwithstanding, a couple of nonbelievers who can't deny the solid proof for configuration yet are not able to recognize a Creator God. They will in general decipher the information as proof that earth was cultivated by a type of expert race of extraterrestrial animals (outsiders). Obviously, their understanding doesn't address the beginning of the outsiders, either, so they are back to the first contention with no dependable answer.

 

Design Theory isn't in every case precisely equivalent to Biblical Creationism. There are different translations of what Intelligent Design alludes to. Scriptural creationists reason that the Genesis record of creation is dependable and right, thus life on Earth was planned by a clever specialist: God. They consider the to be of Intelligent Design as proof from the normal domain that upholds this end. Other Intelligent Design scholars start with the regular domain and arrive at the resolution that life on Earth was planned by an astute specialist, without indicating who that specialist may be.

 

All by itself, Intelligent Design doesn't determine who the Designer or fashioners really are. Accordingly, Intelligent Design is viable with scriptural creationism, however, it's anything but an intrinsically strict position.

 

From the lens of Christian Apologetics

A major theme in the history of Christian apologetics has been the “argument from purpose and design,” also known as the “teleological argument.” When one looks at the unique properties of matter and the earth that allow the existence of human life, the marvels of animal and human physiology, and the many examples in the plant and animal world where the existence of one species is totally dependent upon the interactive existence of another, one is struck by the amount of evidence that can be interpreted as indicating that all of this has been designed by a Great Designer. Many of these arguments in recent years have been stated under the title of “the Anthropic Principle”, which summarizes many of the nuclear, atomic, and gravitational phenomena that appear to be “fine-tuned” to allow the development and/or existence of intelligent life based on carbon.

All such evidence from phenomena in the natural world for the existence of a Great Designer is powerfully consistent for the person who has a personal relationship with God the Creator and Sustainer. The Christian scientist repeatedly marvels at the evidence he sees for the results of God’s design in the properties and development of the universe.

Some Christian apologists have concluded that a science-based on methodological naturalism is inextricably linked to a world-view of naturalism, and that therefore we must rescue ourselves from this situation by introducing the concept of intelligent design as a mechanism in scientific descriptions.

There is no objection to using the concept of intelligent design as a guide in helping to suggest how to construct suitable models of physical the reality, provided that these models are capable of being subjected to test and description in natural categories before they are accepted as scientific.

Intelligent design for the Christian is a general concept underlying all descriptions, scientific and nonscientific, affirming the creative and sustaining activity of God. But if the concept of intelligent design is advanced as a substitute for natural categories of description, limiting the specific instances being considered to acts of God’s “intervention” in the “gaps” in our understanding, and considering intelligent design itself as a valid scientific description, critical harm is done to our concepts of the relationship between scientific descriptions and God’s continuing activity in creating and sustaining.

There is the frequent temptation to consider that we can meaningfully decide what God has done and does do, directly on the basis of our understanding of who God is and what God could do. The history of science and Christianity supplies many examples, both in the construction of models of the physical world and in biblical interpretation, where the decision about what God has done has been made incorrectly on the basis of what our presumed knowledge of God would lead us to believe that he has the ability to do. If, in the case of evolution, for example, we wish to answer the question, “How did God achieve his designs in biological development?” we must turn to investigate what it is that God has indeed done, and what form his activity has taken in the actual working out of his creative will. Otherwise we are subject to such classic errors as arguing that the shape of the planets’ orbits must be circular because the circle is God’s perfect shape, or to arguing that sin must be an illusion because God has made us and God is good.

Second, there is the whole area of interaction between such concepts as “natural law” and “God’s intervention” in the world. Many writers speak of “natural law” as though “laws” were self existing elements that God called into existence to rule the physical world. Within the area of science, “natural laws” are human descriptions of God’s regular creative and sustaining activity. Laws do not cause anything to happen; they are descriptive, not prescriptive.

For God to act in a way different from this regular creative and sustaining activity—as, for example, in the doing of a “miracle”—he does not have to “break his laws,” “set aside his laws,” or “intervene in his laws” to accomplish his purpose. Just as we can understand the ordinary “laws” of nature as our descriptions of God’s regular activity, so we can understand a “miracle” as our description of God’s special activity.

Third, there is the concept of “soul” and its implications for reflections on creation and evolution. There is a growing awareness of the difference between the basic biblical concept of soul as “living self,” a concept increasingly supported by growing knowledge of the human being, describing a set of properties of the whole human being, and the “immortal soul,” a concept of classical dualistic models of human nature, which has often been used as an argument against the “natural” theory of evolution. It appears to be much more appropriate, both scientifically and theologically, to think of the soul as describing what a person “is,” rather than what a person “has.”

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