Religion/Spirituality The Intelligent Design/God/Theism Thread

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10] The Evidence for Common Descent is Incompatible with Intelligent Design
ID is a theory about the cause of complex biological information. Common descent (CD) is a theory about the modalities of implementation of that information. They are two separate theories about two different aspects of the problem, totally independent and totally compatible. In other words, one can affirm CD and ID, CD and Darwinian Evolution, or ID and not CD. However, if one believes in Darwinian Evolution, CD is a necessary implication.

CD theory exists in two forms, universal CD and partial CD. No one can deny that there are evidences for the theory of CD (such as ERVs, homologies and so on). That’s probably the reason why many IDists do accept CD. Others do not agree that those evidences are really convincing, or suggest that they may reflect in part common design. But ID theory, proper, has nothing to do with all that.

ID affirms that design is the key cause of complex biological information. The implementation of design can well be realized through common descent, that is through implementation of new information in existing biological beings. That can be done gradually or less gradually. All these are modalities of the implementation of information, and not causes of the information itself. ID theory is about causes.

 

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http://www.space.com/19282-einstein-cosmological-constant-dark-energy.html​

 

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11] Darwinian evolution is a Vastly More “Simple” Argument than Intelligent Design
This argument usually goes with passionate invocations of Occam’s Razor. Well, echoing Einstein, the answer is very easy: nothing is really simple, if it does not work.

Occam’s Razor is certainly not intended to promote false – thus, simplistic — theories in the name of their supposed “simplicity.” If Darwinian Evolution and ID both explained well what we know about complex biological information, then we could argue about which is the simplest theory. But that’s not the case. One of the most important results of ID theory is that it effectively falsifies Darwinian theory.

We should prefer a working theory to a falsified one, without arguing about “simplicity”.

Moreover, ID and Darwinian evolution are so different that it is really meaningless to compare their “simplicity.” According to Darwinists, ID is “not simple” because it postulates a designer. According to IDists, Darwinian Evolution is “not simple” because it tries and fails to explain complex biological information — which has all the key properties of known designed things — through complicated, ad hoc and artificial assumptions and question-begging rules, just to avoid the “simple” (and even, “natural’) explanation of a designer.

Such discussions are really pointless, more philosophy than science. The only important scientific point is: which theory gives the empirically well-supported, “best explanation”?

 

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Apatheism

 

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12] Macro-evolution is nothing but lots and lots of “micro-evolution”!
Such a point of view is simply untenable, and it denotes a complete misunderstanding of the nature of function. Macroevolution, in all its possible meanings, implies the emergence of new complex functions. A function is not the simplistic sum of a great number of “elementary” sub-functions: sub-functions have to be interfaced and coherently integrated to give a smoothly performing whole. In the same way, macroevolution is not the mere sum of elementary microevolutionary events.

A computer program, for instance, is not the sum of simple instructions. Even if it is composed ultimately of simple instructions, the information-processing capacity of the software depends on the special, complex order of those instructions. You will never obtain a complex computer program by randomly assembling elementary instructions or modules of such instructions.

In the same way, macroevolution cannot be a linear, simple or random accumulation of microevolutionary steps.

Microevolution, in all its known examples (antibiotic resistance, and similar) is made of simple variations, which are selectable for the immediate advantage connected to them. But a new functional protein cannot be built by simple selectable variations, no more than a poem can be created by random variations of single letters, or a software written by a sequence of elementary (bit-like) random variations, each of them improving the “function” of the
software.

Function simply does not work that way. Function derives from higher levels of order and connection, which cannot emerge from a random accumulation of micro-variations. As the complexity (number of bits) of the functional sequence increases, the search space increases exponentially, rapidly denying any chance of random exploration of the space itself.

 

[blackzeus]

13] Real Scientists Do Not Use Terms Like Microevolution or Macroevolution
The best answer to this claim, which is little more than an urban legend, is to cite relevant cases. First, textbooks:

Campbell’s Biology (4th Ed.) states: “macroevolution: Evolutionary change on a grand scale, encompassing the origin of novel designs, evolutionary trends, adaptive radiation, and mass extinction.” [By contrast, this book defines “microevolution as “a change in the gene pool of a population over a succession of generations”]

Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology, in the edition used by a senior member at UD for an upper division College course, states, “In Chapters 23 through 25, we will analyze the principles of MACROEVOLUTION, that is, the origin and diversification of higher taxa.” (pg. 447, emphasis in original). [Futuyma contrasts “microevolution” -- “slight, short-term evolutionary changes within species.”]

In his 1989 McGraw Hill textbook, Macroevolutionary Dynamics, Niles Eldredge admits that “[m]ost families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.” (pg. 22.) In Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (Steven M. Stanley, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 version), we read that, “[t]he known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.” (pg. 39)

The scientific journal literature also uses the terms “macroevolution” or “microevolution.”

In 1980, Roger Lewin reported in Science on a major meeting at the University of Chicago that sought to reconcile biologists’ understandings of evolution with the findings of paleontology:

“The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” (Roger Lewin, “Evolutionary Theory Under Fire,” Science, Vol. 210:883-887, Nov. 1980.)

Two years earlier, Robert E. Ricklefs had written in an article in Science entitled “Paleontologists confronting macroevolution,” contending:

“The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. … apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.” (Science, Vol. 199:58-60, Jan. 6, 1978.)

 

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Apatheism

Theological Noncognitivism​

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

I consider myself to believe in Intelligent Design to a degree but I think a lot of the specific people and labels involved in terms of deities and their role in the development of the Universe is largely story-telling and fables.

And, actually, Logic/Algorithms play a sizable role in my belief system in terms of the intricate order of the Universe. Although I waver a bit from time to time on this..I also think that randomness/chaos can also be seen as a part of the design just as much as it can be seen as proof of the alternative.

 

[blackzeus]

14] Real Scientists Do Not Use Terms Like “Darwinism.” The word “Darwinism” is a derogatory term used by creationists, intelligent design supporters, and other opponents of evolutionary theory that has no real meaning except as a rhetorical device to discredit evolutionary biologists.
Design thinkers sometimes use the term “Darwinism” for the sake of brevity, but we are obviously aware that it is not the original nineteenth century historical version of Darwin’s thought which is at stake here.

Nor is the suggested appeal to “no true scientist” appropriate. As the New World Encyclopedia article on “Darwinism” remarks:

Darwinism and other -isms

It is felt by some that the term “Darwinism” is sometimes used by creationists as a somewhat derogatory term for “evolutionary biology,” in that casting of evolution as an “ism”—a doctrine or belief—strengthens calls for “equal time” for other beliefs, such as creationism or intelligent design. However, top evolutionary scientists, such as Gould and Mayr, have used the term repeatedly, without any derogatory connotations. [NWE, art. "Darwinism," Oct. 23, 2005, acc. Nov. 11, 2010.]

We see here a now very familiar, unfortunate rhetorical tactic. Whenever a term wanders out of the world of journals and textbooks into popular usage, and is picked up by critics of evolutionary materialism, proponents of Darwinism tend to deride those who use it, on the claim that such terms are not used by “true scientists.”

If “no true Scotsman” is a fallacy, so too is “no true scientist.” And, all the moreso because any number of Design thinkers, old and young earth creationists, as well as other critics of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (aka “[Neo-]Darwinism”) more generally, do have relevant, earned academic qualifications and credentials. The real issue is the balance of the case on the merits, not who uses what terms.

The main object of ID criticism of “Darwinism” is usually classical neo-Darwinism, aka “the modern synthesis,” which tries to explain biological information in the main in terms of the dynamic:

RV + NS –> DWM


(Random [or, "chance"] genetic Variation plus Natural Selection acting together yield descent with modification. This has been observed at micro-level, and has been extrapolated — without direct observational support — to the macro-level of body-plans. Unfortunately, on the strength of the former, the latter is too often presented as an empirical “fact,” often using the comparison that it is as certain as gravity and the orbiting of planets around the sun. The proper comparison, though, is not the observed orbiting of planets or falling of unsupported apples, but he far more speculative and tentative models of Solar System origins.)

ID proponents acknowledge that Darwinian mechanisms operate within a limited scope (changes in beak sizes among finches as a result of environmental pressures; development of resistance to antibiotics by certain bacteria). But they dispute that the mechanism responsible for these micro-evolutionary changes is also responsible for macro-evolutionary changes. In other words, ID proponents agree that Darwinian processes can change the size of finch beaks across generations, but they dispute that those processes are solely responsible for the existence of finches, or birds or dinosaurs, or land-animals in the first place.

At the macro-evolutionary level, ID proponents point out that Darwinism is too often rooted in an evolutionary materialist metaphysical presupposition imposed on science and posing as a scientific theory; as Richard Lewontin notoriously admitted in his infamous 1997 NYRB article, “Billions and Billions of Demons”:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Grounded in materialistic ideology, such Darwinism holds that purposeless, mindless, physical mechanisms, manifested as small genetic changes, can drive the evolutionary process to produce all observed complexity and biodiversity on earth. As such, it interprets all evidence in light of its own materialistic ideology and rules out, in principle — indeed “a priori,” any possibility that any part of the evolutionary process could have been designed.

Like the mythical bandit Procrustes, who reshaped the bodies of his unfortunate visitors to fit his iron bed, Darwinism reshapes biological evidence to fit its iron clad world view.

Design thinkers are also perfectly aware that many new forms of evolutionary thought exist, but unfortunately they are typically warped by the same a prioris.

The same NWE article on Darwinism is therefore correct to further observe:

There are some scientists who feel that the importance accorded to genes in natural selection may be overstated. According to Jonathan Wells [NB: a design thinker and critic of Darwinism], genetic expression in developing embryos is impacted by morphology as well, such as membranes and cytoskeletal structure. DNA is seen as providing the means for coding of the proteins, but not necessarily the development of the embryo, the instructions of which must reside elsewhere. It is possible that the importance of sexual reproduction and genetic recombination in introducing variability also may be understated.
UD’s resident Darwinist and critic, the respected Allen MacNeill, adds that in addition to the classic Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1920′s – 40′s, modern evolutionary thought embraces:

separate but related set of interconnected theories explaining the origin and modification of the phenotypic characteristics of living organisms, consisting (at a bare minimum) of the mechanisms of natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, and neutral molecular evolution in deep geological time, grounded (at least in part) in theoretical mathematical models of population genetics, depending on multiple sources of heritable phenotypic variation, and supported by inference from multiple sources of empirical evidence, including field and laboratory research in the fields of biochemistry, cell biology, comparative physiology, developmental biology, ecology, ethology, genetics, neurobiology, and physiological ecology. [Comment,"Darwinism" UD discussion thread, 11/10/2010, 10:51 pm.]

It is important to understand, however, that while ID arguments are often targeted to classical neo-Darwinism, they are perfectly valid for all forms of explanatory theories of biological information which “a priori” do not admit the possible intervention of a design process.

In other words, according to ID theory, no observed unintelligent causal mechanism ever proposed for the generation of information — whether based on chance, necessity, a combination of the two, or any other blindly mechanical form of “cause” — is credibly capable of generating the CSI in biological information on the scope of our observed universe; which is often estimated to comprise about 10^80 atoms and to have existed for some 13.7 billions of years.

(This, of course, can in principle be easily empirically falsified by simply producing a case where on reliable observation, such forces of undirected chance plus necessity have credibly generated CSI. But, while there are literally billions of cases of intelligent causation of such CSI [think: Internet], there are notoriously, no credible cases of chance and necessity alone generating CSI. For instance, Genetic algorithms are intelligently designed, and use constrained random walk searches within islands of function; the problem for evolutionary theory is to get to such islands of function in the vast sea of non-functional but chemically possible DNA and amino acid chain molecules, within the material and temporal resources of the Earth, much less the observed cosmos. The deep isolation of such islands of function leads to the confident stance by design thinkers on the matter. For, the only observed and probabilistically plausible solution to the coded, functionally specific information generation problem is intelligently directed configuration; aka, design.)

One of the results of such heterogeneity of contemporary evolutionary thought has been that ID is often accused of dealing with one form and not with another, be it classical Neo-Darwinism or the most recent examples of what we may call: Neo-Neo-Darwinism.

The truth is much simpler: as a causal theory about the origin of biological information, ID is both a criticism and an alternative to all theories which try to explain biological information by purelyunguided mechanisms.

In the final sense, any list of “engines of variation” that “permits” only unguided mechanisms exclude design, and is thus based, at the basic causal level, on necessity or chance or some mixture of the two. This is bias, not proper science, as, before the facts can speak, it excludes another known “engine of variation” for contingent objects: design. So, we may directly see that, the counter-arguments and alternatives provided by the ID approach apply equally to classical Neo-Darwinian theory and all of these alternatives.

The reason why ID criticism is usually more specifically directed to classical Neo-Darwinism is that, in the end, RV + NS remains the most widely used, most detailed causal model of unguided evolution. It is difficult to analyze in detail alternative models which have never been detailed to the point that they can be really critically evaluated, and so the design theory commentary on these newer models often remains at a very generic level. But, we must underscore: ID arguments are equally valid for all cases: all forms of “random variation” are just that: random, and so must obey the laws of statistics, and all forms of “necessity” – including Natural Selection (as it is usually presented) – must be expressed in a credible and consistent logico-mathematical model.

Unless and until new causal principles are discovered, it has been immemorial since the days of Plato in his The Laws, Book X, that design is the only known alternative/complement to chance and necessity. And so, the only truly valid scientific approach is one that accepts at the outset the possibility of design as well as chance and necessity, and then seeks reliable signs that can differentiate the role played by each for the key aspects of life-forms.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

@blackzeus let's chill a bit on the huge article posting so we can get some more discussion in here.

 

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16] ID is really an attempt at overthrowing the well established principles of science. It is a theory which denies the history itself of modern rational thought and of our scientific tradition.
This objection completely misreads the debate. For centuries, design thinking defined the scientific landscape and held fast to the proposition that a transcendent creator fashioned the universe for discovery. That is the “old” idea that inspired many great scientists from the days of Newton to those of Einstein. By contrast, it was the “enlightenment” approach to philosophy followed by the Darwinian approach to science that completely reshaped our notions about the physical world. Design thinking remains consistent, but evolutionary thinking keeps finding new ways to explain away design and shrug it off as an “illusion.”

In that sense, the questioner has it backwards. In fact, it is ID that is preserving an old idea and arguing against a new idea, namely the proposition that design is an “illusion.” ID is simply challenging a challenge, asking Darwinists to provide evidence that supports that new idea. So far, they have only offered evidence for that which we already knew, namely that features in living organisms change over time. By contrast, they have offered no decisive evidence – question-begging imposed “rules” don’t count — for their extraordinary claim that law and chance alone can explain the apparent design of life.

It seems fair, then, to say that all too many recent developments in evolutionary theory are little more than “damage control” initiatives calculated to cover up failed naturalistic explanations of the past. In the last 150 years, materialists have offered us, in succession, Darwin ’s General Theory, Modern Evolutionary Theory, Punctuated Equilibrium, structuralism, and self organization. Currently, they are looking for yet another paradigm. So, while Darwinists are not unified over which unintelligent mechanism drives macro-evolution, they all agree that some such mechanism MUST exist. That is why it is fair to call them Darwinists; they are united in their faith commitment. That they can find little evidence to support their faith commitment does not seem to be a problem for them. In fact, some of the more ardent Darwinists, driven by zeal, purposely confuse the debate by mischaracterizing ID as an “anti-evolution” movement. that this charge is false does not seem to inhibit them in the least. For the record, Some ID advocates do accept both micro and macro evolution, while others accept only micro evolution. What they all agree on is this: there is no evidence to support Darwinists’ key claims that (i) mindless mechanistic forces drive macro evolution and (ii) all apparent design in natural objects is an “illusion.”

The problem is less about ID vs. evolution and more about the mistaken – or sometimes, outright dishonest – way that too many Darwinists frame the issue.

 

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17] Methodological naturalism is the rule of science
Methodological naturalism is simply a quite recently imposed “rule” that (a) defines science as a search for natural causes of observed phenomena AND (b) forbids the researcher to consider any other explanation, regardless of what the evidence may indicate. In keeping with that principle, it begs the question and roundly declares that (c) any research that finds evidence of design in nature is invalid and that (d) any methods employed toward that end are non-scientific. For instance, in a pamphlet published in 2008, the US National Academy of Sciences declared:

In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. [Science, Evolution and Creationism, p. 10. Emphases added.]

The resort to loaded language should cue us that there is more than mere objective science going on here!

A second clue is a basic fact: the very NAS scientists themselves provide instances of a different alternative to forces tracing to chance and/or blind mechanical necessity. For, they are intelligent, creative agents who act into the empirical world in ways that leave empirically detectable and testable traces. Moreover, the claim or assumption that all such intelligences “must” in the end trace to chance and/or necessity acting within a materialistic cosmos is a debatable philosophical view on the remote and unobserved past history of our cosmos. It is not at all an established scientific “fact” on the level of the direct, repeatable observations that have led us to the conclusion that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun.

In short, the NAS would have been better advised to study the contrast: natural vs artificial (or, intelligent) causes, than to issue loaded language over natural vs supernatural ones

Notwithstanding, many Darwinist members of the guild of scholars have instituted or supported the question-begging rule of “methodological naturalism,” ever since the 1980’s. So, if an ID scientist finds and tries to explain functionally specified complex information in a DNA molecule in light of its only known cause: intelligence, supporters of methodological naturalism will throw the evidence out or insist that it be re-interpreted as the product of processes tracing to chance and/or necessity; regardless of how implausible or improbable the explanations may be. Further, if the ID scientist dares to challenge this politically correct rule, he will then be disfranchised from the scientific community and all his work will be discredited and dismissed.

Obviously, this is grossly unfair censorship.

Worse, it is massively destructive to the historic and proper role of science as an unfettered (but intellectually and ethically responsible) search for the truth about our world in light of the evidence of observation and experience.

 

[blackzeus]

18] Methodological naturalism is a centuries-old, traditional rule for science
In an attempt to rationalize the recently imposed “rule” of methodological naturalism, some Darwinist academics have resorted to rewriting history. As the ‘revised” story goes, Newton and other greats of the founding era of Modern Science subscribed to the arbitrary standard of ruling out design in principle. Thus, one gathers, ID cannot be science because it violates the “traditional” and “well-established” criteria for science.

However, as anyone familiar with the real history of science knows – e.g. cf. Newton’s General Scholiumto his great scientific work, Principia — this proposition is at best a gross and irresponsible error, or even an outright deception. For, most scientists of the founding era were arguing on behalf of the proposition that God, as a super-rational being, does not act frivolously, unpredictably, and without purpose. For such men, and for their time, searching for “natural causes” was a testimony to the belief that the Christian God, unlike anthropomorphized Greek gods, did not throw capricious temper tantrums and toss lightning bolts out of the sky. In other words, the issue was not natural causes vs. design; (they were all design thinkers) it was orderly and intelligible natural processes vs. chaos.

That directly contradicts Lewontin’s dismissive assertion that “[t]o appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” Indeed, the theologians and philosophers will remind us that for miracles to stand out as sign-posts of more than the ordinary being at work, they require that nature as a whole works in an orderly, intelligible and predictable way.

So, for the founders of Modern Science, science (as a delimited field of study within a wider domain, i.e., “natural philosophy” and “natural history”) was primarily about discovering the underlying principles, forces and circumstances that drive observed natural phenomena. But, as Newton so aptly illustrates, it was simply not in their minds to insist dogmatically that only “natural” causes — i.e. blind mechanical necessity and even more blind chance – exist or may be resorted to in accounting for the nature and functions of our world. They made a provisional judgment based on the best information available, but they would never have dared to presume that they knew enough to close off all other options.

Further, in their estimation, the foundational scientists were “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Obviously, they could hardly have believed in Methodological Naturalism while, at the same time, believing that God, as Creator, purposely left clues about his handiwork so that his creatures could interpret them as evidence of his existence and plan for the orderly conduct of the world that are also accessible to us to use for our betterment. Even apart from their religious inspiration, they understood that only the individual scientist knows what he is researching and why, so it is s/he who must in the first instance decide which methods are reasonable, responsible, and appropriate for the task

Indeed, it was their love of truth and the disinterested search for it that made them great. They were always ready to challenge rigid conventions and seek new answers. More importantly, they were wise enough to know that someone new could come along and make their ideas seem old, just as they had made the ideas of their predecessors seem old.

Now, in our day, a new idea has indeed come along, and it is embodied in the information found in a DNA molecule. It is beyond ridiculous, then, to suggest that men like Francis Bacon, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Faraday, Maxwell or Lord Kelvin — all of whom were in part motivated by religion and whose religion gave meaning to their science — would ignore or dismiss such evidence of design because of its possible religious implications.

 

[blackzeus]

19] Science does not address the “Supernatural”

As a matter of brute fact, Science can address anything it pleases, and has already weighed in on several events that have been associated with the supernatural.

Physicists have speculated about the weight of the stone at the time of Christ’s resurrection and the likelihood that Roman guards could have lifted it. Medical doctors have aided the Catholic Church in its canonization process by determining whether or not a medical miracle can be attributed to the special intervention of a saint. Statisticians have calculated the improbability that 459 Old Testament prophecies about Jesus Christ would become realized as historical events as reported in the New Testament. More famously, chemists have calculated the possible age of the shroud of Turin. Indeed, some would say that astronomers “addressed” a supernatural creative event when they found evidence for the “big bang.

So, when Darwinist ideologues say that “science does not address the supernatural, what they really mean is that science should not be PERMITTED to address the supernatural, (or anything that could remotely be associated with it). This attitude of mind goes by the name of “methodological naturalism.” It is best expressed by Lewontin, who writes,

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories [in
evolutionary biology] because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material causes, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”
The lesson here should be clear. We should not put science into a politically-correct, materialistic straight-jacket.

 

[blackzeus]

20] ID scientists are participating in a tautological exercise. They don’t really draw an inference to design; they assume a design in advance and then call it an inference
A tautology (in the bad sense) consists of smuggling the conclusion of an argument into the assumption; it uninformatively says the same thing twice in different words: a bachelor is an unmarried male.

It is as a rule very easy to discern when this is happening. If, for example, one begins by assuming that everything in nature must have been designed, then one will “find” design in nature. Equally, if one assumes there is and can be no design in nature – as say Lewontin did – then indeed one will never accept evidence (regardless of its actual strength) that points to such design. In either case, the conclusion is plainly being question-beggingly embedded in the hypothesis, and the error is not that hard to spot.

However, while question-begging tautologies do indeed constitute bad reasoning, self-evident first principles – things that once we understand them clearly in light of our experience of the world as intelligent and rational creatures, we see MUST be so — define the necessary conditions for reason itself. But, many Darwinists, on hearing that science requires such metaphysical foundations (they generally don’t know that), begin by denying the fact and end by mistakenly concluding that those foundational assumptions must be tautologies.

The resulting confused debates aptly (and often entertainingly) illustrate the underlying point: we inescapably must reason FROM first principles; we cannot reason our way TO – i.e. “prove” — them.

If, on the other hand, a scientist begins with the observation that certain familiar patterns are present in a DNA molecule, s/he can, without begging questions, use the methods of inference to best current explanation to draw inferences about design. Especially since, in every case where we independently know the cause of such precise and complex functional patterns — for instance, this paragraph — they come from intelligence.