ericmurphy
Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Something to think about, Dave.
Let's suppose, for the moment, that life (and, presumably, the rest of the universe) is the way it is because "God Did It." Well, presumably God (or whatever else you wish to call an "intelligent designer") used some sort of methodology, or technique, or praxis, for everything he did. The only other way He could have accomplished the creation of the universe, even in principle, is by basically "willing it into existence" (maybe just by thinking about it really hard?).
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that science isn't a complete waste of time (and, based on its explicative power over the past 500 years, I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue otherwise), then we can exclude "willing it into existence" as a possibility worth studying (at least, for the foreseeable future). Otherwise, there is no explanation, even in principle, for how the universe got to be the way it is, science is a complete waste of time, and scientists should take up needlepoint.
So, even if you assume that God (or, okay, if you want to be pedantic about it, an "intelligent designer"), created life, the universe, and everything through some sort of methodology, a scientist's task (whether that scientist believes in Darwinian Evolution or Intelligent Design) becomes trying to discover a working model of that methodology. The task remains exactly the same whether the science in question is Darwinian Evolution, or Intelligent Design. And since Darwinian Evolution already has a working theory as to how that methodology works, and Intelligent Design doesn't, the best you can say about Intelligent Design is that it's at least 140 years behind Darwinian Evolution.
If you assume, a priori, that life was not designed—that it evolved as a result of unguided and unpredictable events—then you can inquire into the natural processes by which life originated and subsequently evolved. If, on the other hand, you assume that a) life was "designed," and also b) that the putative designer's methods are at least in principle amenable to scientific inquiry, your job is no easier than the job of an evolutionary biologist who discounts the possibility of design. You've still got to determine the methods by which life's designer managed to implement its designs, which is no different from determining the methods unguided happenstance would use to accomplish the same thing. In essence, you're doing exactly the same thing that scientists who discount the possibility of design are doing, except you don't have even the skeleton of a working hypothesis as to how your putative "designer" implements his (or its) designs. An appeal to intelligent design has accomplished nothing, explained nothing, and not gotten us any closer to figuring out how life evolved on earth. Therefore, Intelligent Design is not a useful avenue for scientific inquiry, or certainly is no more useful than Darwinian Evolution that relies on unguided happenstance for evolution.
And, if you assume a priori an intelligent designer whose methods are in principle unknowable, the inquiry ends. If God designed it, and God's methods are unknowable, then what else is there to say about it? Again, this assumption is not a useful avenue for scientific inquiry. If you maintain that an intelligent designer's methods are not the proper subject of scientific inquiry, then you're not really talking about science, are you? What you're talking about is sounding increasingly less like science and more like religion.
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2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
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