Intelligent Design

Principles of evolution Evolution: Species undergo genetic change over time. Gradualism: This takes many generations Speciation: Ancestral lines can split into different species. Common ancestry: We can always look back in time and find descendents joining at their ancestors. Natural selection: Well-suited individuals survive to produce more offspring. Processes other than natural selection can produce evolutionary change.

Leading Scientists Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, The Edge of Evolution William Dembski, The Design Inference, Intelligent Design, No Free Lunch

Behe’s Mousetrap

Mathematism

The Explanatory Filter An event can have only one of three possible causes: Law (regularity) Chance (accident) Design If we can eliminate the first two, we have unambiguously identified design.

Step #1 If the event has a high probability of being due to law, reject it.

Step #2 If the probability of the event being due to chance is intermediate, reject the event as being at least potentially due to chance.

Step #3 There must be a small probability of the event being due to chance. It must posses detachability. Conditional independence Tractability Delimitation If the event passes all tests it must be due to design.

Problems Every event must have an objective probability. Law, chance, and design are assumed to be independent and disjoint. It’s easy to come up with “false positives.”

Politics – The Discovery Institute Regarding the scientific world view – “This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.” “If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, out strategy is intended to function as a wedge that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points.”

The Battle of Gettysburg? Kitzmiller v. Dover, December 14, 2004