Intelligent design
From ArticleWorld
According to some scientists, the proponents of intelligent design are trying to provide a scientific version of creationism to explain the origin of species. While its proponents (largely members of the Discovery Institute) believe that there is an intelligent cause behind the origin of life, the scientific community views it as pseudoscience. They support their stand by stating that there is no experimental proof for Intelligent Design. The supporters of the intelligent Design theory lost out when the Federal Court ruled that intelligent design is infact religious in nature.
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ID in brief
William Dembski, one of the strongest supporters of Intelligent Design, questions the probability of another planet like earth coming into existence without an intelligent cause behind it. They do not subscribe to the view of natural selection and the origin of life according to them can only be explained by an intelligent cause. According to them, the evidence for such a cause comes from what they refer to as “signs of intelligence” i.e.
- physical properties
- irreducible complexity
- Information mechanisms and finally,
- Specified complexity.
The scientific community demands a direct evidence , while the proponents of the Design say that there evidence of the existence of may not be directly observable, but that does not prove its absence.(“Lack of evidence is not evidence of absence of evidence: we just don’t know how to look for it and where! “) ==Origins of the concept and the term ==From Pre-Socratic times, the existence of complex nature of living things has been attributed to a supreme force/supreme designer, also known as a teleological argument for the existence of God. The irony is that in a bid to understand the mind of God, biologists set about to collect fossils , study different life forms , which eventually let to Darwin’s theory about the origin of species. The first documented use of this phrase was inadvertent: in 1847 in Scientific American by George Allman. The same phrase was subsequently used in 1868 and 1873. Ferdinand Canning coined this phrase again in 1903 in book coauthored with Scott Schiller.
Key Concepts of ID
As mentioned before the key concepts are :
Irreducible complexity
In essence this concept conveys that the parts of a complex system ,are indispensable and the system ceases to function when the parts are removed. According to the critics of this concepts, the ID supporters are not providing for the possibility that these parts may have evolved independently, and then might have come together to form the complex system in question. ==Specified complexity== A mathematician and philosopher, William Dembsky, held that directed complexity can arise only by the intervention of Intelligent Design. His critics counter that he does not take into account the permutations and combinations of changes that could have accumulated and led to the complexity of living organisms.(After all nature’s lab is the biggest and it has millions to years to develop and zillions of creature’s DNA to work with!)
A Fine-tuned universe
According to the proponents of ID, the universe has several features today which are key to its present state. They argue that had these features been even slightly different, we would not be where we are today. But mathematicians and physicists, based on their calculations state that another planet like earth exists in all probability.