Is Intelligent Design Dead? (RJS)

There is an interesting column by Paul Wallace on the Huffington Post: Intelligent Design is Dead: A Christian Perspective.

Wallace quotes another blogger, Jason Rosenhouse:

In the nineties and early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after another… it was [then] possible to wonder seriously if ID was a serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out on its own. That verdict is now in. ID is dead.

And then continues:

Rosenhouse is right. ID has no future. His arguments — that over the last few years ID proponents have given us nothing new, that it is mired in the past, that it has merely been recycling its arguments — are all convincing. He rightly points out the scientific weaknesses of ID while simultaneously shining a light on the strengths and recent successes of evolution.

In sum, Rosenhouse does an admirable job dismantling ID from a scientific point of view. But there are other perspectives from which the folly of ID is evident. One of them takes us back to a Christian astronomer who worked at the dawn of the scientific revolution.

Read the rest in Wallace’s post.

Wallace goes on to point out that Johannes Kepler used as his axiom: The universe has been designed; therefore it must be comprehensible. In contrast the axiom of Intelligent Design is, Wallace suggests: The universe is incomprehensible; therefore it must have been designed. This puts a stop to scientific investigation.

I am not sure Wallace has quite the right sense of the axiom of Intelligent Design. Rather it seems that the axiom is: The universe is designed, therefore it must be incomprehensible, … as though God, if he exists, must as a matter of course have left incontrovertible scientific evidence of his involvement for us to find.

I agree with Kepler and with Wallace – from a point of view of faith it makes more sense to say: the universe has been designed, therefore it is comprehensible. And we can take this a step further: the universe, in its comprehensible design, points to the creator.

Comments?

Is Intelligent Design Dead?

If not, why not?

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