What evidence exists for the intelligent design theory (creationism)?

Question

I am wondering what evidence actually exists for the theory of intelligent design or creationism depending on what you call it.

I am pretty set on believing evolution as the correct theory but as an open-minded person would like to know if there is any really credible evidence supporting intelligent design.

Note: I put this question into the Philosophy section because it seems the best fit for a part religious, part scientific question.

Answer 1

So many people these days are confusing biblical creationism with intelligent design. "Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence" (Dr. William Dembski). That's it; it says nothing of who the creator is and how he/she/it/they did it. Intelligent Design encompasses every "creation" story, even aliens seeding life on this planet.

As Dr. Stephen Meyer has said, “I think that the key thing that many folks in the media and many people in the general public miss, and I think this has been a somewhat unhelpful aspect of the debate, is that they have confused the idea of evidence with the idea of implication. The evidence for design is as I said this nanotechnology that we’re finding in the cell, this information embedded in DNA, for example, but the implication of the discussion does raise larger philosophical issues – and that’s true for Darwinian evolution as much as it is for its now chief competitor, the theory of intelligent design. Richard Dawkins has said that Darwinism has made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Is there any evidence? Reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, and data fraud analysis. These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems.

As Dr. Stephen Meyer said (when being interviewed by Nightline), “From the evidence of the information that’s embedded in DNA, from the evidence of the nanotechnology in the cell, we think you can infer that an intelligence played a role. In fact, there are sophisticated statistical methods of design detection that allow scientists to distinguish the effects of an intelligent cause from an undirected natural process. When you apply those statistical measures and criteria to the analysis of the cell, they indicate that the cell was designed by an intelligence.”

The four main areas the ID movement focuses on: Information Theory, Irreducible Complexity, The Anthropic Principle, and The Design Inference.

For those who put so much faith in peer-review, check this out: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2640&program=CSC%20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science

And here is a brief overview of the scientific case for ID: http://www.arn.org/docs/positivecasefordesign.pdf

Answer 2

The same evidence that exists for the theory of the fat man in the red suit who drags a bag of toys down your chimney: stories told by people, which are then collectively reinforced.
Seriously, as to your question, read Darwin. Darwin left open the possibility of a creator...likely more of a First Cause than a mystical force involved in our daily lives, thus evidence for "intelligent design" (a code word for Creationism, ie a creator god) would be buried in pre-history and might never be uncovered.

Answer 3

there's no "evidence", and "intelligent design" isn't an actual "theory."

a scientific theory is a very specific thing and it needs to satisfy certain criteria: it needs to be logical (following the rules of scientific logic), it needs to be testable, and it needs to be capable of predicting future phenomena of its kind.

the theory of gravity is a scientific theory, creationism is not.

this is not to say that creationism is WRONG. merely that it isn't scientific. science requires an empirical process--requires evidence and a process that interacts with the evidence. creationism, on the other hand, requires only faith.

therefore, creationism is a product of religion, not science. these are two branches of human understanding: the one based on empiricism (things that can be experienced directly with the senses and the things that follow logically from that experience), and the other based on faith (things that cannot be sensed with the physical senses and cannot be proven).

neither one, science or religion, is better than the other. they are for different purposes, just as a toothbrush and a frying pan are for different purposes.

the confusion comes because fundamentalist christians don't want their followers to believe in evolution. they find (somehow) that evolution threatens people's faith. this is bullshit, since plenty of scientists are christians, but fundamentalists aren't famous for their openmindedness.

their solution to this "problem" is to create a fake scientific theory, one that doesn't really satisfy the requirements of science, to compete with evolution. they can get away with this because our educational system in america has gotten so bad in the past decade or two, that most adult americans don't really understand what the requirements of science are, and so can be fooled into thinking that "intelligent design" is actual science.

it's not science, it's religion.

Answer 4

The main piece of evidence they use is the existence of irreducibly complex biological systems, such as eyes or flagellar motors.

However, this is has been fairly disputed in court since there are indeed examples of reduced complexity for all their examples. In the case of the Dover, Pennsylvania school board trial, ID was found not to be a science, thus there is no scientific evidence, per se for it. In that case, ID was found to be synonymous with creationism.

Below is a Nova special from PBS that you can watch online (in segments) all about this trial and the specifics of each side's case, as well as the ruling, supplemental info, and more.

Answer 5

This takes me back to 42 years approximately when I was a student of a high school. I think it is Moral Science. A lesson states: If you see anything on a table, you won't think that it came itself. Somebody or someone must have placed it on the table. So also in the vast universe you see several objects including this world. Do you think it could have come itself? What was God's life before He create all these universe, human beings and other creatures? No one can find unless God tells. Jobless God did not want to stay idle for a long time. He had invented and created many things. He had created the system of spirits to manage all that he had created. He repaired by some means whenever he heard that something wrong going on. Some times I really wonder whether God can understand all the languages. I feel that languages were created by spirits. When we pray God or talk about God, only these spirits must translate to God, I think.

Answer 6

Here is the biggest problem with Intelligent Design: it can't be falsified. You see something that looks well designed and you say it supports your argument. You see something that doesn't seem to make sense (like the useless Plantaris muscle in humans, for example) and you say "Well, God must have wanted it that way for some reason, we just don't know what it is". That means your theory can NEVER be wrong, and that's just not scientific.

Answer 7

There is no actual evidence. The illusion of evidence is based on the false logic of assuming that absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence. For example, if one cannot provide evidence for a detailed causal chain of events that constitutes a natural explanation for the origin of a given phenomenon, then ID takes that as evidence that the chain of events is not natural - that is, artificial or supernatural. One problem with this is that such "evidence" increases the *less* we know. That means the "evidence" for ID was stronger in the 1700's than it is now, based on this logic, because fewer things could be explained in terms of natural processes then. Increasing actual evidence logically requires one's knowledge to increase, not decrease.

Another problem is that ID cannot be disproven assuming such a standard of evidence. Since we will never be able to explain *everything*, there will always be "evidence" of ID out there waiting to be "discovered" (the Discover Institute is named after this never ending process). As one thing after another is explained in natural terms, the ID'er will simply move on to the next unexplained thing as "evidence" of ID. So far, they've gone from the missing link, to the human eye, to the bacterium flagellum, and now they're at the human immune system, where their demand for an explanation is at the biochemical level.

Answer 8

I do not see why intelligent design and evolution can not go hand in hand. A way that one might argue against the fact that evolution is the only reason is by bringing up the fact that it is hard to imagine that life is on earth due to chance. After all, think of the complex nature of our cells. Is it reasonable to think that the first cells (that started life on earth) just happened to form out of nowhere? Although it has been proven that amino acids can arrange under the right circumstances, it has never been proven that a cell could arrange all by itself, begging the question that if a cell can't for on its own, how did the first ones come about. Also consider the very nature of humans. Would you say that all you are is matter? Just like a rock? It seems to me that there is something that distinguishes a living thing from a nonliving thing. Think about it, we are composed of carbon, h20, etc, but we have the capacity for compassion and self reflection. What it comes down to is, if you think that cells could form on their own, develop into multicelled organisms and then somehow attain consciousness through the evolutionary process, then go ahead and believe only in evolution.

Answer 9

There isn't any, because it is provably impossible for there to be any. Without going into the details, one can see that if one interjects supernatural activity into a process, the process becomes totally unpredictable, as the supernatural phenomena do not (by definition!) follow any rules. Thus, no consequences of such a theory can be derived, so no evidence of such consequences can be found.

Answer 10

Lies that even most of the religious community feel embarrassed by. I've spoken with several Christian scientists who are absolutely ashamed of the 'Creation museum' in Kentucky. The debate of evolution vs creationism ended some time ago. Anything they parrot as evidence has been proven wrong from multiple angles yet they have no problem with outright lying to further their cause.