An excellent PDF report prepared by the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.
Here are the contents:
Introduction
Part 1: What Is Intelligent Design?
Part 2: What Is Evolution?
Part 3: What are the Scientific Problems with Neo-Darwinian Evolution?
Part 4: How Can Parents Influence Evolution-Education in Local Schools?
Part 5: What is Theistic Evolution?
Part 6: What Can Parents do to Support Intelligent Design?
Part 7: Basic Tips for Parents and Students
Part 8: Recommended Resources
First, there’s a definition of intelligent design: (the thing that people in the news media never define correctly!)
Intelligent design (“ID”) is a scientific theory which holds that some features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID theorists argue that design can be inferred by studying the informational properties of natural objects to determine if they bear the type of information that, in our experience, arises from an intelligent cause.
Proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution contend that the information in life arose via purposeless, blind, and unguided processes. ID proponents contend that the information in life arose via purposeful, intelligently guided processes. Both claims are scientifically testable using scientific methods employed by standard historical sciences. ID is based upon the claim that there are “telltale features of living systems and the universe which are best explained by an intelligent cause.”
Scientists investigating ID compare observations of how intelligent agents design things to observations of phenomena whose origin is unknown. Human intelligent agents provide a large dataset for studying the products of the action of intelligent agents. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski observes that “[t]he principal characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.” When “an intelligent agent acts, it chooses from a range of competing possibilities” to create some complex and specified event. Dembski calls ID “a theory of information” where “information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as as a proper object for scientific investigation.” ID seeks to find in nature the types of information which are known to be produced by intelligent agents, thus inferring a prior action of intelligence.
The type of information which indicates design is generally called “specified complexity” or “complex and specified information” (CSI). Dembski suggests that design can be detected when one finds a rare or highly unlikely event (making it complex) that conforms to an independently derived pattern (making it specified).
Intelligent design looks at features of nature, like cosmic fine-tuning and DNA, and infers an intelligent cause because of the nature of the effect. Information is best explained by an intelligence. Computer programs are best explained by an intelligence. Blog posts are best explained by an intelligence. Cross stitched art is best explained by an intelligence. Intelligence can create complex things that are composed of simple parts that are sequenced together in such a way that they have meaning and purpose that is independent of the properties of the components themselves.
Here’s a good video explaining intelligent design applied to biological information in proteins and DNA: (suitable for complete beginners)
For anyone who is looking for a good basic book on intelligent design, I recommend “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design” by Johnathan Wells. He holds a Ph.D in biology from the University of California at Berkeley. The best intermediate book on intelligent design is Stephen Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell“. He has a Ph.D in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University. The best advanced book is Michael Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution“. He has a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. For Christians looking to understand the relationship between science, evolution and monotheism, I recommend “God and Evolution” edited by Jay Richards. He has a Ph.D in philosophy and theology from Princeton University.
Personally, I fall into the “it’s all junk” end of the spectrum. If almost all of these sequences are not conserved by evolution, and we haven’t found a function for any of them yet, it’s hard to see how the “none of it’s junk” view can be maintained. There’s also an absence of support for the intervening view, again because of a lack of evidence for actual utility. The genomes of closely related species have revealed very few genes added from non-coding DNA, and all of the structural RNA we’ve found has very specific sequence requirements. The all-junk view, in contrast, is consistent with current data.
Got that? According to Darwinists, DNA is almost entirely junk – this is what is consistent with the view that creatures have evolved through a process of random mutation and selection. The estimates that I’ve seen from evolutionary biologists range from 95% to 99% junk. Now let’s compare the religion with the lab experiments and separate myth from fact.
Now let’s compare that with intelligent design theorist William Dembski’s view of “junk” DNA, from 1998:
Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already.
But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function… Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.
Now let’s look at the experimental evidence and see whose prediction was right.
Evolution News reports on a new peer-reviewed paper published in Nature, the top peer-reviewed science journal. (H/T ECM)
Excerpt:
A groundbreaking paper in Nature reports the results of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, which has detected evidence of function for the “vast majority” of the human genome. Titled “An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome,” the paper finds an “unprecedented number of functional elements,” where “a surprisingly large amount of the human genome” appears functional. Based upon current knowledge, the paper concludes that at least 80% of the human genome is now known to be functional:
The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project has systematically mapped regions of transcription, transcription factor association, chromatin structure and histone modification. These data enabled us to assign biochemical functions for 80% of the genome, in particular outside of the well-studied protein-coding regions. Many discovered candidate regulatory elements are physically associated with one another and with expressed genes, providing new insights into the mechanisms of gene regulation.
The $123-million effort involved more than 400 scientists and more than 1,600 experiments during five years of work. If presented graphically, the data generated so far would cover a poster 30 kilometers wide and 16 meters high, Birney has estimated.
This is still just a start — akin to “grainy images beamed back to Earth by the first satellite,” said Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which funded ENCODE. But already, it’s throwing up surprises.
Strikingly, the data overturn old ideas that the bulk of DNA in our cells is useless — albeit inoffensive — junk just carried along for the evolutionary ride. Back in 2003 when the human genome was published, scientists estimated that less than 2% of it carries instructions for making proteins, and many of them thought the rest didn’t do very much.
But the new analysis shows that more than 80% of the human genome is active in at least one biological process that the ENCODE team measured. Nearly every part of it could end up being active when the data are more complete.
Here’s the ultra-left-wing New York Times, confirming the statement I made earlier about the dogma of the Darwinians:
The discoveries were published on Wednesday in six papers in the journal Nature and in 24 papers in Genome Research and Genome Biology. In addition, The Journal of Biological Chemistry is publishing six review articles, and Science is publishing yet another article.
[…]The thought before the start of the project, said Thomas Gingeras, an Encode researcher from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was that only 5 to 10 percent of the DNA in a human being was actually being used.
The big surprise was not only that almost all of the DNA is used but also that a large proportion of it is gene switches. Before Encode, said Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, a University of Washington scientist who was part of the project, “if you had said half of the genome and probably more has instructions for turning genes on and off, I don’t think people would have believed you.”
It’s just another prediction of Darwinian orthodoxy falsified by experimental evidence published in the top scientific peer-reviewed journal. Will this cause Darwinians to revise their theory to fit the evidence? Not likely. Their motivations for clinging to naturalism, the religion that undergirds Darwinism, are entirely beyond correction by evidence.
I wonder what people like P.Z. Myers and Larry Moran do when their religion comes into conflict with scientific evidence from lab experiments? Do they bitterly cling to their mythology from the 19th century? Or do they adjust their worldview to be in line with the progress of science?
Let Richard Dawkins explain evolution and the role of evidence:
“My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.” — p. 287, Blind Watchmaker” (1986)
Or Richard Lewontin:
“Our willingness to accept [naturalistic] scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our own a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, not matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.” (Richard Lewontin in New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 28)
Junk DNA isn’t the only battle in the long war between atheism and scientific evidence. Naturalists fought the Big Bang tooth and nail, trying to save their eternal universe from the progress of science. Naturalists invented the now discredited oscillating model of the universe in order to “explain” the evidence for a cosmic beginning. Naturalists invented the unobservable, untestable multiverse to “explain” the cosmic fine-tuning. Aliens are posited in order to “explain” the origin of life. Precursor fossils are invented without evidence in order to “explain” the Cambrian era explosion in complexity. And so on.
Evidence doesn’t matter to people who are motivated by naturalistic faith. Like belief in a flat-Earth, the delusion of naturalism is not accountable to scientific evidence. They believe what they want to believe. It’s not up for debate. For some people like Richard Dawkins, a prior lifestyle commitment makes theism (and the moral law!) an impossibility a priori. But rational people know that believing something just so that your actions are “justified” doesn’t make what you believe true.
For the intelligent design take on junk DNA, check out this article. To see who was right about predicting whether “vestigial organs” like the appendix have function, check out this post. You can find more predictions that follow from intelligent design right here.
Michael Behe and Keith Fox debate evolution and intelligent design. (See below for link to MP3 file)
Details:
Michael Behe is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania and the founder of the modern Intelligent Design movement. His book “Darwin’s Black Box” ignited the controversy 14 years ago when it claimed that certain molecular machines and biological processes are “irreducibly complex” and cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution.
His new book “The Edge of Evolution” takes his conclusions further, arguing that the Darwinian processes of random mutation and natural selection are incapable of producing the variation and complexity we see in most of life.
So can we conclude that life was intelligently designed by a creator?
Keith Fox is Professor of biochemistry at the University of Southampton and chairman of Christians in Science. As a theistic evolutionist he believes that Evolution is the best explanation going for the complexity we see and that ID is a blind scientific alley and theologically unappealing to boot.
They debate whether micromachines in the cell such as the “bacterial flagellum” could have evolved by a Darwinian process of evolution. When inference to design is and isn’t acceptable in science. Whether random mutation can mathematically stack up to complex life, and whether God is reduced to a divine “tinkerer” by ID.
I get the impression that Fox learned everything he knows about ID by reading Darwinists.
People refuse to discuss ID because of personal philosophical assumptions
ID is like the Big Bang – it is based on evidence, but it has broad religious implications
Keith Fox:
ID is not Biblical creationism, but it isn’t science
Michael Behe:
ID is compatible with common descent
ID is only opposed to unplanned, unguided evolution (Darwinism)
ID is not necessarily opposed to long periods of time
Behe’s first book – the bacterial flagellum
Keith Fox:
Here are a couple of papers that show how parts of the flagellum evolved
They are possible pathways
Michael Behe
No, those are studies that show that there are similarities between bacterial flagella in multiple organisms
Similarities of proteins between different organisms do not necessarily imply a developmental pathway
The problem of having the instructions to BUILD the flagellum still remains
Keith Fox:
Maybe parts of the flagellum had other functions before they were used in the flagellum
Maybe you can use the parts of the flagellum for other purposes
Maybe, one can imagine, it’s possible that!
Michael Behe:
No, parts have to be modified and re-purposed in order to be used for other functions
Keith Fox:
But maybe the proteins can be used in other systems for other things
I re-purpose parts from of designed things to other purposes in my house when I do maintenance
Michael Behe
Uh, yeah – but aren’t you an intelligent designer? What does your home maintenance have to do with Darwinian evolution?
Is ID another God-of-the-gaps argument?
Michael Behe:
Well consider the Big Bang… there was a build-up of scientific evidence for that theory
Just because a theory has religious implications, doesn’t mean that it isn’t true
You really have to look at the specific evidence for a theory, and not decide in advance
Keith Fox: (I’m paraphrasing/inventing/mocking from now on)
But the Big Bang is based on discoveries, and intelligent design is based on gaps in our scientific knowledge
What if I did have evidence of a step by step pathway (which I don’t right now)? Then I would win the argument – what would you do then?
Michael Behe:
Well, if tomorrow you do manage to find expiremental evidence of a pathway, which you don’t have today, then I would be wrong
ID is falsifiable by experimental evidence
But what about your your view? Is that falsifiable by experimental evidence?
What if someone goes into a lab (someone like Scott Minnich?) and performs gene knockout experiments, and publishes the results
You knock out a gene from the bacterial flagellum, you wait for a large number of generations, and it never develops the missing gene
You repeat this with every one of the 50 genes in the bacterial flagellum and it never recovers for any of the 50 genes
There is no pathway to build up even one of the 50 genes – according to actual experiments
What do Darwinists do with experimental evidence that falsifies Darwinism?
Keith Fox:
No, I would not accept that experimental evidence could falsify Darwinism
Just because known published experimental evidence that we have today falsifies Darwinism, it doesn’t mean Darwinism is false because it’s not falsifiable
We don’t know how Darwinism even works – it happened so long ago, and it’s not repeatable or testable, so how could lab ,experiments falsify it?
Darwinism is science and intelligent design is faith, though
Lenski has presided over 50,000 generations, (millions of years of evolution)
The bacterium did evolve and they did get better but not by evolving features, but by disabling features
Keith Fox:
But those are just LAB EXPERIMENTS! What do lab experiments prove?
What if? What if? What if? You don’t know, it happened so long ago, and you weren’t there! You weren’t there!
(clutches Flying Spaghetti Monster idol tighter and sobs pitifully)
Michael Behe:
See, the thing is that I have actual experiements, and here’s some more evidence that just got published last week
So I’ve got evidence and then some more evidence and them some other evidence – experimental evidence
And all the evidence shows that adaptation is done losing traits not by gaining traits
And the published observations are what we see in nature as well
Keith Fox:
But doesn’t Darwinism explain some things that we observe?
Michael Behe:
Well, I am not saying that micro-evolution doesn’t explain some things – it explains bacterial resistance, and other micro-evolution
it just doesn’t explain macro-evolution, and that’s what the experiments show
Keith Fox:
But ID is a science stopper! It stops science! You can’t produce experimental evidence to falsify Darwinism – that would stop science!
Michael Behe:
Well, you have to understand that the Big Bang postulated a non-material cause to the entire physical universe and yet the experimental evidence was allowed to stand because it was testable and verifiable evidence, even if the theory does have religious implications
All explanations in science are design to settle a question and it stops rival explanations that are not as good at explaining the observations
Finding the best explanation stops further study because it is better than rival explanations
Keith Fox:
Well you have to come up with a materialist explanation because that’s the only kind that a functional atheist like me will allow
Michael Behe:
Well, what if the best explanation for an observed effect in nature is non-material, as with the Big Bang?
Keith Fox:
But I have to have a material explanation because I am a functional atheist! (i.e. – a theistic evolutionist = functional atheist)
Michael Behe:
Well what about the cosmic fine-tuning argument? Do you accept that?
That’s an inference to design based on the latest scientific discoveries
Keith Fox:
Well I do accept that argument, but I don’t accept design in biology
When you apply it to biology, somehow it’s bad and you can’t do that or you losing research money and get fired
Anyway, your argument is based on a gap in our current knowledge
Michael Behe:
No, back in Darwin’s time we had a gap in our knowledge – we didn’t know what the cell was – we thought it was jello
Now, we know what the cell is really like, it’s irreducibly complex, and you can’t build up those molecular machines in a step-wise manner
The inference to design is based on the progress of science revealing the increasing levels of complexity
In experiments, Darwinian mechanisms cannot build anything useful, instead genes are disabled or dropped
You guys don’t have the evidence to prove your view that naturalistic mechanisms can do the creating
You keep issuing promissory notes
Keith Fox:
Well, you’re just seeing design subjectively, because you are a non-scientist
I’m being objective when I tell you that we will discover a materialist explanation later on – really really soon now, maybe even tomorrow, yeah
You won’t accept my speculations and you insist on these published experiments
You’re subjective and I’m objective
Just give me more research money so I can hide the decline better
Michael Behe:
Uh, you’re the one who is subjective – I cited evidence, and you are the one who is speculating
You have arguments from credulity, and I’ve got the lab experiments
You refuse to be skeptical, I am the one who is being skeptical
Keith Fox:
Maybe, maybe, maybe! Maybe tomorrow! Maybe in a parallel universe! Maybe aliens from Planet X!
Who knows! I certainly don’t know! And that somehow means you don’t know either! See?
Michael Behe:
Well, to prove me wrong, go into the lab, and run experiments and evolve some new genes (using Darwinian mechanisms) that have new useful functionality
Are there limits to what evolution can do?
Michael Behe:
You need multiple changes in the genome to get a new helpful feature (let’s say two specific mutations)
One specific change is possible
the odds are against getting multiple beneficial changes are really really small – you need two SPECIFIC changes to occur in order
Keith Fox:
Well, lots of things are really unlikely – any permutation of dice rolls is as unlikely as any other
Michael Behe:
Well, we are talking about TWO SPECIFIC mutations that are needed to get a beneficial function – lots of other mutations are possible, but we are looking for a specific outcome that requires two SPECIFIC mutations out of the whole genome
You aren’t going to get useful outcomes unless you direct the mutations
WINTERY KNIGHT 