Unsupported: Jay Richards on Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design Theory: Why it Matters by Jay Richards, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

Jay makes some interesting claims about Intelligent Design, too bad that most of them remain unsupported or plain wrong.

We now have a reliable scientific method, formalized by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski (in The Design Inference, Cambridge University Press, 1998), for detecting designed objects and distinguishing them from the products of chance and impersonal laws. Scientists already use the design inference intuitively in fields such as cryptography, archaeology and forensics. When applied to nature's fine-tuned laws, DNA sequences and Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems, the clear conclusion is that they are intelligently designed.

Let me list the problems with Jay's claims

1. The design inference is not reliable
   
2. Scientists indeed uses methods for detecting ID and they do not use Dembski's limited use method
   
3. Since the design inference is unreliable, it cannot provide support for the faith based conclusion that they are intelligently designed
   
4. There is no theory of intelligent design
   

Ironically when Jay applies the 'design inference' for the scientifically vacuous "Privileged Planet" thesis he omits regularity as a node. In other words, regularity (laws) can indeed be intelligent designers after all. Showing once again the vacuity of the ID thesis.

Jay ends with an interesting comment

What Darwinism and scientific materialism have dismantled, intelligent design theory could help restore.

Indeed as the Wedge Document explains, restoring God is a top priority of the Discovery Institute.

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