Alix Nenuphar

Although the ARN and ISCID forums appear to be going through a period somewhat short on intellectual content and long on rhetoric, I still have questions regarding intelligent design that I would appreciate feedback on.

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Intelligent design is an attempt to formalise the intuition that certain events occurring in the universe are the result of conscious choice, rather than algorithmic chance.

That intelligent design exists is obvious – humans, other primates, birds, ants, etc. all implement conscious design choices. The actual question appears to be whether certain events may be ascribed to unknown designers operating in timeframes where the known designers were not active.

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My questions relate to the philosophical bases of the formalisation:

First, that an analogy from inanimate to animate entities with regards to their origins is valid.

Second, that complexity is a common characteristic of designed (or rather, constructed) entities.

Is there any way to verify these two assumptions?

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It should be noted that, regardless of the rhetoric expended on the subject, the actual entity which is the basis of design is clearly NOT biological organisms such as the bacterium flagellum, but rather the DNA sequence that codes for the flagellum’s development.

This raises the interesting question of whether the analogy really is between inanimate and animate entities. In fact, what precisely is the analogy?

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As a clarification on complexity, it would appear that the ID movement is using the term in two almost independent ways (and please keep in mind that these are my own classifications of the terms – used in an attempt to understand them):

Inherent complexity – a numeric property derived from examination of the structure of an entity. This corresponds to Behe’s irreducible complexity. Although I do not believe that he formally calculates any particular number, his usage would indicate that a simple binary (0 or 1) would suffice. The main characteristic of this property is that can be derived strictly from an examination of the entity and does not require any historical information.

historical complexity – a numeric property derived from examination of the history of an object. This corresponds to Dembski’s specified complexity. Since this property requires that probabilities be assigned to the history of an entity, it needs historical information: the entity cannot be examined in situ.

The question of complexity is raised because many artifacts of human and other designer’s manufacture are not particularly complex in structure: a pipe, for instance, is quite simple to express mathematically; so is a lens for a pair of glasses. It is only their historical complexity which is high.

Under those circumstances, when so much of the historical complexity of entities is unrecoverable, is there some other characteristic of design entities which might be applied?


(Edited for the usual reasons - none of which I'd like to get into right now....)