What is Intelligent Design?
By Damion Roop

“Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best described as the result of intelligence�
- William A. Dembski

First, the Design theory
If we are going to talk about Intelligent Design (ID) then it is probably a good idea to first discuss Design Theory (DT) because almost all of the opposition thus far against ID has been with the specifics of Design Theory and not ID at all.
Design Theory has been around, in one form or another, since ancient Greece. The most well known version was championed by theologian William Paley, who, circa 1802, put forth his “watchmaker� thesis stating thus.

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there."

The only real problem in his version of the theory, and truly what plagued every version so far, was that its only method for detecting directed design was that of perceived purpose in the object or event in question. When Darwin’s evolutionary theory came around he simply pointed to nature’s cruelty and brutality and, with Design Theory lacking sufficient explanation or method, dismissed DT out of hand.

Intelligent Design in a Nutshell
Intelligent Design builds on DT but is simpler in its approach and because of that simplicity it is much more powerful. ID uses the presence of specified complexity to determine if Intelligent Design is implied. Specified meaning a recognizable pattern and Complexity meaning that there are so many possible alternate outcomes that the specific one we are observing is not possible by accident. Let’s use an example to make this clearer. Suppose that you have a friend and he comes to you with a strip of paper and on it is the following sequence of letters.

INTHEBEGINNINGGODCREATEDTHEHEAVENSANDTHEEARTH

Your friend now proceeds to tell you that he put that sequence together by repeatedly tossing a coin backwards over his shoulder onto a large mat with the alphabet printed on it and then writing down the letter his coin landed on each time. You wouldn’t believe him and neither would I, but why? You would intuitively understand that there are so many other possible sequences that could have come out that the odds against getting any coherent sentence at all, not to mention that specific sentence are astronomical.

That, however, is not where our explanation ends. Suppose that instead of the previous letter string he gave you this.

HYRIEHBNVIRJFIOHYSARUHBNVNMROEIRGPALPLRFDGLKPJW

You would, in all likelihood, believe him now. Again, though, we need to ask why? It’s due to specifics; the first string was specific, a discernable pattern â€" a very recognizable sentence in the English language. The second group of letters was seemingly random, not specific at all. It is, still, complex.

What if your friend had shown you the sequence “CAT�? That’s specific, but it isn’t complex at all. ID requires that both criteria be met, that the model in question be both specific and complex in order to implicate an intelligent cause for its design. Thus Specified Complexity is indicated when any object or event has a high improbability of occurring by chance and also fits a recognizable pattern.

It is the use of Specified Complexity that separates ID from all of its predecessors and also what defines it as a scientific approach. You see, ID stops at the implication of intelligence in the design. It does not presume to go on to imply the source. Of course we can easily, and some may say obviously, infer the existence of God from the proof or application of ID. We must remember that ID is a scientific theory and from its unique perspective the source of intelligence is irrelevant. The real focus is on the distinction between undirected, unsupervised random, or natural, causes and sentient, intelligent ones.

If we approach the discussion of ID versus creationism versus atheistic evolutionary theory with the previous paradigm in mind we immediately disarm our most ardent adversaries and eliminate their use of God as a target. God will be evident because He is real. Science, if used as it is meant to be - as an unbiased tool for thinking and reasoning people to discover and understand the mysteries of this world, will empirically prove God for us.

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