Commonly Employed Arguments Against ID

Uncommon Descent has a web page devoted to frequently cited but weak arguments against Intelligent Design. Anyone involved in these debates for very long will recognize some of the arguments. The topic 27] The Information in Complex Specified Information (CSI) Cannot Be Quantified is appropriate for a blog identified to a great extent with William Dembski.

39] ID is Nothing More Than a “God of the Gaps” Hypothesis may be the most common anti-ID argument. This from the link:

ID is not proposing “God” to paper over a gap in current scientific explanation. Instead ID theorists start from empirically observed, reliable, known facts and generally accepted principles of scientific reasoning:

(a) Intelligent designers exist and act in the world.

(b) When they do so, as a rule, they leave reliable signs of such intelligent action behind.

(c) Indeed, for many of the signs in question such as CSI and IC, intelligent agents are the only observed cause of such effects, and chance + necessity (the alternative) is not a plausible source, because the islands of function are far too sparse in the space of possible relevant configurations.

(d) On the general principle of science, that “like causes like,” we are therefore entitled to infer from sign to the signified: intelligent action.

(e) This conclusion is, of course, subject to falsification if it can be shown that undirected chance + mechanical forces do give rise to CSI or IC. Thus, ID is falsifiable in principle but well supported in fact.