Q1. Why should one assume that God created the universe with the requisite properties for all material complexities, including life, to emerge without his direct intervention? It doesn’t seem to be a widely held view by professional Christian philosophers (to my limited understanding), even those who are evolutionists (e.g. Swineburne, Plantinga).

A1.  Because that’s just how science works. It’s traditionally known as “Methodological Naturalism”.  By faith, we can believe whatever we want (or for Christians, whatever we think the Scripture require of us), but that doesn’t make the belief scientific.  Just like my belief in the resurrection is not scientific, even though I believe it to be true by faith.

Q2.  Why limit it to the kinds of things you do?  You seem to say “because interventions are for our benefit” (whereas other these things creationists appeal to are not for our benefit [at least in the "evidential" respect]).  But then why can’t I say (like I believe) that special-design of life was a miraculous-intervention for our evidential benefit?

A2.  You can say that if you want to – as an article of faith.  But you can’t proceed on that assumption when you’re doing science!  Science doesn’t allow for, nor can it detect, supernatural agency or “un-caused” effects (divine fiat).  We have to assume natural causality or we can’t proceed with a program of research.  When we can’t find answers to some of our most important questions (ie: big bang, abiogenesis, etc…) then we must humbly say that we don’t know (scientifically speaking) how life or the universe began.  I don’t have a problem with this.  I only have a problem if we turn around and claim that our ignorance is proof of divine agency — because it’s not.

Q3.  Jesus’ resurrection was not itself witnessed, but was inferred on the basis of seeing Jesus alive again. Why, likewise, can we [ID theorists] not look at contemporary evidence and come to the conclusion of a potential miraculous-intervention in the past?

A3.  Again, we can draw these conclusions if we want to, AS LONG AS WE ARE WILLING TO CONCEDE THAT THEY ARE NOT SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS.  Last I checked, acknowledging that God raised Jesus from the dead is central to the Gospel.  Believing that God must disrupt the normal patterns of material behavior, patterns that he obviously could not get right the first time, in order to create life is not part of the Gospel.  This belief accomplishes nothing scientifically, and it proves nothing to unbelievers.  I’d say that it is pretty useless.

Q4. You also state here that I.D. makes no testable predictions, nor does it lead to discoveries — but is this the case? Certainly I.D. predicts that biological systems will display functionality through and through (apparent design), does it not?

A4.  That a biological system displays functionality is an observation, not a prediction.   An actual prediction would have to posit a material mechanism for how something intelligently designed in God’s mind became manifest in our material world.  In other words, to qualify as a scientific theory, ID would have to make predictions about the material ASSEMBLY of the designs we find in nature.  Of course, only naturalism can do this.  Agency via supernatural means (divine fiat) does not make testable/falsifiable predictions.  ID can only make trivial predictions.

Q5.  I recall critics of I.D. appealing to vestigial organs and Junk DNA as potential falsifications of intelligent design.

A5.  Hmm… Which critics are these?  I personally wouldn’t even waste my time making such a criticism.  You can’t falsify the design hypothesis because it is trivial — “anything that appears designed has been designed by an intelligent agency” — how can you falsify that?  Besides, who’s to say that the creator didn’t design these morphological and molecular vestiges for an unknown purpose?  Or perhaps he didn’t even need a reason?  Just because we haven’t discovered a reason for the existence of vestigial structures doesn’t mean that ID is falsified.  Again, you can’t falsify something [ID] that can’t be tested.

Q5.  The natural and historic prediction of I.D. then is that as we learn more, these [vestigial structures with no apparent function] would turn out not to be junk/vestigial after all.

A5.  Discovering that a piece of “junk” DNA has been adapted to serve another function is not a confirmation of intelligent design.  Far from it! If you were to find a broken stapler being used as a door jamb, you would not conclude that it must have been specifically created for that very purpose?   No - you would immediately recognize that it once functioned as a stapler, somehow lost the ability to staple, and is now used for something other than stapling.  Moreover, vestigial organs that have adapted themselves to serve alternate functions are actually a prediction of evolution.  And by doing comparative anatomy and molecular genetics, common descent can usually explain how the original structure became obsolete, as well as identify the genetic changes that led to the emergence of novel features that enabled the same structure to assume a new role.  And a vestigial structure recently adapted to serve an alternate function is usually a clumsy fit (ie: the broken stapler analogy).  If ID could predict anything, it would be that one should expect only to find optimized designs, and not sub-optimized designs (of course, one could then say that perhaps the structure is optimally designed for some unknown purpose - which is why the prediction is not falsifiable in the first place).  On the other hand, evolution absolutely requires sub-optimized designs. For example, if our DNA were optimized (no junk at all) and we had no vestigial organs, then evolution would be in big trouble.

Q6.  I think [the "natural and historic prediction of I.D." mentioned above] is a rich topic whereby I.D. enjoys an equally rich history of successes (which, to the candid surprise of non-ID theorists, seems to keep coming).  Is this not good science?

A6.  No, and here’s why: Traditional (naturalistic) science is already searching for vestigial utility, since evolution predicts that vestigial structures should adapt themselves to perform novel functions.  Moreover, evolution provides a material cause-and-effect framework to investigate the issues at hand.  ID only makes the trivial claim that “since God made it, it must do something” - great, thanks for the tip.  But without a material framework of construction (ie: an ordinary mechanism to actualize God’s designs), ID is useless in the laboratory.  If you look more closely at the examples you provided, you will find that these discoveries are not taking place at the “Discovery Institute” or by ID theorists (who are mostly non-scientists), but rather in laboratories that operate under the naturalistic premise.  Folks like Dembski simply show up after the hard work is done and claim victory for an idea that can never be falsified in the first place!  So ID is actually contributing nothing to the scientific body of knowledge here (unless you count ad hoc explanations as contributions).  To show up with your bullhorn and shout “Ha! See, I knew this vestigial organ would have some function, and even if we didn’t find one, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some unknown function that has yet to discovered!” - is not a helpful explanation.  Any theory that can explain anything, actually explains nothing.

Q7.  You state, “any shortcomings of evolutionary theory are not good evidences of creation” (which I take to mean “actual-design”).  But this leaves me scratching my head.  Since life does display “specified complexity” (even on your view), we have two possible explanations: (1) Real Design (2) Pseudo-Design [i.e. what Dawkin's calls "designoid"].

A7.  I still don’t think you get what I’m saying.  I agree that we can look at something and claim it was designed.  That the universe displays God’s handiwork is evident.  But the design inference tells us nothing about how a design (which started out in the mind of God) is actualized here on earth.  Evolution is a working theory that does this, and it does this quite well, as long as you start with a primitive life-form (like bacteria).  So this distinction between Real Design and Pseudo-Design is a false dichotomy.  It’s all real, because it is all began in the mind of God and is a consequence of the patterns he built into the created order.  Evolution is simply the current best-candidate for a possible mechanism God may have used to actualize it.

Q8.  On your view here, how can one come to conclude that something like Stonehenge was designed?

A8.  That’s easy: because stones don’t arrange themselves like that apart from agency (agency = the action of an intelligent being).  And ID theorists would agree with me on this.  My problem with ID is that they leap from there to “we don’t know how the stones got there so they must have been arranged directly by God’s divine intervention” — which is absurd.  We still have to assume that there is a material explanation for how something designed became actualized.  Agency (ultimate cause) still requires an efficient cause to actualize it (to borrow from the language of Aristotle).  So somebody obviously figured out how to carry heavy stones over long distances and manipulate them into a pattern.  There are many different theories on how this came about; there is even one that aliens did it.  But does anybody actually think it was a miracle?  This is why ID fails.  Miracles have no place in the scientific process.  If something needs a miracle to explain it, then it should remain inexplicable as far as science is concerned.

Q9.  If you, like archaeologists, appeal to nature’s inability to create something “like this” (i.e. specified-complex entity), then it appears you would be applying double standards. I think a more consistent position therefore would say that shortcomings in evolutionary theory can be evidence for design, but that you just see no shortcoming in evolution.

A9.  No - Shortcomings in evolutionary theory are only evidence of our ignorance about material causality.  This ignorance might be the result of divine fiat, or it might simply be the result of our limited epistemology.  But the question of design is altogether separate.  I can believe that life shows evidence of design, and still believe that God used a physical process to accomplish it.  Or I can believe that these “apparent” designs are nothing more than the result of undirected chance. Either way, I have some work to do.  But scientists can’t just claim that God must have performed a miracle every time he can’t figure something out.

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