Casey Luskin is upset with a philosopher named Christopher Pynes. Paynes had the audacity to suggest that one of the key features of Intelligent Design Creationism is ... creationism. According to Paynes, "supernaturalism is a necessary component of ID: there must be a designer" [AD HOMINEM ARGUMENTS AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN: REPLY TO KOPERSKI].Luskin wants to remind everyone that Intelligent Design Creationism has nothing to do with a creator/designer [Professor Pynes Rails Against the "Straw-Man Fallacy" while Attacking a Straw-Man Version of Intelligent Design]. According to Luskin (a lawyer), Intelligent Design Creationism is a purely scientific theory that relies on: (a) proving that evolution is wrong, (b) detecting the creator/designer by examining nature.
On the primary1 grounds that it's always good to know your enemy, I present to you the best scientific grounds for Intelligent Design Creationism.
If all of these things were true, then you'd predict that scientists would be flocking to church on Sundays. You'd also expect that the scientific literature would be full of papers proving the existence of God. It would be the most remarkable discovery in the history of humans.
- Studies of physics and cosmology continue to uncover deeper and deeper levels of fine-tuning. Many examples could be given, but this one is striking: the initial entropy of the universe must have been fine-tuned to within 1 part in 10(10^123) to render the universe life-friendly. That blows other fine-tuning constants away. New cosmological theories like string theory or multiverse theories just push back questions about fine-tuning, and would, if true, simply exacerbate the need for fine-tuning. This points to high levels of complex and specified information (CSI) in the cosmid architecture of the universe--information which in our experieince only comes from intelligence.
- Mutational sensitivity tests increasingly show that DNA sequences are highly fine-tuned to generate functional proteins and perform other biological functions. Again, this is high CSI--which in our experience only comes from intelligence.
- Studies of epigenetics and systems biology are revealing more and more how integrated organisms are, from biochemistry to macrobiology, and showing incredible fine-tuned basic cellular functions. The integrated nature of organismal body plans shows CSI throughout biological systems--in our experience, only intelligence can generate tightly intregrated multi-component blueprints.
- Genetic knockout experiments are showing irreducible complexity, such as in the flagellum, or multi-mutation features where many simultaneous mutations would be necessary to gain an advantage. This is more fine-tuning--and in our experience, irreducibly complex machines arise only from intelligence.
- The fossil record shows that species often appear abruptly without similar precursors, which represents mass-explosions of high CSI--something which requires an intelligent cause.
- There have been numerous discoveries of functionality for "junk DNA." Examples include recently discovered functionality in some pseudogenes, microRNAs, introns, LINE and ALU elements. Intelligent design predicted this data.
A key part of Intelligent Design Creationism—the part that Casey Luskin is leaving out—is to explain why it has been so remarkably unsuccessful after 200 years of trying. That part has to do with the huge Darwinist conspiracy that forces scientists to tow the line and stick with atheistic Darwinism in spite of all the scientific evidence against it. If you read the blogs, you'll see that attacking scientists and Darwinism is the dominant theme. The "scientific" "evidence" for Intelligent Design Creationism is almost never mentioned.
Most of us scientists don't realize that we are part of such a conspiracy because we have been brainwashed into believing in evolution. However, a few god-fearing souls have seen the truth. Some of them are lawyers (Casey Luskin, Philip Johnson), some of them are philosophers, some of them claim to be mathematicians, and a few think they are scientists (Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells). The one thing they all have in common is that they are all IDiots.
1. The secondary grounds are to keep a record of the June 2012 "facts" because they will change soon enough.
