An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life. The term "intelligent cause" is also used, implying their teleological supposition of direction and purpose in features of the universe and of living things.
History
The popularly termed intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist campaign that arose out of the Christian fundamentalist creation science movement. Proponents of intelligent design
argue to the public that their concept does not posit the identity of
the designer as part of this effort, but in statements to their
constituency, which consists largely of Christian conservatives, they identify the designer as God.
The Discovery Institute has claimed that university criticism of
intelligent design is tantamount to "endorsement of an anti-religious
view"
Identity
William Dembski states in his book Design Inference that the nature of the intelligent designer cannot be inferred from intelligent design and suggests that the designer, if one is even necessary for design inference, may or may not be "the God of Scripture." In December 2007 Dembski told Focus on the Family, "I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God."
Some leading intelligent design proponents have stated
identifying or characterizing the designer is beyond the scope of
intelligent design as a line of inquiry. Proponents had hoped that, by
avoiding invoking creation by a specific supernatural entity, (such as that employed by creation science), intelligent design would be considered scientific and not violate the establishment clause of the US constitution.
Proponents feared that were intelligent design identified as a
restatement of previous forms of creationism, it would be precluded from
being taught in public schools after the 1987 Supreme Court of the United States decision in Edwards vs Aguillard.
This line of reasoning was not particularly persuasive to most in the
scientific community, which overwhelmingly rejected intelligent design
as both a line of scientific inquiry and as a basis for a sound
education in science.
On December 20, 2005 federal district court ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
that intelligent design was not science and was essentially religious
in nature. The ruling not only rendered that public school district's
endorsement of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in
science classes unconstitutional
on the grounds that its inclusion violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, but validated the objections of critics who discounted proponents' claim that the identity was not God.
Highlighting these mutually exclusive claims about the designer,
Dembski, despite having said that the intelligent designer or designers
could be any god or gods, or even space aliens,
has also said that "intelligent design should be understood as the
evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical world
is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of mindless
material forces" and that "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."
Michael Behe, in his book Darwin's Black Box, suggested the designer might be a time traveling cell biologist.
At various times, leading proponents in the intelligent design movement have clearly expressed that they consider the Abrahamic God "Elohim" in his role as a creator God,
to be the intelligent designer and denied that intelligent designer is
God, depending on which audience they are addressing. One example is
William Dembski, who on his blog in response to the question "Is the
designer responsible for biological complexity God?" said "not
necessarily" and "To ask who or what is the designer of a particular
object is to ask for the immediate intelligent agent responsible for its
design. The point is that God is able to work through derived or
surrogate intelligences, which can be anything from angels to organizing
principles embedded in nature."
Yet to the intelligent design movement's conservative Christian
constituents Dembski has said "intelligent design should be understood
as the evidence that God has placed in nature to show that the physical
world is the product of intelligence and not simply the result of
mindless material forces. This evidence is available to all apart from
the special revelation of God in salvation history as recounted in
Scripture. ... Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an
intellectually fulfilled atheist. This gives intelligent design
incredible traction as a tool for apologetics, opening up the
God-question to individuals who think that science has buried God"
and "Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should
be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the
intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from
receiving serious consideration." Stephen C. Meyer,
founder and leader of the intelligent design program of the Discovery
Institute admitted on national television he believes that the designer
is God.
Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the ID movement has stated the goal of the intelligent design movement:
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." -- Phillip E. Johnson, American Family Radio, January 10, 2003
"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." -- Phillip E. Johnson, World Magazine, November 30, 1996
The Discovery Institute's leaked Wedge document sets out the movement's governing goals, including:
"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." . . . "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." -- The Wedge Document, a 1999 Discovery Institute pamphlet
Claimed actions
Opinion as to the amount of creation the intelligent designer has done varies within the ID movement. Michael Behe's concept of irreducible complexity has natural selection accounting for most of evolution but the intelligent designer contributing the design of some proteins. Others in the ID movement however contest concepts such as common descent, particularly of humans and other apes. Though most in the ID movement seem to be Old Earth Creationists, a few are Young Earth Creationists who believe in ex-nihilo.
The amount of creation that the intelligent designer did has also been criticised by Young Earth Creationists as not being specific enough, and particularly contradicting their beliefs of Biblical inerrancy and a young earth. Some intelligent design proponents say the intelligent designer fine-tuned the universe's physical constants
in such a way that life is the result of the universe's physical
constants being related to one another in a fashion that permits life to
exist. The fine-tuned universe argument
is a central premise or presented as a given in many of the published
works of prominent intelligent design proponents, such as William A. Dembski and Michael Behe.
Criticism
Intelligent
design has been presented by its proponents as a "big tent" strategy
into which several accounts of creation can fit. Were a "scientific"
version of intelligent design approved for inclusion in public school
science curricula, then a path would be opened for discussion of
alternatives to not only natural selection but naturalism as well, and eventually religious accounts on the origin of life.
The vast majority of scientists reject the concept of intelligent
design and an intelligent designer. Instead, the most widely accepted
explanation is that physical processes such as natural selection can
account for the complexity of life and other phenomena and features of
the universe. Attempts to insert theories of intelligent design into
public school science curricula fits in with the intelligent design
movement's social aims, via the overturning of Western secularism as
detailed in the Wedge strategy. The concept of the intelligent designer has been criticised as a God-of-the-gaps
argument. Introducing the hypothesis of an intelligent designer
introduces the unsolved problem of accounting for the origin of such a
designer (first cause).
By raising the question of the need for a designer for objects
with irreducible complexity, intelligent design also raises the
question, "what designed the designer?" Richard Dawkins
has argued that "If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a
complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea
that God (or the intelligent designer) is simply immune to the normal
demands of scientific explanation,"
since such an answer would be unscientific. With religious
creationism, the question "what created God?" can be answered with
theological arguments, but in intelligent design, the chain of designers
can be followed back indefinitely in an infinite regression,
leaving the question of the creation of the first designer dangling. As
a result, intelligent design does not explain how the complexity
happened in the first place; it just moves it.
Elliott Sober
says that by intelligent design's own arguments, a designer capable of
creating irreducible complexity must also be irreducibly complex: "Any
mind in nature that designs and builds an irreducibly complex system is
itself irreducibly complex" Sober says that this an argument that intelligent design proponents still need to respond to.
If intelligent design proponents invoke an uncaused causer or deity to resolve this problem, they contradict a fundamental assumption of intelligent design that design requires a designer and reduce intelligent design to religious creationism. Another possible counter-argument might be an infinite regression of designers. However, admitting infinite numbers of objects also allows any arbitrarily improbable event to occur,
such as an object with "specific" complexity assembling itself by
chance. Again, this contradicts a fundamental assumption of intelligent
design that a designer is needed for every specifically complex object,
producing a logical contradiction.
Critics contend the claim that positing a designer which explains
gaps in our understanding yet does not need to be itself explained as
not a contribution to knowledge but as a thought-terminating cliché.
The Dover trial
In
2005, intelligent design proponents arguments regarding the identity of
a designer became an issue considered by the court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District,
the "Dover trial," where plaintiffs successfully argued that
intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board
policy requiring the presentation of intelligent design as an
alternative to evolution as an "explanation of the origin of life" thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his ruling, the judge, John E. Jones III, stated
"However, as Dr. Haught testified, anyone familiar with Western religious thought would immediately make the association that the tactically unnamed designer is God..." -- Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 25
Jones also commented that the appearance of design is subjective:
"It is readily apparent to the Court that the only attribute of design that biological systems appear to share with human artifacts is their complex appearance, i.e. if it looks complex or designed, it must have been designed. (23:73 (Behe)). This inference to design based upon the appearance of a "purposeful arrangement of parts" is a completely subjective proposition, determined in the eye of each beholder and his/her viewpoint concerning the complexity of a system." -- Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 81
"For human artifacts, we know the designer's identity, human, and the mechanism of design, as we have experience based upon empirical evidence that humans can make such things, as well as many other attributes including the designer's abilities, needs, and desires. With ID, proponents assert that they refuse to propose hypotheses on the designer's identity, do not propose a mechanism, and the designer, he/she/it/they, has never been seen. In that vein, defense expert Professor Minnich agreed that in the case of human artifacts and objects, we know the identity and capacities of the human designer, but we do not know any of those attributes for the designer of biological life. In addition, Professor Behe agreed that for the design of human artifacts, we know the designer and its attributes and we have a baseline for human design that does not exist for design of biological systems. Professor Behe's only response to these seemingly insurmountable points of disanalogy was that the inference still works in science fiction movies. -- Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 81
The judge ruled that "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents" and "that ID is an interesting theological argument, but that it is not science."
