Further to “Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s anti-Darwin book ‘can’t be ignoredby the thinking public’”, here is Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin’s summary:
Intelligent design is a scientific theory that argues that the best explanation for some natural phenomena is an intelligence cause, especially when we find certain types of information and complexity in nature which in our experience are caused by intelligence.
… topics …
1. ID uses a positive argument based upon finding high levels of complex and specified information.
2. ID is NOT a theory about the designer or the supernatural
3. ID is NOT a theory of everything
He then goes on to say what it is:
1. ID uses a positive argument based upon finding high levels of complex and specified information
The theory of intelligent design begins with observations of how intelligent agents act when they design things. Human intelligence provides a large empirical dataset for studying the products of the action of intelligent agents. This present-day observation-based dataset establishes cause-and-effect relationships between intelligent action and certain types of information.
William Dembski observes that “[t]he principle characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.”15 Dembski calls ID “a theory of information” where “information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as a proper object for scientific investigation.”16 A cause-and-effect relationship can be established between mind and information. As information theorist Henry Quastler observed, the “creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”17
The most commonly cited type of “information” that reliably indicates design is “specified complexity.” As Dembski writes, “the defining feature of intelligent causes is their ability to create novel information and, in particular, specified complexity.”18 Though the terms were not originally coined by an ID proponent, Dembski suggests that design can be detected when one finds a rare or highly unlikely event (making it complex) which conforms to an independently derived pattern (making it specified). ID proponents call this complex and specified information, or “CSI.” Stephen Meyer explains that in our experience, only intelligent agents produce this type of information:
More.
Note: It’s depressing that so much “opposition” to the notion of design in the universe/life forms comes from Jesus-hollering academics who say things like “Well, that would make God responsible for bad design!”
I (O’Leary for News) wrote about that in “Here’s one bad reason for rejecting ID,” pointing out that when speaking to Moses, God takes responsibility for things that don’t work. (Ex. 4:11) These facts cannot be used as an argument against divine authorship or involvement by anyone claiming to operate within the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
So far as I am concerned, any Christian academic using such arguments should rightly be suspected of not actually knowing, caring about, or even taking seriously what the Bible says. Of course, many theistic evolutionists/Christian Darwinists probably do not know, care about, or even take seriously what the Bible says about anything if it conflicts with current fashion. But they are only allowed to openly say that about topics like Adam and Eve, about whom they make silly jokes. If they start saying that they don’t think Moses ever really talked with God or reported what he said accurately, why then … why then they might be asked just what their issues really are, and those issues won’t turn out to be “information theory” or “specified complexity.” Hence all the evasion and fancy dancing.
But don’t expect serious questions to be asked any time soon. Too many people are complicit now.
At any rate, the issues thinking atheists who don’t work for lobbies raise are far more honest.