Perhaps. Its founder is preaching materialist heresy.
In a post over at The Skeptical Zone Elizabeth Liddle joins the ranks of our opponents who are finally admiting that biological design inferences are not invalid in principle. She writes:
Has Barry finally realised that those of us who oppose the ideas of Intelligent Design proponents do not dispute that it is possible, in principle, to make a reasonable inference of design? That rather our opposition is based on the evidence and argument advanced, not on some principled (or unprincipled!) objection to the entire project?
EL, welcome to the ranks of biological design theorists, by which I mean that group of people willing to follow the evidence for (or against) design in biology wherever it leads.
There is more good news. EL quoted me when I set forth the following objection ID proponents often get: “All scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism, and you violate the principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology.”
EL writes:
Yes, indeed, Barry. It is not a valid objection . . . There is nothing wrong with making a design inference in principle. We do it all the time, as IDists like to point out. And there’s nothing wrong with making it in biology, at least in principle. There is certainly nothing that violates the “principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology”
There is even more good news. EL rejects the idea that one most know who the designer is before one can infer design:
The objection to ID by people like me . . . is not that it is impossible that terrestrial life was designed by an intelligent agent, nor that it would be necessarily impossible to discover that it was, nor even, I suggest, impossible to infer a designer even if we had no clue as to who the designer might be (although that might make it trickier).
She even agrees that biological design inferences can be made without invoking any supernatural agent:
If Barry means that we can only infer natural, not supernatural, design, he is absolutely correct
I have been saying biological ID infers merely “design” and not supernatural design for several years. I am glad it has finally sunk it.
More good news. EL quotes me again: “You agree with us that it is the EVIDENCE that is important, and objections thrown up for the purpose of ruling that evidence out of court before it is even considered are invalid.”
And she agrees:
Yes, it is the EVIDENCE that is important,
Then she runs of the rails:
Of course, by the same token, nobody can claim that ID is false – it may well be true that life was designed by a supernatural designer
EL writes this sentence as if biological ID theory posits a supernatural designer. Sigh. Every prominent ID theorist has always (when speaking qua ID) said that it is a project to detect design, not supernatural design.
Then back to good news:
EL says she does not object to the broader ID project
. . . as stated in the UD FAQ: In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.
Wow. Yes, that is EL folks. Don’t believe me, follow the link and check it out yourself.
As I write this her post has gotten over 750 comments, some of which are very interesting.
The first one is EL’s own:
And that’s my point, really – that it’s perfectly possible to test ID hypotheses (small case id I guess) because you can test specific predictions arising from specific hypothesised scenarios.
ID opponent Glen Davidson joins the bandwagon and even adds an area of biological design that has received too little attention:
It is done in biology in fact as well as in principle. Genetic engineering can often be detected, and certainly would be searched for in the case of any biologic warfare. I wouldn’t particularly disagree with Allan Miller so long as there is no context, but, within known context, we can find telltale evidence of genetic tampering or of domestication.
Our William J. Murray jumps in with this zinger:
REC and Moran say they can detect convincing indications of design by intelligence …. what are their definitions and methodology? I mean, isn’t that what you guys always ask ID advocates?
A heaping helping of hypocrisy anyone? 🙂
Our old foe Kantian Naturalist agrees with EL!
I concur with the general sentiments expressed here.
EL even comes up with a not-half-bad definition of “intelligence” for the “I” in ID.
an entity with a human-like type capacity to invent things
EL then writes:
I absolutely agree that inferring design does not require a supernatural hypothesis. That was one of the points I was making in the OP.
I am not quite sure how she squares that with what she wrote before (which seemed to imply that she believes the “D” in ID is always posited to be supernatural agent even though all ID proponents say otherwise):
Of course, by the same token, nobody can claim that ID is false – it may well be true that life was designed by a supernatural designer
KN makes an astute observation:
I also think, quite frankly, that Dembski and Behe are also methodological naturalists (on my suggestion of what that concept means), and this comes out in their refusal to identify the putative designer(s) with any deity or deities. ID is consistent with methodological naturalism — as well as consistent with metaphysical naturalism.