Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

“I’ll identify the intelligent designer when you identify the Big Banger”

Denyse O'Leary
July 21, 2011
Cosmology, Intelligent Design
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Design

That’s Dennis Jones’s challenge to those who insist, “You can’t talk about design unless you say who the designer is”:

1. ID Theory has nothing to do with creationism or a designer. There is no philosophical contemplation as to a designer any more than the Big Bang theory has anything to say about a banger.

It is impossible to complain about the “designer” of Intelligent Design Theory without resolving the “banger” inferred by the Big Bang Theory. One cannot deny there is a “banger” if they insist there is a designer, and vice versa.

The request is as absurd as requiring cosmologists to explain the nature of the Banger. To assert that Intelligent Design requires a Designer is as ridiculous as demanding it is impossible to have a Big Bang without a Banger. A designer cannot be imposed upon ID Theory without likewise imposing one on the Big Bang theory. The study of the Big Bang has nothing to do with what existed at Time = zero. The same is true with the origin of information. We study how information operates and increases towards greater biological complexity, and assert that an artificial intervention is involved in addition to unguided natural processes.

– “Intelligent Design Theory Is About INFORMATION, Not Designers” (May19, 2011)

Comments
Intelligent Design may require a designer but Intelligent Design is about the design, not the designer (for the very reasons posted in comment 2).Joseph
July 21, 2011
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Actually, it isn't so much theological reasons in the case of the "designer" - it's plain old practical reasons. This is actually the problem with Dennis' challenge. The reason that folks ask about the "designer" is that Intelligent Design requires such an entity. It's very premise notes one. The Big Bang, otoh, not only does not require a "banger" (as Hawking's and Feynman's work shows) it doesn't even imply one as a theoretical model. So how is this a valid comparison? Dennis' challenge strikes me as really nothing more than a red herring by way of a non-sequitur. OTOH, let's suppose theoretical physicists accept Dennis' challenge. They say, "fine...we completely dismiss the very concept of a "banger" or any need for such a concept in the Big Bang Theory. As such, according to Dennis, that means the the ID Theory must dismiss the very idea of a designer, which would then remove any premise of intelligence from the theory too. So...what exactly would the theory be left with? Without either "designer" or "intelligence" as core concepts of ID, what would the theory be about?" Yep...you'd have an "Intelligent Design" Theory about nothing.Doveton
July 21, 2011
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I checked with my son. The Designer is Bob.allanius
July 21, 2011
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1- If we knew who the designer was then we wouldn't have a design inference as design would be a given 2- Reality dictates that in the absence of direct observation or designer input the only possible way to make any scientific determination about the designer or the specific process used, is by studying the design in question.Joseph
July 21, 2011
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Very good point. But then anyone who wants to know about the Designer, or even the Big Banger, is not asking for scientific reasons. They are asking for purely theological reasons.Chris Doyle
July 21, 2011
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