Mirror Question 3: Whither goes Intelligent Design?

I understand that this post may be premature, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of where I’m going with this blog. Rest assured that in future posts I will talk in more detail about what I mean by “intelligence” and “emergent property”.

I mentioned in Directions and Content that Intelligent Design has its flaws. In fact it has one big one, which is fatal; that is, the assumption that intelligent design implies the existence of an intelligent designer.

There is no reason to assume this logical implication as either necessary or valid. Once choice is taken as an axiom, something that can be defined as intelligence arises naturally from the laws of physics as an emergent property; there is no need for an external intelligent agent to explain its appearance.

This is a thesis I have not seen proposed before and its development will occupy many future posts. But for now, please dear reader, take it as a given. This thesis now raises a set of mirror questions.

For the Intelligent Design community, will Christian apologists still continue to advocate for intelligent design once it can be shown that intelligence arises naturally as an emergent property from the laws of physics alone? See note [1].

To be clear, Intelligent Design, as it has been promulgated by its advocates, has never been an honest argument. It starts with valid scientific observations, but then falls into logical fallacy, and ends with the conclusion that some form of external creative intelligent agent must be necessary to explain the physical universe we see. Scientists, for their part, instinctively recognize this dishonesty and, as one should expect, react defensively in response.

So the companion question for the secular side of the debate becomes, if there wasn’t any need for a knee-jerk defensive reaction to arguments for intelligent design, out of fear of “Jesus-smuggling,” would the defenders of Darwin relax enough to consider the valid arguments that intelligent design does raise?

[1]… This observation is a teachable moment for those Christians who look to science for justifications for their faith. If one’s faith is made dependent on a particular scientific consensus and that consensus changes with new theoretical or scientific findings, what happens then to their faith?