'Intelligent Design Is Testable'

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If somebody went into a laboratory and showed that random mutation and natural selection produced some new, complex system, then it would be falsified on that basis, because intelligent design, at least as I have formulated it, says that these complex systems that we see in the cell require intelligent activity to produce them. So that would show that they did not require intelligent activity

I don't really think it has any implications for the pursuit of it as a scientific theory other than in public schools in the middle of Pennsylvania. None of this decision affects reality, and it's reality that we're trying to get a grip on.

The fact of the matter is that the foundation of life is extraordinarily complex and functional. Nobody-Darwinian claims not withstanding-knows how such a thing could have arisen by an unintelligent process. Whenever we see such functional complexity, we've always found it in the past to have been the result of design. And if we want to understand where life came from, then we will have to come to grips with that. So this judge's ruling doesn't affect that at all.

You mean in favor of reading the statement to kids? No. I think things like this are kind of dumb, frankly-disclaimers and statements. Frankly, I think they should be in a biology textbook, in the main curriculum. I don't think they should be an add-on or some such thing.

One of the basic questions of biology, whether you agree with it or not, is how to explain what everybody agrees is the strong appearance of design. And so whether you think Darwin's theory accounts for it, or maybe in the future will account for it, or doesn't account for it but maybe in the future some other theory will, or whether you think it's real design, I think it's good to point this out to students. I think one of the big problems is that that's simply ignored, and students aren't even made aware of the fact that people are trying to account for the appearance of design by non-design type of explanations.

So this should not be addressed in a kind of sideways manner; it should be more forthrightly spoken about.

No, that's not exactly it. I think that's fine; student should be apprised of the good and bad points of any theory and should not be told to take any theory as the last word. I think everybody's agreed on that.

Oh, no.

Well, you know, for example, the witnesses [for the defense] at the trial. But if you look at biology textbooks, frankly, they act more like cheerleaders for Darwinian theory than they do as critical evaluators of it. And I think that's the big problem; that misleads students about what can be explained and what's still a problem for Darwinian theory. But I don't think discussions should be limited to that. I think students should be apprised that there are huge questions [in Darwinian theory], not that there are little details that are probably going to be solved in the next couple of years or so. And, that what people are trying to account for is the appearance of design. So whether or not that

be accounted for and whether or not you even think design is a scientific theory, it's still a live question.

No, I don't think so. I think it's pretty much the flip side of Darwinian theory. Students are told that Darwinism can account for the appearance of design. So if they're told that, they can be told why it doesn't look like some apparently designed things can be accounted for with Darwinian theory.

Well, frankly, it doesn't account for it. Designers can have all sorts of motives. What sort of a designer would make an atomic bomb? Or make a gun, or some such thing? Is a gun good or bad? Those are more philosophical questions. The question ID focuses on is, can this be accounted for by unintelligent processes? Does it have the earmarks of design? Is it a sophisticated, functional system? If it is, then that would be the criterion for whether it was designed or not-not what motives you might be able to think of for it.

It's not troubling from a scientific perspective, but even from a religious perspective-I am Christian-I don't think it raises any more questions than any other theory of how life got here, because the viruses and bad things, from our perspective, are here. And you're either saying that God made them for some reason-there might be some purposeful reason for these things, maybe they do something else in nature which are beneficial. He either made them directly, or designed them, made the information for them, whatever, or He permitted them to arise. In either case, He could have done something about it. So, in either case, the problem of evil remains.

I don't think it raises any questions for intelligent design that it doesn't raise for a theist who thinks Darwinian evolution is true. In either case-if Darwinian evolution is true, then what sort of method did God choose to make life that results in all this suffering for humans? I don't see how tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanoes-they raise the same sorts of problems. And what's more, I think it's a huge assumption to say that the primary effect of viruses in nature is to cause problems for us. It's entirely possible that they are doing something important in the biosphere about which we are still unaware.

Well, just because we can't explain everything doesn't mean we can't explain anything. And again, you can show a child a gun, and he can ask, "Why do people shoot each other?" and "My Mommy was shot by somebody and that was bad." It may be bad, and it may raise philosophical and moral questions, and even questions of theodicy [the theological questions arising out of the existence of evil and suffering], but you can look at the gun and tell it was designed. Those questions might be important, and might arise later on, but you do know that the gun was designed.

I'm certainly not competent to explain or even think much about theological questions. I'd be delighted if other people would start to think about these questions. I'm just concentrating on a very simple point: I see what I seen in a cell, and what I think is the best explanation for that.

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