From SecularPortal

Inteligent design or I.D. is a teleological argument for the existence of a God. The argument emerged with creationists attempting to place their beliefs on a scientific foundation, as well as to circumvent legislation against the teaching of Creationism in American science classes.

The argument claims that the diversity of life on Earth is better explained by an intelligent cause than a process such as evolution by natural selection. A famous formulation of the argument regards a hyperthetical person (call him Andrew) who is out walking. Andrew comes upon a pocket watch having never seen one before he opens the back and observes the working which power the watch's clockwork and concludes that this is highly complicated. Andrew deems that something this complicated could not have came about my chance, and that therefore it must have a designer and a maker. The I.Dist then claims that life on earth is far more complicated that the workings of a pocket watch and so we can reasonably infer that there must have been a designer of life. They then claim that this designer is the God of Christianity

The argument has been heavily criticised, not only in its validity but also that it is claimed to be scientific as there is no possible way to test the theory i.e. there is no object which couldn't have been designed.

For the argument to be valid an example must be found which can't be explained by evolution. However one is yet to be forthcoming, although proponents are quick to jump upon any new feature of life before scientists have had time to investigate it fully and formulate a naturalistic explanation so ones of these kind are not sufficient.

The argument relies on drawing an analogy of man-made things and natural things, namely the pocket watch and life. However the structure of a diamond is highly complicated yet we have an adequate explanation of how it if formed by a natural process, thus the analogy may be a false one.

It has also been argued that the inference from a designer to an omnipotent God is not valid as our designer would only require enough power to create whatever we find around us which will always require finite power, not infinite.

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