Prof,
Let me say it this way,in cryptanalysis there are specific ways of detecting information in what appears to be noise. “Design detection” does and should work along similar tenets. This is a very direct and inelegant example, but I’ll use it anyway; Say you draw the history of the Earth out as a straight line on a map with a pencil. Then you take out the fossile record and a black felt tip marker and you black out on that line everywhere the holes are, and (because “it’s so riddled with holes”) you notice a lot of single dots on that line, oddly enough in morse code that represent the letter “e” which is the most commonly used letter in the English language. As a result you translate out the entire ciphertext according to morse code and miraculously you get the book of Genesis (or the ten commandments, take your pick).
Now, as I said this example is very simplistic and direct, and you can probably see the same problems and different problems than I see. First of all, this still isn’t proof, it’s only evidence of an intelligence acting on a scope that we cannot. Second, it would require very little faith as the statistics, linguistics, and codes involved all have very clear and direct derivations and applications. Third, it could just as easily convey the Talmud or the Qur’an, in which case, Christianity would probably flip on the whole ID issue, or the cleartext could be some nice sections of Descartes’ Principia Philosophie or something even less religiously or creationistically meaningful, either way, the underlying problem is still present, the information isn’t there unless it’s detected and it elicits a response, and what that response is something no religion (or science) can reasonably forsee. Third, this constitutes evidence of an intelligence but still leaves us without an explanation for a creator or validation of faith (unless it happens to be as direct as I stated).
Say, we figure all of this out and then a spaceship crashes to earth with all of the missing fossils in it, then where are we? If you think your Lord and Maker is generating new species out of the ether and that’s what’s behind ID, your understanding of him may be great, but in my estimation, your scope is narrow and your vision is clouded. When man capable of creating entire universes in a single breath, then, I believe, we will be capable of understanding our maker until then, our suppostions are premature and arguably blasphemic. While you may believe my example to be fantastic, it isn’t nearly the only way something like this could occur and, this is scientific skepticism (extreme claims need extreme evidence).
Throttle,
Matthew 7:3
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Psalms 33:10,11
The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I resent YOU using YOUR INTERPRETATION of OUR Bible to label ME and others atheists when I am at the very least agnostic. Also, isn’t it interesting that you quote the New Testament when evolution, in my estimation, most conflicts with Genesis and the Old Testament. Should ID prove to be true and THE CREATOR, there’s still the issue of the death, burial, and ressurection that would need scientific evidence in order for Christianity to be largely true (that’s not to say I don’t believe in JC, it’s just to say I have no evidence or proof he existed outside the Bible (or the Qur’an) which can be subject to bias).