The scientific objections to evolution ask them to explain, among other things, how random mutations can add complexity, when there's no evidence that they can.
Why wouldn't a church-going Christian ask the same questions? If you believe in God, and your belief extends to knowing that He created everything, then of course everything is designed, and it's designed by God, so what is ID good for?
There's nothing wrong with asking this question, but it has no bearing on the validity of the theory. ID is scientific theory which says life shows evidence of having been designed period. Either life shows evidence of design or it doesn't. People can supply their own answers to who is the designer. Of course the designer is God (in my view), but the theory doesn't attempt to prove that, nor should it be required to. The evos say that because the designer must be God, therefore life shows no evidence of design, which is a total non-sequiter and is circular or backward reasoning.
I think that Behe (irreducible complexity) and Dembski (specified complexity) are barking up the wrong tree with this idea. Human design (which the only design we can be certain of) tends toward irreducible simplicity.
Irreducible complexity doesn't refer to the thought processes of the designer, so I don't know what you're talking about there.
If you take ID at face value, AND you assume that it's NOT about God, then the designer's NOT God. How is that better?
ID doesn't say the designer's not God, it just doesn't say it is God. There's a difference. Again, the question of who the designer is is beyond the theory. Either life shows evidence of design or it doesn't. The atheist evos say that it leads inevitably to the idea that there is a God (True). They then use that as a basis for immediately dismissing the entire idea. This is not a scientific basis however, it is their atheist philosophy.
Simple question, though. Okay, we say that life is too complicated to have occured naturally, indicating that it must have been designed by a designer....
Wouldn't that designer be way, way too complicated to occur naturally? And wouldn't that indicate that the designer had been designed to design? And what about *that* designer? And that designer's designer.... Before long, the universe is filled with designers who can create life out of nothingness, as it could be no other way.... By concluding that complexity=design, we conclude that those complex designers must have been created by even more complex designers, ad infinitum.
I'm not sure where this came from, but "random mutations" kind of implies "anything can happen." In any case, I don't recall anyone hanging their hat on random mutations as the be-all and end-all of evolutionary mechanisms.
ID is scientific theory which says life shows evidence of having been designed period. Either life shows evidence of design or it doesn't.
But that's not what they talk about. They declare that something couldn't have evolved because it's too complex, so therefore it must have been designed. They don't offer evidence of design, design is their fallback position.
Irreducible complexity doesn't refer to the thought processes of the designer, so I don't know what you're talking about there.
I was talking about the concept of design when it involves structures that have physical functions. A perfect designer would make a design as optimally functional as possible (the hallmark of which would be uncluttered simplicity). Most designs found in nature are adequate, not optimal.
Either life shows evidence of design or it doesn't. The atheist evos say that it leads inevitably to the idea that there is a God (True). They then use that as a basis for immediately dismissing the entire idea. This is not a scientific basis however, it is their atheist philosophy.
You don't think God is outside of science?
Sure there is. New, beneficial genetic information arises according to known scenarios. In fact, evolutionary mechanisms can produce "irreducibly complex" systems. The main mechanism for adding new genes is the duplication mutation.