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Thank you so much for your excellent post and the ping to the sidebar you are having with GSlob!

xzins: The "intelligent design" criticism of evolution says that another organizing principle must be found.

So very true, xzins - intelligent design is about organizing principles!

GSlob: And where would that "intelligent principle" [aka a deity] come from?

I would like to clear up this persistent misunderstanding about the intelligent design hypothesis: that the intelligent cause must be a deity.

The intelligent design hypothesis states that “certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection”.

The “intelligent cause” is not specified as to whether it is a phenomenon or an agent – much less a specific phenomenon or agent.

There are two basic types of intelligence as a phenomenon: emergent property (such as from self organizing complexity) and fractal intelligence. And there are various candidate intelligent agents: God, collective consciousness, aliens, Gaia, etc.

The intelligent design hypothesis does not say which is the "intelligent cause" for "certain features". It could even be a mix of phenomenon and agency.

Any “intelligent cause” which is determined to be the best explanation for “certain features” will vindicate the hypothesis, for instance:

1. Phenomenon: That animals choosing their mates results in a variation which gives them a survival advantage.

2. Phenomenon: That molecular machinery chooses to cooperate to the survival of the whole organism.

3. Phenomenon: That collectives of organisms (swarms, etc.) make decisions the component organism cannot, which gives the species a survival advantage.

4. Agent or Phenomenon: That there exists a universal will to live – a life principle, fecundity principle, or evolution of one – which is the primary inception of information (successful communication) in biological systems.

5. Agent: That the complexity of “certain features” cannot be explained by natural mechanisms given the age of the universe.

6. Agent: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.

Frankly, I believe the vindication of the intelligent design hypothesis is virtually unavoidable in physics and math. After all, the only way to exclude intelligence as causation of "certain features" is to prevail in the assertion that intelligence is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain.

Lurkers: epiphenomenons are secondary phenomenons which can cause nothing to happen. In this case, it would mean that your physical brain caused your hand to move the mouse to read this post - willfulness had nothing to do with it. Criminals do what they must, involuntarily and so on. In this worldview, the universe is highly determined and free will does not exist.

BTW, intelligence (awareness plus decision making) observed in biological life which does not have a brain debunks the epiphenomenon hypothesis. These include decisions made in cells (Albrecht-Buehler) and amoebas. It is also seen in the McConnell experiments where the flatworm which regenerates from the half with no brain remembers what the original flatworm was taught.

The organizing principles concerning biological life to which xzins speaks are currently being investigated by mathematicians and physicists who have been invited to the table by the biologists. More specifically, the areas include information (successful communication), autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence. Such subjects are of little interest to biologists (Pattee “Bridging the Epistemic Cut”) but are crucial to physicists/mathematicians (Rocha, Schneider, Adami, Kauffman, Wolfram, etc.)

It should also be noted that these mathematicians and scientists do not usually claim to be intelligent design theorists. And to me it doesn’t matter whether the answers are found because of intelligent design or despite it.

6. Agent: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.

A-G, I personally am turned to these two to such a great degree. I believe that is where we'll eventually find our organizing principle.

However, there is still the issue of a phenomenon as organizing principle itself being the cause of all the complexity of life that we see.

The current, insufficient paradigm is "natural selection." Its deficiency as an organizing principle is evident in its inability to explain hyper-complexity.

I'm guessing that a more adequate phenomenon-based organizing principle, if another is proposed, will involve an intersection with another dimension....many have proposed time as a 4th dimension.

But -- what if "will" or "life" were to be dimensional intersections that we mistake for this world phenomena?

We ask "what has departed" when we compare a dead rabbit and a live rabbit. Are we really witnessing the end result of a chain of events that led to the separation of an intersecting dimension?

Indeed, Alamo-Girl. May we add Michael Polanyi to your list of physicists and mathematicians who are "doing" (or have "done") intelligent design without calling it that? If I'm not mistaken, Avshalom Elitzur, Attila Grandpierre, Man Ho, et al. are also candidates for such a list.

To my mind, the Discovery Institute has become a sideshow in recent times; but it's drawing all the attention. However, other scientists around the world continue to "do their thing" regardless. It is interesting to note that non-Americans are in the forefront of the development of a so-called "non-reductive science" -- which does not presume a materialist premise as the exclusive basis of all scientific inquiry.

Yet the neo-Darwinist argument is that ID may not even be mentioned in the public schools, lest American science students suffer a competitive disadvantage relative to the science being done in other parts of the world. To me, this is ludicrous.... If anything, "banning" ID now by court decree (sheesh....) may well mean that American science will have a lot of "catching up to do later on." FWIW.

I note the great interest overseas these days in formulating a "non-reductive" science, particularly in biology. Moreoever, there is a new international institute of theoretical biology in formation, under the auspices of a roster of highly distinguished biologists, physicists, and mathematicians. I'm not absolutely sure of this at the present time, but it may eventually have a presence in a major American university. Everybody stay tuned....

Thanks for your excellent post/essay, Alamo-Girl!

Frankly, I believe the vindication of the intelligent design hypothesis is virtually unavoidable in physics and math.

BTW way the theory of Intelligent Design lays at the foundation of science itself. The strong conviction that the world is intelligently designed by the Creator allowed the natural sciences to be born and develop.

That is why the actual institution of science was created in the medieval universities run by the Catholic Church. (Universities themselves were created by the Catholic Church, not by rare atheists or profit driven merchants or predatory aristocracy.)

Once the market profit, atheist license, political correctness and politics takes over the science, science will die.

A poem by Rilke

The kings of the world are grown old,
inheritors they shall have none.
In childhood death removes the son,
their daughters pale have given, each one,
sick crowns to the powers to hold.

Into coin the rabble breaks them,
today's lord of the world takes them,
stretches them into machines in his fire,
grumbling they serve his every desire;
but happiness stills forsakes them.

The ore is homesick. And it yearns
to leave the coin and leave the wheel
that teach it to lead a life inane.
The factories and tills it spurns;
from petty forms it will uncongeal,
return to the open mountain's vein,
and on the mountain will close again.

(Rainer Maria Rilke from Book of Hours. Translated by Albert Hofstadter as part of Heidegger's What Are Poets For?)