If "intelligent design" theory fits in with all the facts,
would that make it a legitimate theory? If so, what would
the difference make what it's "roots" are?
Couldn't someone argue that evolutionary theory is based on
the fact that ONLY one causation of physical findings is
allowed,(namely "nature" --whatever "nature" really is) and
its roots are in atheistic philosophy, and therefore it is not legitimate? Richard Lewontin has admitted that modern science won't let in creative acts by an outside agency, because it is not of the paradigm of raw, untrammelled "nature" which is widely accepted by many
observers and experimenters.
A good philosophical question to ask, is this...
Is the realm of "nature" only what we can observe (by any purely physical means), or is "nature" that which exists, whether we can observe it or not? How one approaches that
question will indicate where their bias, and experimental
methods will lead them.
If I were defending ID (and you couldn't pay me enough!) that's what I would try to argue. But there's so much evidence of the religious roots, and so little actual science produced.
Don't confuse philosophy with science.
I asked this on a previous thread, but it seems appropriate here too.
In CS/ID: What is your dataset? What are your methods?
Science relies on observation to establish data (facts), then through hypotheses and testing (falsifying) of hypotheses constructs a theoretical framework to explain the dataset.
CS/ID has the final answer already--God did it--so it does not need a dataset or any of the other methods normal to science.
If this is not the case, please enlighten me: What is your dataset? What are your methods?
You were OK until you started talking about atheistic philosophy. Modern science is based on simple observation and reasoning about observations.
Science doesn't claim to be all-knowing. And it's generally indifferent to philosophy, except when the philosophy says don't trust your eyes. If everything we see is a lie, then science shouldn't produce any results like electric appliances, computers or computer networks, which wouldn't be real anyway.
Also you should be aware that modern science has roots in the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). They were not exactly atheist philosophers.
Intelligent Design does fit with all the facts. But that's it's problem, it fits with anything. Whatever we find in the universe you can answer that the "intelligence" made it that way.
If lightning strikes you dead, God did it. If we find fossils in the ground, God put them there. If we found them this way, or that way, with this radiocarbon dating or that, then God did it that way, and we don't know any more than we started out with.
Intelligent Design is the anti-science. It implies that we can't discover anything, because the Intelligence can fool us, or change the facts at His whim. We can never be sure of anything under such a philosophy.
One of the big problems of ID and the irreproducible complexity argument is this. If life is so complicated that it needed a designer, then, in order to design the complexity of living things, said Designer must have a similar or higher level of complexity. From whence did that complexity originate. Also, how did a Designer create the various forms of life with their basic body plans. What mechanism or force in nature accomplished this. After all if a Designer did this for life on earth, then man can do the same thing, given the knowledge and resources.
The other problem is that a Designer may 'fit the facts' as you say, but offers no testable predictions like evolution does. Nor is there any test that can show ID is false. Every theory in science has testable hypotheses that can shoot it down. Evolution has withstood, to this time, that challenge. ID does not permit that challenge.
Lewontin has admitted that modern science won't let in creative acts by an outside agency, because it is not of the paradigm of raw, untrammelled "nature" which is widely accepted by many observers and experimenters.
And on that note, the Designer, for ID to be science, must be a part of nature. If the designer can interact with the universe, then the Designer is, in some way, a part of our universe and is part of the natural world. Even humans are part of that natural world.
A good philosophical question to ask, is this... Is the realm of "nature" only what we can observe (by any purely physical means), or is "nature" that which exists, whether we can observe it or not?
That is one of the axioms of science. For something to be observable, it must be detectable. In order to be observed, it must have some interaction in the physical universe. If it cannot interact with the physical universe, it is not observable. If it is not observable, then how can it's existence be determined? It is indeed a good philosophical question, but it is not a scientific question.
No. Intelligent design also fits all the non-facts, too. ID has no more content than Last Thursdayism (which fits all facts, known, unknown, unknown-unknown, Rumsfeldean, etc.)