Tuesday, July 31, 2012

On Testing Intelligent Design

Lydia McGrew, Ph.D. in English Literature, offers an interesting paper on how to test for intelligent design: Testability, Likelihoods, and Design.

 HT: Victor Reppert

3 comments:

  1. Interesting that the paper discusses a bayesian take on infering design. Dr. Carrier (who is an expert in Bayes Theorem: watch?v=HHIz-gR4xHo) has an essay in the book The End of Christianity. He applies Bayes Theorem to the question of design, and ultimately concludes that there is at most a 15 percent chance that life and the universe are intelligently designed. This means there is at least an 85 percent chance that life and the universe are not designed.

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  2. Hi Adam,

    I'm not an expert on Bayes Theorem, though I get the impression a lot of the calculations depend upon background assumptions and beliefs. But what apparently both Carrier and McGrew agree upon is that ID is testable.

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  3. I would agree that parts of the intelligent design hypothesis are testable. For example, irreducible complexity is testable to an extent. I don't believe true irreducible complexity has ever been proven by any ID proponents, but it could be.

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