As to the specific arguments of Intelligent Design, I am somewhat the agnostic. But, as I mention here, I find what it reveals about the 'scientific' community to be humorous and instructive.

To recap:

There are two parts to ID: One are statements which might be testable, statements like "life could not have arisen by chance" and "life appears to have been designed." If scientists could come up with a criteria by which we could separate events into "probable" and "improbable", or "designed" versus "not designed", then these propositions COULD possibly be testable, and thus scientific.

Then, there are purely metaphysical propositions or inferences: "If life is improbable, and/or appears to be designed, then it must have had a designer." Again, I agree these statements of divine intent or involvement are easily viewed philosophical or metaphysical. If one has a strict view (as ID opponents seem to have adopted, at least concerning ID) then such statements perhaps should be kept out of scientific discussions.

The problem is, having made this reasonable argument, materialistic evolutionists frequently contradict themselves, and thus convict themselves of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.

After all, if it is impossble to put forth a standard for distinguishing what is "designed", then you cannot also distinguish what is "not designed". And if you can't say what is "improbable" then you equally cannot say what is "probable". If it is unscientific to claim something happened by intent, then you sure as hell can't say it happened without intent ("by chance" or through "blind luck"). And if you can't say that order or complexity implies a designer, then you can even less claim that disorder refutes the idea of a designer.

But many proponents of evolution are not the most rational creatures, as we'll see demonstrated yet again...

Mimivirii

This week's example of a science writer who cannot help but inject his metaphysical beliefs into the evidence comes from the current issue of Discover magazine:

Unintelligent Design ....
In the discussions of intelligent design, one hears a yearning for an old-fashioned creation story, in which some singular, inchoate entity stepped in to give rise to complex life-forms—humans in particular. Now the viruses appear to present a creation story of their own: a stirring, topsy-turvy, and decidedly unintelligent design wherein life arose more by reckless accident than original intent, through an accumulation of genetic accounting errors committed by hordes of mindless, microscopic replication machines.

The author cannot help but lapse into the very crime of which ID proponents are accused: Of drawing metaphysical conclusions from scientific evidence. In this case, the author argues that if life came about in a particular manner, then a creator does not exist. Literally: "Life arose more by reckless accident* than original intent." Wow! Virii disprove a creator-God's existence. Who knew you could make such a leap?**

So this is humorous to me: here is an author who is apparently an avowed enemy of ID, who undoubtedly argues it's unscientific -- and then engages in the exact same sins critics attribute to his opponents! He cannot keep his religious feelings out of the evidence, and leaps from recounting the evidence to preaching what he feels it must prove about God -- metaphysics or religion.

So we see the real source of his disagreement: Not with arguments about evidence, but with the implications of the evidence. He is offended by what ID might imply. But if he finds evidence of "non-design" (or so he thinks -- see below), well, now it's all right and good to leap into philosophy or metaphysics. Science is thus apparently just a cover for the actual argument he is having with his opponents, which is a metaphysical one, as he inadvertantly admits: He can't just cover what the virii do or don't do. To him, it all proves something about God.

Yet this kind of reasoning is, again, by the arguments of his peers, verboten.

(Heh, unless it arrives at an anti-God conclusion, apparently!)

[* Divine intent, as the author sees it, must apparently exclude anything looking like a 'reckless accident' to us. By that reasoning, all amazing co-incidences (sometimes called "miracles") must actually disprove God's existence. Did the Red Sea part at the right moment for the Israelites to cross, lest they be killed otherwise? That looks like a "reckless accident" to us, so it surely disproves God's involvement! That's the chain of reasoning we're supposed to accept here, anyway. Pardon the pun, but it's a classic case of "Damned if you do; damned if you don't."]

[** "Virii (or any mechanism) disprove a creator-God's existence?" Tell that to the earliest scientists: They always felt that when they discovered a law, they were discovering how the law-giving creator did his work. This lot believes that each times a new mechanism is found, it disproves there was a law-giver. I'm not sure how that logic is supposed to work either, but then again, I clearly don't have nearly as much faith of as an ardent materalist.]

Illogic

Even more amusingly, all that aside, the author's argument is, at the core, a logical fallacy. In formal logic, we write "A -> B" to mean "If A, then B." For example, "Dog -> Animal" might be read as "If something is a dog, then it is also an animal."

A logically sound equivalent statement is "!B -> !A", said "if not B, then not A." Continuing our previous example, if something is NOT an animal, then we can conclude it is also NOT a dog.

A common fallacy at this point is to go from "A -> B" to "!A -> !B". In our case: "If it's not a dog, then it must not be an animal." This is unsound and fallacious: it could be a cat, which is not a dog but is indeed an animal. This is called the "fallacy of inverse implication."

But the author is here employing this exact fallacy: He is attempting to transform "A -> B" ("evidence for design implies a creator") into "!A -> !B" ("a lack of design thus implies no creator"). The author may be in love with the idea of science, but his thinking is hilariously unsound and illogical.

Well, it would be hilarious if it wasn't so representative of the rest of his field.

Neo-Darwinian Evolution: Unscientific and Unfalsifiable?

Another funny thing about the article is that it contains what would seem to be evidence against classical Darwinism. Remember, according to Karl Popper, an idea is "scientific" if it is falsifiable -- that is, if someone can suggest a criteria by which it could be falsified.

An example Popper gave of an "unscientific" belief was Marxism. Originally, Marx predicted that a great revolution would come to industrialized nations which would cause everybody to share everything and destroy all class barriers. When it didn't happen, Marx's followers came up with new explanations: Now any outcome could be fit into and explained by the (neo-)Marxist worldview; no outcome could disprove it.

In Popper's view, the original formulation of Marxism was "scientific", because it had a set of conditions by which it could be falsified: if the predicted results (a revolution) didn't occur, then the theory was false. But neo-Marxism was unscientific, since there was no possible set of evidence which could refute it.

Likewise, Darwinism predicted gradual evolution from simple to complex via random mutations. That clearly has a falsifiable condition or three: If the fossil record failed to show gradual change from one form to another, then Darwinism would fail.

Only problem: The fossil record didn't show that, but instead implied that evolution, if it happened at all, happened by "fits and starts". So was Darwinism rejected? Heavens no: Like Marxism, it was reformulated so that the new evidence wouldn't disprove it. So neo-Darwinism can't be falsified by any fossil evidence. A gradual change wouldn't disprove it, nor would sudden jumps.

So what about the other proposition: That we would expect to see life progress from simple to complex? The article itself answers this question for us:

The new virus, officially known as Mimivirus (because it mimics a bacterium), is a creature "so bizarre," as The London Telegraph described it, "and unlike anything else seen by scientists... that... it could qualify for a new domain in the tree of life." Indeed, Mimivirus is so much more genetically complex than all previously known viruses, not to mention a number of bacteria, that it seems to call for a dramatic redrawing of the tree of life.

"This thing shows that some viruses are organisms that have an ancestor that was much more complex than they are now," says Didier Raoult, one of the leaders of the research team at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France, that identified the virus. "We have a lot of evidence with Mimivirus that the virus phylum is at least as old as the other branches of life and that viruses were involved very early on in the evolutionary emergence of life."

And:

The implications of that finding are truly radical: that Mimi, or a Mimi-like ancestor, emerged prior to the three other domains and played a key role in inventing the very cells of which humans and all complex cellular life-forms are made.... But simple does not always mean less evolved. Mimi's outsize complement of genes — so large that the virus is tantalizingly close to being an independent organism — suggest to many scientists that Mimivirus underwent reductive evolution early on and shed some of its genome, including the genes necessary to replicate on its own.

So here we have an apparently ancient, ancient virus, which is much more complex than modern virii -- in fact, more complex even than some modern bacteria. (How much more complex? Many modern viruses have 10 genes. Mimivirii have 1,000 or more!) Further, they believe this virus was itself may have been important to the creation of modern lifeforms.

The phrase "reductive evolution" is a dead giveaway: If evolution is the movement from simple creatures to more complex, then what do we call the exact opposite? Degradation? Devolution? Haha! You silly reader! That's called "Evolution" also! "Reductive evolution!" A bit of doublespeak akin to saying your child is "regressively improving" when they stop getting A's and start bringing home F's!

Another whopper is "simple does not mean less evolved?" Really? Well if simpler does not mean less evolved than what the hell would? So we see, again, that people in the story are so stuck on the idea of "evolution", as a metaphysical tool attached to the religious idea of materialism, that they're willing to actually invert the definition to make sure it can still be applied!

(I'm not claiming that Mimivirus didn't come first, I'm just pointing out that "evolution" has now been completely defined away from it's original Darwinian meaning of a series of changes from simpler to more complex.)

Reductive "Evolution" in Action!

Finally, Darwin proposed that change happened through random, individual mutations. Yet if some of the wilder implications of the article are correct, then perhaps it was, instead, viral interactions which were responsible for some of the radical changes which brought about contemporary life. Again, that's certainly not what Darwin proposed.

So here we have an oddity: An article which refutes two of Darwin's three main assertions, suggesting entirely different mechanisms. And yet... for all that... this is the cover story for a montage of what face? Oh yes, dear reader, you guessed it: Darwin's!

So if we see a gradual change, that confirms Darwinian evolution. But if we see radical transitions, without apparent intermediate forms, that also proves Darwinian evolution. If we see organism going from simple to complex, that proves Darwinism. Yet if we see an organism whose earlier ancestors were more complex, well, that also proves Darwinism. And if we find that perhaps Darwin's mechanism -- random individual mutation -- wasn't really sufficient to explain changes over time? No problem -- it's all still "Darwinian evolution!"

Clearly, "Darwinism" is now absolutely unfalsifiable!

So why on earth should all these things be "Darwinian evolution", when they so clearly aren't? It's as if Einstein's refinements were also called "Newtonian physics", as were Heisenberg's, as were Planck's, as were Feynman's, as was brane theory...

I'll tell you why: Because "Darwinism" is no longer a description of Darwin's actual theory and mechanisms: it is now simply a codeword for "anything that seems to undermine the idea of a theistic creator" (whether it actually does or not!) -- in short, for a materialistic conception of our origins, in the "spirit" of Darwin's original materialism.

For some, this is a religion, and Darwin, a religious mascot -- too important to jettison; as with Freud and Marx, the sacred icons must be preserved, even when their original musings are shown to have been hopelessly inaccurate and even racist. Loss of falsifiability is a rather small price to pay for advancement of your pet religious ideology, no?

As with the theists, so with the atheists. Freud, Marx, and Darwin preserve us! (Only theists don't generally deny that their faith has a strong subjective element. The danger here is that passions can hide where they need never hear the sound of their own name. What better cover for an unscientific, irrational religious belief than "science" itself? I have no doubt that this is why so many atheists seek refuge in the sciences.)

So no matter what we find in the future, whether things are seen to arise from previous forms, or appear, as best as we can tell, with great complexity, ex nihlo -- whether Darwin's mechanisms are proved right, right, right, or laughably wrong, there are two things we know with absolute certainty:

(1) As above, all new discoveries will be spun (oh-so-subtly) as disproving theism, and

(2) All proposed or confirmed mechanisms will be called "Darwinism"

And of course, the fact that all possible kinds of evidence do and will continue to be construed as prove "evolution", much less "Darwinian evolution" (i.e. materialism) puts the final nail in it: By Popper's definition, this is not science in the slightest, but rather is an expression of an non-scientific religious faith.

Today, it's just spin; perhaps tomorrow the "hard" sciences will go the way of the softer sciences, and suppress any evidence that is believed to undermine the cherished outlook of the establishment. Look to Harvard and the Soviet faith: Theism has surely had its scientific censors, but history shows they are small fry when compared to the fervor and illogic of fundamentalist materialists.