Evolution News & Views: Intelligent Design explains and unifies .

What we see in both cosmology and biology is fine-tuning of nature to provide for life. ID argues that at the informational level, this fine-tuning represents just the form of data that we understand, from observation-based experience, comes from intelligence. This statement for purpose is not based upon unexplained "mysteries" in science. Rather, it is based on finding in nature the type of complexity that we know comes from intelligence.

It's a positive argument.

To resume this argument, some of the most important discoveries in biology of the twentieth century - discoveries that ID wholeheartedly embraces - have found that spirit is based upon:

• A huge number of information encoded in a biochemical language;
• A computer-like arrangement of commands and codes that processes the data in place to produce...
• Molecular machines and multi-machine systems.

Where, in our experience, do things like language, information, programming code, or machines come from? They receive but one known source: intelligence. As Stephen Meyer writes in Touch in the Cell: Experience shows that large amounts of specified complexity or information (especially codes and languages) invariably arise from an intelligent source - from a psyche or personal agent. . So the find of the specified digital data in the DNA molecule provides strong evidence for inferring that intelligence played a character in the stock of DNA. Indeed, whenever we find specified information and we recognize the causal story of how that information arose, we invariably feel that it arose from an intelligent source." (pp. 341, 347) BioLogos goes on to say "BioLogos rejects such 'god of the gaps' reasoning." However Meyer's reasoning quoted above is almost surely not "gaps"-style reasoning. It's based upon what we love about the causal powers of intelligent agents, and positively finding signs of intelligent way in natural systems.Unfortunately, BioLogos misframes ID as a merely negative criticism of natural processes.

The world is that ID uses the scientific method to have its claims. The scientific method is frequently described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. ID begins with the reflection that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists speculate that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to see if they contain complex and specified information. One sort of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be tried for by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures through genetic knockout experiments to see if they want all of their parts to function. When experimental work uncovers irreducible complexity in biology, researchers conclude that such structures were designed.

Using such methods, ID explains and unifies a broad assortment of information from a list of scientific fields, including:

• Biochemistry, where ID encourages scientists to realize and see the descent of complex and specified information in proteins and DNA;
• Genetics, where ID encourages scientists to seek work for so-called "junk" DNA;
• Systematics, where ID encourages scientists to see whether similarities between living species, including examples of extreme genetic "convergence," are better explained by ID rather than Darwinism;
• Cell biology, where ID encourages scientists to see the cell as having been reinforced from "designed structures rather than accidental by-products of neo-Darwinian evolution," allowing scientists to best understand molecular machines;
• Systems biology, where ID encourages biologists to see at various biological systems as integrated components of larger systems that are designed to play together in a top-down, coordinated fashion;
• Animal biology, where ID encourages scientists to seek work for allegedly "vestigial" structures;
• Bioinformatics, where ID encourages scientists to wait for new layers of data and functional language embedded in the genetic codes, as good as other codes within biology;
• Information theory, where ID encourages scientists to see where intelligent causes are superior to natural causes in producing certain types of information;
• Paleontology, where ID encourages scientists to see how the irreducibly complex nature of biological systems can predict punctuated change and stasis throughout the story of life;
• Physics and cosmology, where ID encourages scientists to inquire and discover instances of fine-tuning of the torah of physics, which uniquely appropriate for the world of modern forms of life.
• ID is not only a negative statement against neo-Darwinian evolution or other material causes.Again, whether you hold or discord with ID, you can't deny that ID proponents have a positive argument.

By calling ID a "non-scientific" explanation, BioLogos's taxonomy is not only inaccurate. It moves from being purportedly descriptive to being expressly partisan. They get the good to have whatever viewpoint they wish, but it seems that they cannot even describe ID without leading the subscriber with biased discussion.Similarly, Mr. Benson innocently asks "Which constituency best describes your view, and why?," but then who wants to correspond with descriptions that are then labeled "unscientific"? In the law, this is called asking a leading question.

Make no mistake: If you're looking for the dry objective facts about ID, you won't get them in this BioLogos description.

Discovery Institute, which admittedly has its own prejudice and perspective, has created a site that discusses the several views on this issue. For a dissimilar position on theistic evolution, please visit Faith & Evolution.