Unfortunately, I missed Dr. Wood’s Darwin Day lecture a few Weeks ago at NDSU. The talk “Scientific Illiteracy: Definition, Prognosis, Treatment” sounded very interesting.

I noticed comments from the Science and Religion Forum or possibly from Dr. Wood revealed a misunderstanding. Just to clarify: Intelligent Design theory DOES accept the standard aspects of a scientific theory:

An additional misunderstanding was that:

Intelligent Design “fails to meet these criteria and is therefore not a scientific theory.”

Allow me to take these one by one!

1. Science deals with understanding natural phenomena. This however does not mean that we pretend that Science has no metaphysical implications.

For example, notice the metaphysical and philosophical implications of materialist evolutionary science:

“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.   . . . . . Darwin’s theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism-of much of science..” (Futuyma D.J., “Evolutionary Biology”, [1979], Sinauer Associates: Sunderland MA, Second Edition, 1986, p.2)

. . . . “biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God.”

Stephen J. Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1977), 147.

As far as ID science, it implies a higher purpose of metaphysical intention, to wit-‘a Mind.’

2. To answer point two; yes, a Mind doesn’t have “substantial power to explain the observations” of design in life systems.
3. Does Intelligent Design science have “predictive power?”

The answer to this is absolutely! One case in point is the most recent discovery that ‘junk DNA’ has very important regulatory functions in cell genetics—a prediction of Intelligent Design science.

Junk DNA for many years was held to be evidence of the history of trail and error mutational experimentation that evolution stumbled through to arrive at functional lines of code. Junk DNA, since it did not code for proteins, and no one knew what it did, was thought to be genetic fossil evidence for evolutionary science.

“…the junkiness of the vast majority of the genome as an assured scientific reality and one that is, in the specific case of “pseudogenes,” “useful for. . . embarrassing creationists.”

“Junk DNA is just what a Darwinist would expect . . .”   “The Greatest Show on Earth” (pp. 332-333),

In 2009 “Why Evolution Is True,” by Dr. Jerry Coyne predicted (page 71) that according to evolution the genome should be “replete with inactive, functionless dead genes.”

Now, the research is in! As many now know, a decade-long project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), has found that at least 80% of the human genome serves important regulatory purposes, biochemically speaking. “I don’t think anyone would have anticipated even close to the amount of sequence that ENCODE has uncovered that has functional importance,” (well!) John A. Stamatoyannopoulos, an ENCODE researcher.

ENCODE’s results represent a major breakthrough for Intelligent Design science.

Darrel Lindensmith, NDSU Intelligent Design Fellowship