The blog Evolution Engineered looks at “the evolution-ID debate from an engineer’s perspective.” Recently, he provided some interesting reviews of different parts of The Design Matrix. In this posting, he surveys the ways in which the design perspective can guide research, after noting that I do not consider ID to be science. Since many people have difficulty with that distinction, let me address it.

As I have just noted, the DM approach is much more like a police investigation than science (keeping in mind that science is incapable of determining whether or not life was designed). Thus, the four criteria of the DM (Analogy, Discontinuity, Rationality, and Foresight) can all be used, as part of an investigation, to inspire and guide testable predictions about biotic reality. But here is the catch. Science can only address the questions raised by the criteria themselves (i.e., Is the analogy with an artifact strengthened? Does the molecular machine have system-dependent parts? Is the system a frozen accident? Etc.) Science is not determining whether or not a system is designed. It’s like a police investigation, where science can address whether or not the blood sample came from a suspect, or whether or not the victim died from a blow to the head (etc.), but it cannot determine whether or not the suspect is guilty.

Yet the scientific data can be fitted into the DM. That is, any data from testable hypotheses about the four criteria can be used when scoring with those criteria. The scoring process itself is not science , but the information can be used to assess the strength of a design inference as part of an investigation. As I noted in the book:

While the Design Matrix score might not be perfect, it is a significant step to scale the strength of the teleological signal. Furthermore, the Design Matrix score helps us move beyond the realm of suspicion, as the score itself can serve as both an impetus and a focal point for new research ideas that can in turn feed back into the score, either strengthening it or weakening it over time…… Thus, the Design Matrix can not only bring focus for research, but is also receptive to the findings of research.

With this in mind, let us consider some criticisms raised by someone on JJS P.Eng’s blog.

If these are indeed “working design hypotheses”, they should lead to predictions about the mechanism. For example, can ID “theory” postulate HOW transcriptional proofreading (one of the examples you cite) come about?

This criticism doesn’t work. With regard to the transcriptional proofreading, predictions about mechanisms are not needed from the investigative perspective. What is relevant is that the Rationality criterion, working with background information about other forms of proofreading, predicted that transcription itself would be proofread. Whether or not such proofreading occurred could then be tested. This information could then be fed back into The Matrix.

This criticism about mechanism, while common, is rooted in a faulty understanding of detecting a teleological cause (mind) as if it were just another non-teleological cause. This is explained on pp. 242-243. I should also mention that JJS P.Eng provides an insightful observation:

You are treating design as a mechanism, and any engineer can tell you that is patently false. Engineers make use of mechanisms in their designs.

It would be interesting to see an engineer expand on this theme.

JJS P.Eng also adds:

So the question really is “Can a myopic tinkerer/Blind Watchmaker create natural objects that appear to be designed?” Depending on the object under investigation, the answer can be possible, plausible, or probable. If the answer is only possible, this could raise suspicions of a rational designer. Thus more experiments would be required.

Here I would make a small, but significant change. Instead of the question being “Can a myopic tinkerer/Blind Watchmaker create natural objects that appear to be designed?”, it should be “Did a myopic tinkerer/Blind Watchmaker create natural objects that appear to be designed?”

Let’s get back to the skeptic and his second criticism:

Secondly, it is abundantly clear that all of the observations and bits of evidence used by Mr(s) Gene were provided by scientists who were not laboring under the design paradigm. In fact, it is abundantly clear that no scientist who advocates design has ever contributed one bit of evidence for it. Does this parasitism bother you?

First, it is not “abundantly clear” the observations stem from a non-teleological perspective, as chapter 3 outlines the many ways in which non-teleologists have heavily borrowed from the design perspective. Second, this criticism would have teeth if I was advocating that the DM is science. But since this is not the argument of the DM, the criticism fails. Data, whether generated by simple observation or obtained from any experiment, are always open to reinterpretation and there is nothing wrong with this at all. This is explained in chapter 6.

As for the third criticism:

When ID scientists come up with an observation that clearly supports teleology and also cannot be accommodated by evolutionary thinking, you will have a real reason to blog about this stuff. Until then, it’s just blowing smoke.

Yet the need to come up with something that “also cannot be accommodated by evolutionary thinking” is simply god-of-the-gaps thinking that stems from the traditional template that portrays design and evolution as mutually exclusive concepts. The DM does not rely on god-of-the-gaps thinking (chapter 10) nor the traditional template (chapter 2), does not view evolution and design as mutually exclusive (chaper 2) and outlines the logic of designing through evolution (chapter 7).

The skeptic’s criticisms may apply to the “ID is a growing field of science that shows evolution did not happen” that is common in the ID movement, but all of the criticisms fail against the argument(s) of The Design Matrix.