Intelligent Design: Describing and Criticizing Elliott Sober’s View Point

Abstract

Intelligent Design (ID) is an attempt to defend the idea that the order of nature bears marks of its Creator. This image of the concept has a historical root in ancient Greek philosophy. ID argues that science and theology support each other, when they are rightly understood. Under the influence of investigations of modern sciences –especially biology and cosmology- ID became the most serious battle in contemporary debates between theists and atheists. In this article, after an introduction for describing ID in general, Sober’s view point on the subject is described and criticized. Sober’s main claim is that ID is not testable and so should be rejected from scientific enterprise. In this article, we show that (1) his notion of testability is not complete and (2) ID can satisfy the testability criterion with some considerations. Sober's critics mainly underlie his notion of designer (divine) intervention in nature. The first response of this article is not only a deductive proof for ID, but also a critique of methodological naturalism.

Keywords

• intelligent design
• elliott sober
• testability
• design argument
• fine-tuning argument