ABSTRACT
Whatever your opinion of traditional design arguments, versions developed under the rubric of “intelligent design” (ID) are neither distinctive nor uniquely compelling. Nonetheless, proponents of intelligent design such as Michael Behe (1996), William Dembski (1998a, 1999), and Stephen Meyer (1999, 2000) represent them as substantively different from traditional design arguments and as having overcome their inherent deficiencies. Unlike traditional fare (Paley 1802; Swinburne 1979), Dembski insists that ID arguments provide “a rigorous scientific demonstration” such that “[d]emonstrating transcendent design in the universe is a scientific inference, not a philosophical pipe dream” (1999:223). Although it is not entirely clear why an argument based on a philosophical interpretation of the ontological status of the findings of science should constitute a “pipe dream”, this essay shows that ID arguments rely on philosophical premises just as much as have design inferences of the past. In this crucial feature, they are not substantively distinct.
