Abstract
William Dembski claims to have established a decision process to determine when highly unlikely events observed in the natural world are due to Intelligent Design. This article argues that, as no implementable randomness test is superior to a universal Martin-Lof test, this test should be used to replace Dembski’s decision ¨ process. Furthermore, Dembski’s decision process is flawed, as natural explanations are eliminated before chance. Dembski also introduces a fourth law of thermodynamics, his “law of conservation of information,” to argue that information cannot increase by natural processes. However, this article, using algorithmic information theory, shows that this law is no more than the second law of thermodynamics. The article concludes that any discussions on the possibilities of design interventions in nature should be articulated in terms of the algorithmic information theory approach to randomness and its robust decision process.
William Dembski, in a number of works, including The Design Inference (1998), No Free Lunch (2002b), and “Specification: The Pattern that Signifies Intelligence” (2005), claims that there is a robust decision process that can determine when certain structures observed in the natural world are the product of Intelligent Design (ID) rather than natural processes. As defined by the Discovery Institute Web page (Discovery Institute 2012), the theory of ID “holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.”
CONCLUSION
There are several serious flaws with Dembski’s claim that an explanatory filter can be used to provide clear evidence that structures observed in the universe require a design explanation outside of nature. In summary:
Dembski’s design template eliminates natural causes too early, thereby forcing a design explanation when none is warranted. The choice is not between chance and ID, but between natural laws and ID.
Dembski’s attempt to define an information measure, CSI to identify ordered structures is inconsistent. A modified measure based on Kolmogorov’s deficiency in randomness is a much more consistent and useful measure of order.
