the difference between design in science and "intelligent design" laid bare...

[acroyear]

Angry Astronomer: DI's Apples & Oranges:

In this post, Denyse O'Leary (on Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog) writes about a recent scandal in which the news media was caught posting a poorly photoshopped image of smoke over Berut that was apparently intended to make the scene more ominous. The deception, like many others, was quickly outed by attentative bloggers who noticed the similar natures of the smoke columns and were able to show precisely how the feat was accomplished.

O'Leary makes the claim that this process is synonomyous with the process Intelligent Design supporters use to detect design in nature.

Unfortunately, aside from the initial step of say "well, it looks designed, so perhaps it is", the two cases have very little in common. The Photoshopped image scenario has several components that intelligent design lacks.

The major one is that there is an obvious intent that gives purpose, and motivation, to the Photoshopped image's creation. With intelligent Design, There's no intent. Apparently, the designer just thought it'd be a good idea to put a bunch of organisms together.

The second thing that differentiates the two, is that the Photoshopped picture case did something ID has stubbornly refused to do: demonstrate how it's possible. The blogger that outed the media took the image and demonstrated which parts were copied from where. In science, this would be considered a very good test of a hypothesis. As far as ID, well, they still haven't bothered to explain how the designer did anything. They just claim he/she/it did.

emph mine