ID is very different from creation science. To an outsider, at least, it does not seem to depend on massive distortion of the evidence and hopeless incoherencies in its interpretation. Nor does it depend, like biblical literalism, on the assumption that the truth of ID is immune to empirical evidence to the contrary. What it does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance. Once it is assigned a significant prior probability, it becomes a serious candidate for support by empirical evidence, in particular empirical evidence against the sufficiency of standard evolutionary theory to account for the observational data. Critics take issue with the claims made by defenders of ID about what standard evolutionary mechanisms can accomplish, and argue that they depend on faulty assumptions. Whatever the merits, however, that is clearly a scientific disagreement, not a disagreement between science and something else.
A great deal therefore hangs on the sources of differences between investigators in their attitude to this prior probability, and the relevance of those sources to the scientific character of their convictions. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the two sides are in symmetrical positions. If one scientist is a theist and another an atheist, this is either a scientific or a nonscientific disagreement between them. If it is scientific (supposing this is possible), then their disagreement is scientific all the way down. If it is not a scientific disagreement, and if this difference in their nonscientific beliefs about the antecedent possibilities affects their rational interpretation of the same empirical evidence, I do not see how we can say that one is engaged in science and the other is not. Either both conclusions are rendered nonscientific by the influence of their nonscientific assumptions, or both are scientific in spite of those assumptions.
(Thomas Nagel, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 [spring 2008]: 187-205, at 196-7)
Note from KBJ: As I predicted, Nagel is being vilified for writing this essay. (Google his name.) But why? All he is doing is exploring the status of ID. Is it science? If so, is it good science? These are the questions philosophers are trained to ask and answer. To vilify someone for asking them is to engage in thuggery, not philosophy. Sad to say, but some philosophers are thugs. They prefer attacking people for discussing certain issues to addressing the issues themselves. These thugs should be drummed out of the ranks, not because of their views but because of their despicable behavior. As many of you know, I have been attacked by some of the same people who are attacking Nagel, and for the same reason: I had the gall to treat Design Theory (and religion generally) respectfully.
Note 2 from KBJ: Do not say that I'm contradicting my earlier post, in which I took a philosopher to task for making legal judgments. Nagel is not making scientific judgments. He is doing philosophy of science. You don't need scientific credentials to do philosophy of science, although I continue to believe that the best philosophers of X have credentials in X. Almost all great philosophers of law, for example, have legal credentials.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 