Just as sciences such as archaeology and forensics can detect design, so
it is a valid scientific practice to detect intelligent design in nature.
The success of those sciences shows that the methods of intelligent design
work in practice.
Source:
Dembski, William A., 1999. Intelligent Design: The bridge between
science and theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
Dembski, William A., 2001. Is intelligent design a form of natural
theology?
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2001.03.ID_as_nat_theol.htm
Response:
The methods of archaeology and forensics are unrelated to any methods
proposed by intelligent design advocates. Archaeologists and forensic
scientists look for patterns that they know, from prior observation,
are the sort of patterns that human designers make. The same goes for
all other sciences that detect design. ID theorists have no prior
observation of other designers to go by. Or, if they do use the
methods of archaeologists and forensic scientists, they are implicitly
assuming that the designers were human.
The only proposed intelligent design method, Dembski's filter,
is eliminative; it tries to detect design only by eliminating other
possibilities. The methods used by scientists are not eliminative.
They consider many possibilities and choose the one that best fits the
data. If none fit the data, the question is left unresolved.
