The IDos­phere (IDome?) is odd­ly enthu­si­as­tic about an arti­cle in the Chris­t­ian Post about Paul Nel­son’s attempts to defend ID. The prob­lem is, the title of the piece refutes itself: Intel­li­gent Design Defend­ed by Unsolved Genet­ic Puz­zle.

Set aside (at least momen­tar­i­ly) the issue of whether the author intend­ed to refer to Nel­son as an unsolved genet­ic puz­zle (we have a pret­ty good idea of where his genes came from, after all).

The prob­lem is, an unsolved prob­lem can­not be an argu­ment for some the­o­ry pos­i­tive state­ment about the world. If the prob­lem is unsolved, it sug­gests that IDC does­n’t solve it either, after all.

I struck out “the­o­ry” above because Nel­son insist­ed “that you don’t need a the­o­ry of design to know that is design.” Alas, this isn’t true. With­out a the­o­ry, all you have is hand-wav­ing, maybe with some intu­ition thrown in. You have no explana­to­ry pow­er. And the world isn’t always intu­itive, so you real­ly have noth­ing at all.

Essen­tial­ly, the head­line’s accu­rate sum­ma­ry of IDC is that it can be best defend­ed by igno­rance. And if that’s so, I have to won­der why any­one would find it worth defending.