Detecting Design in the Natural Sciences, Essay Example

William Dembski wrote an essay, “Detecting Design in the Natural Sciences”, in which he promoted the concepts of specified complexity. The purpose of this essay was to convey his message, introduce and persuade his message about his beliefs in regard to intelligent design, which opposes the scientific evolutionary theory. In reading this essay, I came across three characteristics that are the criteria for specified complexity: Its makeup is not simply the result of a natural law, its makeup is complex, and it’s makeup replicates an independent given pattern or specification.

Dembski argues that all three of the characteristics of specified complexity are reliable indicators of design from an intelligent agent, because it is able to detect what is actually occurring among other possibilities. He even goes as far to correlate specified complexity as a reliable empirical marker of intelligence in the same way as fingerprints are a reliable marker of an individual’s presence. Dembski also implies that the specified complexity is a pattern that illustrates huge amounts of independent specified information that is also complex in nature. For instance, he uses the movie Contact as an example. He says that the researchers in the movie received meaningless random signals for years; however they discovered a pattern of beats and pauses that corresponded to prime numbers between 2 and 101. The signal, therefore had a specified complexity and the researchers took that as evidence of intelligent design.

Dembski also describes specified complexity as not occurring by chance. He states in the essay that it occurs beyond natural causes; however, at the same time, he argues that naturally occurring systems themselves, exhibit specified complexity. For instance, he talks about writing on a paper. We know that this didn’t happen by chance, but from a human actually writing on the paper. All in all, Dembski’s ideas are theories that are widely controversial and for some a little non-realistic.

All three of three of the characteristics that make up specified complexity when used alone are inadequate for design; however, when all of these characteristics are combined, they serve as the indicator for design. An example of this is when specified complexity is applied to biological organisms. When looking at an organism and its complex system of enzymes, cells, and so forth, we know that those have clear functions that can be assessed and we can attribute them to design; however, we must note that some of the aspects of the organism can result from chance.