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From DNA to a Designer
Barry Arrington's "ID is Not an Argument from Ignorance" at Uncommon Descent (April 11, 2011).
Still the most common criticism of Intelligent Design is perhaps the "god-of-the-gaps" rejoinder, that it is an argument from ignorance. Barry Arrington offers a twofold rebuttal. First, ID is an abductive form of argument, an inference to the best explanation based on three defensible premises. 1) Living things display irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. 2) Material forces have never been shown to produce either of these characteristics in a living system. 3) Intelligent agents routinely produce irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. Intelligent design, therefore, is, in his view, a justified abductive inference. Secondly, he argues that ID's critique of Darwinism rests not on an absence of evidence but rather the evidence of absence. When there is a justified expectation that evidence should be forthcoming for a claim, the absence of evidence is in fact telling. In the case of Darwinism, Arrington concludes that in spite of a legion of well-funded scientists searching tirelessly for 150 years, the effort to find evidence for undirected material forces producing irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information has "failed utterly".
From the site: "Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If philosophical and scientific concepts of intelligent design (ID) are valid, we believe they will both inspire, and be reflected in, our art, music, literature and film. Much of the focus of the ID movement to date has been on left-brain activities (logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, focused on parts). We believe there is also a right-brain approach to the issues (more intuitive, focused on the creative process, standing back looking at the whole and not just the parts) that may speak to an even wider audience through the arts. Some people, who might never crack a science book, will grasp ID concepts through image, lyric, or prose."