What is the best evidence or argument for intelligent design?
Biology, astronomy, physics, cosmology, and other sciences show credible arguments for intelligent design. Here is some of the best evidence.
In biology, William Dembski established the "explanatory filter" which determines if a phenomenon shows evidence of design through a series of three yes/no questions. Phenomena which show evidence of intelligent design are contingent, complex, and display an independently specified pattern. Those phenomena which show intelligent design, based on the explanatory filter, are not regularities resulting from the laws of nature or the result of chance. Dembski argues that the most important quality of an intelligently designed system is its independently specified pattern.
Also in biology is the discovery of highly complex, non-repeating sequences that have specific functional or communicative purposes coded into their digital information. These are inherent in living cells. The computer-like programing (based upon Dawkins' research) in DNA and other biomolecules shows thought, intention, and intelligence inherent in design.
In physics, cosmic fine tuning shows that physical constants and physical laws that allow our universe to function are balanced on such "razor's edge" variances that the emergence of complex life is nearly impossible to comprehend. The preciseness of the physics that allow for life to continue have persuaded even agnostic scientists to conclude that there must be a transcendent purpose to life and the cosmos.
"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question," wrote British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.
One example shows that if the universe expanded quicker than its one part in ten to the 55th power (1055), the formation of stars, planets, and galaxies would be impossible. If it were any slower, the universe would collapse. This, like other examples in physics and nature, is so precise and works together with other extremely precise physics that it leads reasonable people to conclude intelligent design.
Another example shows that if the ratio of the electromagnetic force to gravity was increased from its one part in ten to the 40th power (1040), stars would expand to 40 percent larger than our sun, burn hotter and quicker, and not allow for life as we know it. If decreased slightly, the stars, including our sun, would not be capable of producing the heavy elements necessary to sustain life.
In cosmology, the near-universal belief among scientists now includes the idea that the cosmos has a definitive beginning. Additionally, the Kalam argument includes the ideas that everything that begins has a cause apart from itself and that the universe indeed began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause apart from itself. This leads us to conclude that something that is uncaused existed before all things that were caused. This something must exist outside space, matter, and time.
Many scientists and philosophers (and of course theologians) have concluded that the universe was created by something outside itself—an intelligent designer.
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