As to some hypothetical intelligence of a genome itself, that splendidly explains why the great majority of species that have ever existed are now extinct, right?

Actually, yes, it does. Or at least could. It’s certainly worth considering, IMHO.

As a mind exercise, let’s take as a major premise that there is an intelligence inherent to the genome, which purpose is to best adapt life to whatever environmental conditions prevail.

One minor premise might be that such an intelligence must of necessity not operate too quickly, lest it overreact to temporary changes and leave a species unable to survive in a restored status quo. But in reacting slowly, cataclysmic changes, such a a comet strike, will inevitably cause that strategy to fail. It may be intelligent, but nobody’s claiming that it’s omniscient, nor that it will necessarily be able to achieve similar results in all species. It still has to work with the raw material that each species in its current configuration provides it. Like ourselves, sometimes it wins, and sometimes it fails miserably.

Alternately, one could choose the minor premise that the purpose of an inherent intelligence might be to effect adaptation to environmental stresses more efficiently than random mutation could possibly achieve. In that case, would it not be reasonable to conclude that if sustaining life as a whole is the ultimate goal, then perhaps the most efficient means of sustaining it is to allow species that no longer further that goal to die off?

Just musing here, but consider the very long time it took for life on Earth to develop past the stage of simple single-celled organisms, and the vastly more brief time thereafter, when complex life virtually exploded. Could it not be that what was actually necessary to evolve, and what took so long, was the base-level genomic intelligence that subsequently allowed life to design itself? Sort of like robots that use a rudimentary intelligence to design ever more intelligent and capable new models. If so, then it both explains the flaws in Darwinian theory relative to speciation, as well as supporting the notion that random mutation had a hand in the development of life on Earth.

Of course, it might be that none of this is correct, and the answer lies neither in ID nor in strict Darwinism. But the instant we shut down any path of inquiry because it offends our bias against any hint of the supernatural, we cease to be scientific in our method.

Have you ever actually read the play?

Oh course I have read Hamlet. And Julius Caesar (still my favorite), and Richard III (”Dive, thoughts, down to my soul”), and Titus Andronicus, and of course The Taming of the Shrew …. and plenty more. My folks had lots of books in the house when I was growing up. The Bard was a family pass time….

Please don’t insult me, Palinurus. I am an educated person. I don’t believe the Earth is 6000 years old, but I do indeed believe that there are mountains of truths hidden in plain sight from the mundane expectations of Popper’s epistemology.

When ID skeptics object to the claim that the universe was designed based upon the highly improbable ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe, they often cite the possibility that there are actually an infinite number of universes — or multiverses — and our universe just happened to win a cosmic lottery to get the conditions right for life.

And infinite number of universes, they argue, reduces the odds that ours just “happened to get it right” because it shows that some universes were bound to get the right conditions for life eventually.

However, a Nature article published January 6, 2006 noted that this multiverse hypothesis is not testable. The Nature article wrote, “Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have argued that multiple universes could have formed during a period of cosmic inflation that preceded the Big Bang. More recently, String Theorists have calculated that there could have been 10 to the 500th universes, which is more than the number of atoms in our observable universe. Under these circumstances it becomes more reasonable to assume that several would turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and zillions of darts thrown at the dart board, says Susskind. ‘Surely, a large number of them are going to end up in the target zone.’ And of course we exist in our universe, because we couldn’t exist anywhere else. It’s an intriguing idea with just one problem, says Gross: it’s impossible to disprove. Because our universe is almost by definition everything we can observe, there are no apparent measurements that can confirm whether we exist within a cosmic landscape of multiple universes, or if ours is the only one. And because we cannot falsify the idea, Gross says, it isn’t science.”

Ironically, the National Academy of Sciences member, Leonard Susskind, was given print space, saying that we shouldn’t reject the multiverse hypothesis on the grounds that it isn’t testable. Susskind, too, finds it deeply troubling that there’s no way to test the principle, but he isn’t yet ready to rule it out completely. Says Susskind in Nature: “It would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science.”

Many scientists challenge ID on the grounds that it isn’t testable. Plainly, the multi-universe hypothesis is not testable. Yet you see prominent physicists like Leonard Susskind arguing that, even it it isn’t testable, “it would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science.”

If an ID proponent made such a claim, you would never see it in Nature. Nonetheless, ID is testable. But when critics claim ID is not testable, no one in the scientific community gives ID proponents the courtesy given to Dr. Susskind. Could you imagine Nature quoting William Dembsky is he said, “It would be very foolish to throw out the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science”?

Perhaps there is a double standard at work in the scientific community regarding Intelligent Design and testability.

Notwithstanding Casey’s excellent point that there is a “double standard at work in the scientific community regarding Intelligent Design and testability”, I personally think that the multiverse theory holds within it the fruits of a proof for the existence of God as defined by Frank Tipler in his Omega Point Theory. This is because — assuming the multiverse is true — in some iterations of the multiverse, Tipler’s conditions for the creation of the Omega Point will become real.

Note that the Omega Point Theory requires that the universe collapse into a closed three-sphere (see David Deutsch – chapter 14, The Fabric of Reality). According to Tipler, the universe will collapse into a three-sphere ONLY if an intelligent agency develops a fleet of self-replicating von Neumann probes for the purpose of destroying the universe’s free baryons. (It is the existence of free baryons that is causing the universe to inflate.) By destroying a critical mass of these baryons, the universe will indeed collapse into a three-sphere, allowing for the emergence of the Omega Point, which is itself identified as God.

In other words, if the multiverse is true, then it is inevitable that — at least in one universe of the 10 to the 500th that are expected to exist — the Omega Point will in fact emerge. And God only needs to emerge ONCE in order for him to become God, the Self-Creating Creator of all possible universes.

The multiverse, in my opinion, guarantees the existence of God.

It is possible, for instance, entirely in keeping with the concept of intelligent design, to question whether the genome itself might have a form of intelligence that allows it to respond to environmental stresses, without ever having to rely on religion or some concept of a supernatural hand. It is not, as the scoffers would have one believe, irrational to ask such questions; they just violate their worldview, so must be suppressed.

That is an excellent point. Darwinists would indeed shut down such a concept because they would see it as too closely tied to metaphysics.

Shakespeare has a perfect comeback to orthodox Darwinists: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act I scene V)

This is not to say that ID offers any answers, nor that every point it raises is valid — it’s still developing as a thought process, after all — only that it does point out where strict Darwinian theory fails according to the theory’s creator himself. Chief among those failures, and what Darwinists have yet to explain to my satisfaction, is the very issue of how massively complex structures that require a complete process for survival could possibly have evolved stepwise, as Darwinian theory insists, or how entirely new ones develop that way.

The problem, it seems to me, is that the proponents of Darwinian evolution are so intent on removing any hint of the supernatural from science that they refuse to consider the question of whether there is an intelligence to how life’s diversity has come about. It is possible, for instance, entirely in keeping with the concept of intelligent design, to question whether the genome itself might have a form of intelligence that allows it to respond to environmental stresses, without ever having to rely on religion or some concept of a supernatural hand. It is not, as the scoffers would have one believe, irrational to ask such questions; they just violate their worldview, so must be suppressed.