The greatest argument for science is that it is the only thing that prevents us thinking exactly what we want

Or something like that.
Just thought I’d add it to the mix since it seems to me that quote is Demski dismissing science because he wants to believe exactly what he wants.

Are ugly things easier to allow naturalistic explanations for?

Excellent point Fred, and a great observation about where this line of thinking leads us…

As far as never investigating the designer, that’s the M.O. of ID. From the very beginning, they shrug their shoulders about who the designer is, thus claiming they are not religious in any way. They got their head handed to them on a platter in the Dover trial however, as that defense proved a spectacular failure. They couldn’t quite escape their own words and there unequivocal beginnings within the traditional creationist movement.

Where’s the hard line between what’s acceptable to have a naturalistic explanation and what’s not? Who decided on that, and why? Even to the strictest religious person in the world some naturalistic explanations are acceptable (the mechanism of airplane flight, for example, or that gravity causes things to fall). In the quote above, Dembski indicates that it’s the beauty that makes him lean towards non-materialism. Are ugly things easier to allow naturalistic explanations for? And what about all of the ugly things that are really complex, like the innards of the human body? Dembski is implying that they’re okay to attribute to nature, right? And clearly there IS some science that Dembski believes in. Not just things outside of biology, such as computers, but even some biological things. After all, he’s not against every single facet of evolution. And I’d guess he believes in the science of medicine.

Anyway, ID is not necessarily anti-materialistic. Demski has absolutely no clue or proof whether or not the “designer” submits to materialism or is the creator of it. In other words, he doesn’t know whether the designer evolved or not. Even God may have evolved. Surely it must be harder to believe that God just sponaneously appeared from nothing than that the lowly ant evolved. I know that’s an old argument against ID, but I’ve never heard even an attempt to answer it. I’d like to know, if the ant is too amazing and complex to have arisen naturally, must God– infinitely more complex and amazing than an ant– not also have been designed?

One more thing: The ID folks like to talk about the analogy of the watch maker. Yet they abandon this analogy when they find it convenient. If you are studying the watch and want to know all about it, doesn’t it naturally follow that you’d need (or at least want) to know as much about the watchmaker as possible? Wouldn’t you put some effort into researching the watchmaker? Not the ID folks. They’ve repeatedly stated that they are not putting any effort, physical or mental, into finding out about the designer. Doesn’t that seem odd? Isn’t the designer of life on earth a fascinating research subject? And it doesn’t have to go into the supernatural either; the ID mantra is that they don’t know who the designer is, so it could be gaseous beings from Jupiter for all they know. Jupiter can be studied. Why aren’t they investigating?