A Scientific Test for the Intelligent Designer

 
Kirk Durston has been participating in the discussion on the thread Kirk Durston's Proof of God. He's been having a bit of difficulty keeping up with the scientific criticisms of his proposed proof of the existence of God an Intelligent Designer. I can understand the problem. In an online debate everyone is on a level playing field. When a paper is mentioned, we can all check it out before replying.

So, Kirk proposes another way of handling the discussion.

I thank Larry for extending the opportunity to post a method to test for whether ID is highly probable or not (the way I phrased it in my lecture). I've been mulling this over even before Larry posted the invite. I have reservations about doing it in this particular forum, primarily because the numbers that would be involved are too few to justify the time and, secondly, I would prefer a live lecture where the back and forth dialogue would be greatly enhanced. I've thought that, perhaps, this could be done at the U of T over a 2 hour period. Larry could book a room and chair the event. I could present my proposal (as I repeatedly referred to it in my lecture) of a method to test for ID. I would sincerely hope that Larry et al would be able to set aside the usual hostility and personal attacks and, instead, run a collegial, honest event. As I repeatedly stressed in my lecture this past week, I am NOT claiming to have a 'proof' for ID. Rather, I am proposing a scientific method to test for it that is a work in progress. When this could take place is another question. Certainly not this semester. I am currently swamped with getting the next phase of my research up and running, and a couple of papers in progress. I cannot even afford the time o respond to these posts and will likely have to bow out today. My suggestion would be sometime in 2008, preferably after the winter semester, say, late April or May.

I'm happy to oblige and I've booked a room for either Tuesday April 22nd or Tuesday April 28th. I invite Kirk Durston to come and present his evidence that protein folding studies indicate the presence of an intelligent designer.

This will be an informal scientific debate attended by scientists who are familiar with protein folding. We have a lot of them here at the University of Toronto. Here's a list of the active labs working in this area in our Department [Protein Folding]. Here are the labs in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics [Molecular and Structural Biology]. And here are the labs in the Dept. of Molecular Genetics [Structural Biology].

I'm pretty sure we could get 20-30 graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members to come out and hear the protein folding evidence for intelligent design. They are experts in the same field as Kirk and I'm sure they will be able to show him where he's going wrong. It will be good for them to get exposure to the quality of work on protein folding that's being done at the University of Guelph.

I think it's safe to say that most of my colleagues have no idea of the importance of their work in the Intelligent Design Creationism field of scientific research. This is an opportunity for them to learn from Kirk Durston. Hopefully, after listening to Kirk my colleagues will be more open to the idea of intelligent design when it comes to reviewing research grants, scientific papers, or even sitting on Ph.D. oral exams—provided Kirk makes a convincing case.

I admire Kirk for his willingness to subject his scientific evidence for intelligent design to a group of experts on protein folding. It's very courageous of him since he's putting his scientific reputation on the line.

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[Photo Credit: The Figure is from my textbook, Horton et al. (2006) p. 110. It's taken from the work of my departmental colleague Hue Sun Chan, one of the world's leading experts on the theoretical aspects of protein folding.]