Creation Moment 6/21/2015 - CSI & IC = DESIGN

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him,

and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

Acts 17:27

"Recently an atheist student emailed me to ask how it's reasonable to claim that an "unobserved designer" is responsible for complex features of nature, like high CSI (complex specified information) and irreducibly complex structures.

Thus, just because something is "unobservable" by our eyes at this exact moment, doesn't mean we

This is the structure of your cell's battery charger

can't find compelling evidence that it exists, or that it was present. We must not toss out the word "unobservable" as if it somehow blocks the design inference. We regularly make inferences to unobserved objects and events (like a campfire) by using our senses to detect evidence that reliably indicates that a particular object or event was present (like finding a circle of blackened stones, charred wood, soot, and smoke).

We can use exactly the same method of reasoning to detect design at the heart of biology. In all of our experience, high CSI and irreducible complexity ONLY come from intelligent agents. Thus, based upon our experience of the cause-and-effect structure of the world we observe around us, we are justified in inferring that a mind was at work. As Stephen Meyer writes:

[W]e have repeated experience of rational and conscious agents -- in particular ourselves -- generating or causing increases in complex specified information, both in the form of sequence-specific lines of code and in the form of hierarchically arranged systems of parts. ... Our experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source -- from a mind or personal agent.
(Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 117(2):213-239 (2004).)

Likewise, in our experience, irreducibly complex structures always come from an intelligent source. As Meyer writes with microbiologist Scott Minnich:

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system. ... Indeed, in any other context we would immediately recognize such systems as the product of very intelligent engineering.
(Scott A. Minnich & Stephen C. Meyer, "Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic bacteria," in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design & Nature, Rhodes Greece, p. 8 (M.W. Collins & C.A. Brebbia eds., 2004).)

Thus, when we find high CSI entities like language-based digital codes or irreducibly complex molecular machines, we are justified in inferring that an intelligent agent was at work. Why? Because, in our experience, these things always trace back to a mind. We might not directly see that mind, but we can infer that a mind was present to create the known observed effects." EN&V