Does Intelligent Design Make Scientifically Fruitful Predictions?

Absolutely. To cite just one example, the non-functionality of “junk DNA” was predicted by Susumu Ohno (1972), Richard Dawkins (1976), Crick and Orgel (1980), Pagel and Johnstone (1992), and Ken Miller (1994), based on evolutionary presuppositions. In contrast, on teleological grounds, Michael Denton (1986, 1998), Michael Behe (1996), John West (1998), William Dembski (1998), Richard Hirsch (2000), and Jonathan Wells (2004) predicted that “junk DNA” would be found to be functional.

The Intelligent Design predictions are being confirmed and the Darwinist predictions are being falsified. For instance, ENCODE’s June 2007 results show substantial functionality across the genome in such “junk DNA” regions, including pseudogenes.

Thus, it is a matter of simple fact that scientists working in the ID paradigm carry out and publish research, and they have made significant and successful ID-based predictions.

A more general and long term prediction of ID is that the complexity of living things will be shown to be much higher than currently thought. Darwin thought the cell was a relatively simple blob of gelatinous carbon. He was wrong. We now known the cell is a high-tech information processing system, with superbly functionally integrated machinery, error-correction-and-repair systems, and much more that surpasses the most sophisticated efforts of the best human mathematicians, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and software engineers. The prediction that living systems will turn out to be vastly more complicated than previously thought (and thus much less likely to have evolved through naturalistic means) will continue to be verified in the years to come.

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