Purposeful Design
The Explanation
Design offers a different kind of explanation. Instead of treating the life-permitting conditions as coincidence, necessity, or the result of selection from many universes, it proposes that at least some features of the physical system were intentionally ordered.
The argument is not simply that life exists. It concerns the relationship among laws, constants, particle properties, initial conditions, stars, elements, and other requirements that together make complex life possible.
Supporting Evidence
Design is most relevant where independent lines of evidence form a cumulative pattern. A single adjustable parameter may allow many alternatives. Yet a viable universe must satisfy numerous requirements at the same time.
The apparent coordination of these requirements is what leads proponents of Intelligent Design to consider purposeful arrangement as an explanation.
Limitations
Design is an inference about the explanation of physical evidence rather than a measured physical parameter. Physics by itself does not identify a designer.
Probability arguments for design also face important questions about how probabilities should be assigned to possible physical conditions and what kind of universe an intelligent designer would be expected to create.
The existence of alternative viable parameter combinations likewise means that the argument should not depend upon claiming that our exact universe is the only physically conceivable universe capable of complexity.
Questions That Remain
How should purposeful design be compared with coincidence, deeper physical law, and multiverse explanations? What observations would favor one explanation over another?
Intelligent Design Response
For AVWJ, Intelligent Design is relevant because an ordered universe is compatible with the Christian understanding of creation. But that theological belief should not substitute for investigating the physical evidence.
The scientific observations should first be stated accurately. The design inference can then be considered on the basis of the cumulative evidence rather than being inserted wherever present scientific knowledge is incomplete.