User:Noisy/MDT

Multiple Designers Theory is a proposal offered as a critique of intelligent design. It is defined and promoted by its originator – Richard B. Hoppe – on websites associated with the evolution/creationism/intelligent design debate, such as ISCID (where it was introduced ), ARN and The Panda's Thumb (update in 2004).

According to its originator: "as its name implies, the central tenet of Multiple Designers Theory is that if intelligent design is implicated in the properties and structure of life of on earth, then multiple designers are implicated, not merely a single designer." In his introduction of the concept in 2002, Hoppe denies that it is a parody of intelligent design: "I am known to be an ID critic, and readers may therefore believe that this description of Multiple Designers Theory is presented as a parody of ID. It is not. It is a logical extension of a dominant stream of thought in current ID."

The proposal offers an alternative to the assumption within the intelligent design movement that there is a single designer of life on Earth, i.e. the Christian God. The proposal offers a number of indicators that may be investigated to explore the 'theory':
 * Design-versus-design, as in evolutionary arms races
 * Designs acting in concert, as in pollination
 * Failures and imperfections of design, where designs fail to find peaks on a fitness landscape
 * Intermittent interventions, as opposed to front-loading.

Since investigations into multiple designers might actually fail to make any such discrimination, MDT does not exclude the single-designer possibility. However, while the ideas offer fruitful ground for research, Hoppe has failed to inspire anyone within the ID community to follow up on his approach, and remains the sole investigator: Investigating MDT using Designer Discrimination Algorithms on The Panda's Thumb.