Re: What is Intelligent Design?

On May 10, 3:11 pm, Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 10, 5:49 pm, Vernon Balbert <vbalb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On 5/10/2008 6:11 AM, Tim Tyler went clickity clack on the keyboard and
produced this interesting bit of text:

On May 9, 9:34 am, "Devil's Advocaat" <mankyg...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Personally I find it difficult to accept the idea of Intelligent
Design, but here are a couple of links that show explanations (of a
sort) about what Intelligent Design is supposed to be all about.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/id-defined/

``The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of
the
universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent
cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.''

This theory of intelligent design appears to be correct - e.g.
skyscrapers are indisputably best explained as the product
of design by intelligent agents - and skyscrapers are
biological products, just like snail shells, or termite mounds.

Yes, but snails don't decide to make shells nor do termites decide to
make mounds. There's no visible intelligence behind them. Men decide
to make skyscrapers and they decide what they will look like. I don't
think a snail ever decided that it wanted a long pointed shell or a
spiral shaped.

Right - so snail shells are probably not the result of intelligent
design. Dembski's definition of "The theory of intelligent design
(ID)"
never said *everything* was designed - only that "certain features"
were.

And, like Paley, he then falls back on a flawed argument by analogy
with objects that humans have designed and manufactured for useful
purposes. The problem is, of course, that we *know* that useful
objects that humans have designed *also* must be manufactured by
humans modifying raw materials to produce them.

Living creatures, however, are not manufactured by any outside agent.
They are not manufactured at all; they imperfectly reproduce. And it
is precisely the crucial question of how the 'designed' article is
manufactured or reproduces itself that is the heart of the question.
If human-designed objects are manufactured by a different method than
are living creatures now (and human-manufactured machines, to date, do
not imperfectly self-reproduce), then pointing out other irrelevant
similarities between *some* human-manufactured devices and living
species is just that: irrelevant.

But perhaps the claim is that it was only *initially* that living
things needed to manufactured like a dead non-living human-designed
machine. If one wishes to demonstrate that living things were
*initially* 'designed' and 'manufactured' by a mechanism *different*
from the one we can observe living things using today (imperfect
reproduction, natural selection, and neutral drift) and much more
similar to that seen in human-designed artifacts (made by some
hypothetical posited entity from raw or unmolded materials), then one
must present evidence directly to that point. Specifically, one must
present evidence for *how*, *who*, *when*, *where*, and *for what
reason* this supposed *manufacture* occurred. Anything else is
bullshit.

ID specifically claims that it is not in the business of providing
that sort of detail. Don't ask; don't tell.

--
__________
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reply.

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