RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 6/19/2000 12:42:58 PM, hvantill@novagate.com writes:
>
> << Before any of these questions can be considered we must know what Dembski
> and the other vocal proponents of ID mean by "design," "designed," and
> "intelligently designed."
>
> Only when we have been told what it means to be (or have been) intelligently
> designed can we ask about its detectability, functionality, transmission,
> construction, etc..
>
> ID proponents treat the term as if it had a uniformly understood or
> self-evident meaning. It clearly does not. It seems to have nearly as many
> meanings as proponents.
> >>
>
> Howard,
>
> Let me try once more to deal with your demand for a prior definition of
> design. I will do so by giving three examples where a given phenomenon was
> difficult if not impossible to define, and yet the difficulty or
> impossibility did not stop the process of dealing with the phenomenon. The
> first is a rather trivial case, the second and third are more serious. ...................................
Your examples which I snip) point out the possibility of studying a subject
without being able to give a precise & unambiguous definition of the subject matter. An
example even closer to the ID debate can be given - "life". Biology studies living
things, yet a precise & unambiguous definition of "life" or "living" is difficult. You
can get a good debate going among some scientists by asking whether viruses are alive.
But in reality biologists don't worry about the lack of such a precise definition and
operate a "If it walks like a duck ..." understanding of life.
Now is "intelligent design" the same sort of thing? It depends on what types of
phenomena are being considered. Art critics or historians of technology recognize quite
explicitly that they are studying the products of ID & don't have to worry about
defining just what ID _is_: "Everybody" knows that there have been human beings around
to produce paintings, clocks, &c & only a few people on the fringes of those fields are
going to argue that these things were produced by dolphins or ETs.
The situation is different when we ask study living things, because here there
definitely is NOT a tacit consensus that they have been "intelligently designed". The
claim that they have been is precisely the point at issue. Thus a more explicit &
careful definition is needed, which is what Howard is asking for. This is especially so
because what the term "intelligent design" in fact connotes for most people on both
sides of the debate is "made by God in a way science can't explain."
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 01 2000 - 08:40:12 EDT