Did you really say this? May I see some ID please? Trial and error is
certainly not the very definition of the kind of design an omnipotent,
omniscient God produces. I find this really amazing. You are clutching at
any element of design at all -- even when it's in bits and pieces which
conflict and clash with one another, just so you can say that design is
present in a fairly chaotic example. Are you really Howard Van Till?
Amazing.
>Intelligence guides the process of choosing what trial to try; it then
>distinguishes error, and tries again.
Intelligent design as taught by Mike Behe, Steve Meyer and their colleagues
implies a single designer who produces an integrated design for all nature.
_That_ is not the sort of design you see in my example. I don't deny that
design is _present_. What I am saying is that there is not a single
coordinated design of the entire process. As a result parts of the process
conflict and show bad design.
Actually there's a rather interesting comparison here. People like Stephen
Gould (I believe Gould has made this point) claim that examples of bad
design in nature prove that nature is not designed by an intelligent agent.
Generally they conclude that there is no design at all -- it just looks
like design because natural selection has weeded out the nonviable designs.
But a group of intelligent agents, poorly coordinated (as in the case of
Moog) or using erroneous models and failing to observe and diagnose
deviations from the design goals (the Soviets) can produce a system full of
examples of bad design[1]. But this has nothing to do with the Designer I
worship -- the God of the Bible, so I'm puzzled why you are working so hard
to "save" design in this example.
Notes
[1] I'm not claiming the Soviets could have produced a good design for the
Soviet economy by any design strategy other than Thomas Jefferson's: That
government governs best which governs the least.
Bill Hamilton
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