Chris
I have my doubts about ANY kind of designer, including my own personal
favorite. But, certainly a designer could work in various ways. It could be
a Deist designer, who designs and builds the Universe and lets it go on its
own from that point. It could be a typical prayer-answering God who also
occasionally or even persistently intervenes in the processes of Nature in
order to have certain things happen and not others. It could be aliens who
had no detailed idea how our (part of the) Universe would turn out but who
built it for research purposes, and who occasionally intervene when they
think of something interesting to do to "tweak" details of it.
>I do believe there is an unpredictable aspect of nature, but I don't define
>it as random. I believe individual choice plays a part. Take the loosely
>defined entity known as "public opinion", as an example resembling a living
>organism. It is the summation of many similar and diverse beliefs. To
you,
>how each individual opinion was reached may appear to be random. However,
>how you personally reached your opinion was not random. It was the result
of
>nature, experience and choice. Perhaps you would leave choice out of the
>formula, but I doubt you can prove choice does not exist. (No burdens of
>proof, please!! While I doubt anything in this realm can be proved, don't
>insist proof be presented when arguing something doesn't exist which most
>people take as an obvious given.)
Chris
I don't argue that choice doesn't exist, only that acausal, indeterministic
choice does not exist, and that the burden of proof is on the side of
proving that choice is anything beyond information processing to pick an
alternative from among two or more perceived alternatives.
>I've read predictions of design which might verified. For instance, more
and
>more traits might be found which add nothing to the survivability of the
>organism, but contribute to the health of the environment.
Chris
What is the "health" of the environment? Health by whose standards?
>The essential
>contributions each organism makes to the design of the biosphere will
>continue to be discovered. Other predictions might be that the genome is
>not a "hodge podge", but that each and every piece of the genome plays, has
>played or will play, an important part in the evolution of the organism and
>the biosphere.
Excuse me, but this seems incredibly vague. What I want to see is a
statement of a specific scientific test that we could, at least in
principle, carry out to test design theory.
>Another prediction might be that only those mutations which
>are harmful to the organism will turn out to be random. (And evey they
have
>causes.)
How is this a prediction, if you don't specify a means by which the random
mutations might be distinguished from the non-random ones?
>Other mechanisms will be found for any mutations which add to the
>complexity of the organism. I'm sure design theorists will think of more
>examples, but of course the loudest prediction of design is that random
>mutation and natural selection play very little part in macro evolution.
This is a PREDICTION? What empirical observation (not CONCLUSION) would tend
to support or refute this, if it were made? What fact does design theory say
will be observed, a fact such that, if it is not found where it "should" be
according to theory, the theory is refuted or weakened? Etc., etc. etc.
>According to my definition of design, our biggest area of disagreement is
the
>existence of a "designer". I consider the question irrelevant. It seems
>important to you that a "designer" NOT exist. Is that question important
>enough to you to prevent any consensus on the question of design?
What's important to me is rationality and good science.