<< Mike, in your recent post you said,
"It should be noted that the anti-ID crowd has never themselves
come up with any criteria to distinguish between ID and
non-intelligent causes (the primary one being natural selection)."
That stimulates me to pose the following question:
Since natural selection could operate fruitfully only in the context of a
universe that is, (1) equipped with a remarkable set of resources (atoms,
with all of their diversity of properties, for instance), and (2) an
astoundingly robust set of formational capabilities (for self-organization,
transformation, and the like) and (3) a 'potentiality space' (or 'genomic
phase space,' if you prefer) for viable organisms rich beyond our
imagination, why would you want to characterize this state of affairs as
one dominated by "non-intelligent causes"? Would not the 'being' of this
whole integrated system be the clear manifestation of conceptualization by
an Intelligence?>>
Howard, I think you make a very good point. For natural selection to
happen, we apparently require a particular type of reality whose origin
requires an explanation (and Intelligence appears to be a very good
candidate). I suppose what I am speaking talking about
are the two processes of intelligent selection vs. natural selection.
In the former, the filtering takes place in the conceptual realm (where
the greater the understanding the purer the conceptual filtering) and
in the latter, the filtering takes place only after a trial-and-error process
is
run. Of course, reality may have been designed as such that the trial
and error process of natural selection is actually stacked to "find"
preconceptualized solutions (I believe this would be similar to Glenn's
views) and this would imply natural selection as *part* of the design.
I'm simply focused on more proximate causes without meaning
to imply larger conclusions beyond them. After all, a few carefully placed
originally designed biotic states may be part of the stacking behind natural
selection. I don't claim this *is* the case. It is simply something I would
like to explore in order to see what shakes out.
I really enjoy your perspective on these matters.
Mike