Reflectorites
On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 10:12:57 -0800, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
[...]
>SJ>[Note the clever use of words by Scott contrasting atheism with young-Earth
>>creationism, as though they are the only two alternatives. By admitting that
>>there is a "debate between theism and materialism" she "legitimate", tacitly
>>concedes they are opposites. But then she says any such debate between the
>>two "shouldn't take place in the classroom", even thought materialism is
>>to continue to be taught unopposed "in the classroom".]
CL>Intramural battles are the nastiest of all. But where are the battles between
>YEC and ID? I've never read of any such debates at all. This is why people
>think it's the same old religionists doing their same old thing.
I have previously documented some "battles between YEC and ID" in
Henry Morris and Ken Ham's attacking ID for setting aside Bible-science
issues. And there has been a long-standing "battle" between leading ID
advocate Hugh Ross the ICR. Moreover, there are major battles between
TE/ECs and ID, both of whom are "religionists".
The relative lack of "battles between YEC and ID" is because ID doesn't
collide with YEC (despite Morris & Ham's confusion on this point). ID is
at a more basic level than YEC issues. ID is concerned merely with the
lower-level question of the existence of an Intelligent Designer. YEC is
concerned with higher-level questions about the interpretation of Genesis
1-11 which are not the province of ID.
As Mike Behe points out, ID can co-exist with either a young or an old
Earth because *that* a Designer conceived and executed His designs is
essential to ID, not how long it took Him to do it:
"The third reason why Miller's argument misses the mark is actually quite
understandable. It arises from the confusion of two separate ideas-the
theory that life was intelligently designed and the theory that the earth is
young. Because religious groups who strongly advocate both ideas have
been in the headlines over the past several decades, much of the public
thinks that the two ideas are necessarily linked. Implicit in Ken Miller's
argument about pseudogenes, and absolutely required for his conclusions,
is the idea that the designer had to have made life recently. That is not a
part of intelligent-design theory. The conclusion that some features of life
were designed can be made in the absence of knowledge about when the
designing took place. A child who looks at the faces on Mt. Rushmore
immediately knows that they were designed but might have no idea of their
history; for all she knows, the faces might have been designed the day
before she got there, or might have been there since the beginning of time.
An art museum might display a statue of a bronze cat purportedly made in
Egypt thousands of years ago-until the statue is examined by
technologically advanced methods and shown to be a modern forgery. In
either case, though, the bronze cat was certainly designed by an intelligent
agent." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box", 1996, p227)
CL>If 'materialists' are the enemies of ID, who are the friends of ID? Will the
>average religious person embrace the agnostic view that 'Well, it might
>have been God, it might have been green scaly space aliens, who knows?'
The "friends of ID" are those who are prepared to consider the possibility
that the existence of an Intelligent Designer may be *empirically
detectable* in the universe.
I cannot speak for the "average religious person", because it is so vague as
to be virtually meaningless. But I believe I can speak for the average Bible-
believing Christian. I do not think that the average Bible-believing Christian
will have any problems with ID once he/she understands what it is.
ID, from a Christian perspective, is type of pre-evangelism apologetics. In
the past, Christians could talk to their non-Christian friends and neighbours
about God and Christianity and they understood from the background of a
basically Christian culture what the Christian was talking about.
But today, in our post-Christian culture, a Christian cannot assume that
those who he wishes to share Christianity with does understand what God
and Christianity are. The job today is becoming what it was when
Christianity first encountered non-Christian cultures which did not even
have a clear understanding of God. In such cases there is a need to get
right back to basics and build up some common ground in a shared
understanding of God as Creator.
There is in fact an example of this in the New Testament. The Apostle
Paul, when he first encountered the polytheistic philosophers of Athens,
sought to find some common ground in their belief in an ultimate but
"Unknown God" (Acts 17:22-23), and Paul used arguments from nature
(Acts 17:24-27), and their own philosophers (Acts 17:28-31) to build on a
common minimum understanding of God. While ID is not itself Christian
apologetics, its arguments can be used by Christian apologists.
CL>'ID'--is it really that good a term? In common parlance people speak of
>'designer clothes' and 'designer furniture', meaning custom creations
>by established artisans. In this sense, 'designer universe' sounds silly,
>it implies a universe that is particularly chic.
I am not aware that ID theorists use the term "designer universe". But even
if they did, I think modern people are not *that* shallow that they cannot
think of an Intelligent Designer of the universe without getting it confused
with the latest "chic" fashions!
CL>Maybe the 'I', the 'intelligent' is the important thing. So a more logical
>construction, making 'intelligent' the substantive part, might be
>'designing intelligence'. But that's no good, because it shifts the focus
>back to 'who or what is this intelligence?' I must presume that ID
>advocates much prefer a construction that puts the emphasis on the
>inexplicability (thus far) of complexities in nature, and avoids an
>emphasis on what they are really about.
Not really. The "Intelligent" part of "Intelligent Design" is primarily to
contrast it with *unintelligent* "apparent design":
"The confusion centered on what the adjective "intelligent" is doing in the
phrase "intelligent design." "Intelligent," after all, can mean nothing more
than being the result of an intelligent agent, even one who acts stupidly. On
the other hand, it can mean that an intelligent agent acted with skill,
mastery, and clat. Shermer and Prothero understood the "intelligent" in
"intelligent design" to mean the latter, and thus presumed that intelligent
design must entail optimal design. The intelligent design community, on the
other hand, means the former and thus separates intelligent design from
questions of optimality. But why then place the adjective "intelligent" in
front of the noun "design"? Doesn't design already include the idea of
intelligent agency, so that juxtaposing the two becomes an exercise in
redundancy? Not at all. *Intelligent design* needs to be distinguished from
*apparent design* on the one hand and *optimal design* on the other.
Apparent design looks designed but really isn't. Optimal design is perfect
design and hence cannot exist except in an idealized realm (sometimes
called a "Platonic heaven"). Apparent and optimal design empty design of
all practical significance.." (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design is not
Optimal Design", Metaviews 013, 2 Feb 2000.
http://listserv.omni-list.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind00&L=metaviews&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=1744)
Steve
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"Essentially, the same amino acid chain being found also in other animals
and even in plants, we have a case in histone-4 where more than 200 base
pairs are conserved across the whole of biology. The problem for the neo
Darwinian theory is to explain how the one particular arrangement of base
pairs came to be discovered in the first place. Evidently not by random
processes, for with a chance 1/4 of choosing each of the correct base pairs
at random, the probability of discovering a segment of 200 specific base
pairs is 4^200, which is equal to 10^-120. Even if one were given a random
choice for every atom in every galaxy in the whole visible universe the
probability of discovering histone-4 would still only be a minuscule
~10^40." (Hoyle F., "Mathematics of Evolution", [1987], Acorn
Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp102-103).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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