Given the flap over Dembski and representation of others, I
remembered having looked up a quote that Dembski made of
Dawkins.
Dembski's text:
[Quote]
[...] Is LIFE specified? Dawkins (1987, p.9) is quite
definite about affirming this premise: "Complicated things
have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly
unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the
case of living things, the quality that is specified in
advance is ... the ability to propagate genes in
reproduction." So Premise 2 isn't a problem for Dawkins
either. Indeed, no evolutionist or creationist I know denies
that LIFE is specified.
[End Quote - WA Dembski, TDI, p.57]
I was wondering what might be in the ellipsis that
Dembski used in his quote of Dawkins.
[Quote]
Complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance,
that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance
alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is
specified in advance is
[The contents of Dembski's ellipsis]
, in some sense, 'proficiency'; either proficiency in a
particular ability such as flying, as an aero-engineer might
admire it; or proficiency in something more general, such as
the ability to stave off death, or
[End of Dembski's ellipsis]
the ability to propagate genes in reproduction.
[End Quote - R Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p.9]
Wesley
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 24 2000 - 10:09:20 EST