Re: Natural selection and ID

From: DNAunion@aol.com
Date: Sun Oct 08 2000 - 19:42:51 EDT

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    >FMAJ: I am somewhat confused about the apparant/actual? contradictions
    between the two statements made by DNAUnion.

    [begin Quote DNAUnion] That sounds like an oxymoron to me. If you have any
    kind of intelligence and design involved in the selection process, then it
    is not NATURAL selection, be definition. What am I missing?[End quote]

    [begin Quote DNAUnion] I will not address Welsberry's claim that Demski's
    filter allows RM & NS to act as an intelligent designer: I think Demski
    himself should address the merit of that. But I will comment on another
    point you brought up.[End quote]

    DNAunion: There is no actual contradiction in my two statements. In the
    first, I eliminated intelligence and design from NATURAL selection (as per
    Darwin's definition): in the second, I state I will not address whether or
    not natural selection can operate as an intelligent designer. These are two
    separate concepts. [PS: I moved the two statements of mine FMAJ referred to
    so that they would be just under his original mention of them]

    >FMAJ: On the one hand DNAUnion seems to defining natural selection to be
    NON-ID. This is something that imho hardly follows from the premises of
    Dembski and Behe.

    DNAunion: No, you keep using Elseberry's statements, not Dembski's and
    Behe's. Elseberry claims his conclusion follows from Dembski's, but that
    does mean that it is so: case closed. You should contribute the ideas to the
    proper person(s): in your case, that would be Elseberry and not Dembski
    and/or Behe. (perhaps Elseberry has addressed this since the last time I
    posted and has shown me to be wrong - but to the best of my knowledge,
    neither Behe nor Dembski allow RM & NS as the intelligent designer (of
    course, Richard Dawkins does!))

    >FMAJ: And I encourage him to show us how he reaches that conclusion. On the
    other hand he says he will not address the claim made by Wesley that ID
    cannot exclude natural selection as the intelligent designer. He refers to
    Dembski to address this. I presume that Dembski has not addresses his
    assertion about natural selection having to be NON-ID nor Wesley's assertion.
    Does this mean that DNAUnion will retract his first assertion or will he show
    the merit of his assertion?

    DNAunion: Sure, as soon as all OOL researchers retract their claims that
    life arose on Earth by purely-natural processes (an unsupported naturalistic
    assumption), and all evolutionists retract their claims that whales evolved
    from wolf-like mesonychians (since they still have not ruled out hippo-like
    ungulates as the proper ancestors), and all evolutionists retract their
    claims that birds evolved from theropods (since it is possible that birds
    arose before theropods did), and so on.



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