From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Sep 14 2002 - 16:16:47 EDT
1) Explained event.
2) Partially explained event.
3) Unexplained event.
Loren-
Thanks for the comments; they are useful for thinking about the issue. Some
thoughts:
>To the extent that popular literature or school textbooks implies that
>evolution falls into the first category, they need to be corrected.
--How do you convince a major population committed to materialistic maximal
naturalistic evolutionary worldviews to present their ideas fairly? I think
that presenting a rigorous (many here seem to disagree with that adjective)
challenge to their worldview on some level is a decent start, hence ID.
"Behe, Dembski, et. al. are trying to construct arguments that complex
biological organisms fall into the third category. They are free to make
such attempts."
--I don't find this a fair assessment. I would modify saying ".....features
of modern organisms show that for these specific features, evolution falls
into category three." I don't think any of them believe that evolution is
completely empty for explanations into aspects of biological systems. You
cannot identify abiogenesis as the same set of concepts as variation of the
aids virus in response to drug administration in human patients. Clearly
evolution as an umbrella concept succeeds in explaining some phenomena
better than others. Your statements require that ID assumes no event can be
explained by evolution and that is false.
"The scientific consensus is that their arguments are flawed, and that the
second category is still the correct one."
--What consensus? THE consensus? Popular opinion doesn't determine truth,
even among professional scientists. I think that Behe et al. agree with
category two in regards to evolution, however they suspect strongly that for
SOME aspects of biology, category three will ultimately apply once the truth
is known.
"The problem which Howard addressed was this: The rhetoric of Dembski, Behe,
et. al. often seems to imply that evolution needs to be in the first
category, or else the third category must be true."
--As I see it, an unnecessary distortion of their view. Why should Behe
accept common descent? Clearly he allows evolution to perform some tasks
while unable to do others.
"But it's quite another thing to say, or imply with one's rhetoric, that
"theory XXX must be false unless it falls into the first category."
--And yet quite another to say that since theory XXX neatly explains
OBSERVABLE phenomena YYY, we can naturally assume that it also explains
UNOBSERVABLE phenomena (ALL).
Josh
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