From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 06:22:25 EDT
Hi Richard,
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Richard McGough
>Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:54 PM
>To which Glen replied:
>
>>
>>If I were to be more careful I would have said, ID *tries* to deduce. The
>>rest of my original comment, which wasn't requoted, goes on to
>note that we
>>can't rule out little green men as the creator. Thus I would agree with
>>Howard's point 5. I find ID logically worse than useless.
>>
>
>Point well taken Glen, but it is possible to agree with Howard's
>Point #5 (as we do) without taking the extreme view that ID is
>"logically worse than useless" as you do. His Point #5 was simply
>that "the identity of the form-conferring agent would remain
>unknown." This does not invalidate the whole ID program which
>could be logically *necessary* if we actually do live in a
>universe where the Lord God Almighty confers form on His Creation.
I respectfully disagree. The only reason the ID group is doing what they are
doing is to show that God designed the universe. Lots of people have signed
on to that agenda. But, in the end, if you can't rule out green men or
Vishnu as the creator, then the ID agenda is taking people down a logical
dead end and thus is a waste of time, effort, trees and ink. Any agenda
which has no hope of accomplishing what most people want it to is worse than
useless because of all the wasted and misspent effort chasing a logical
impossibillity. It is a waste of apologetical talent.
>
>Note also that I didn't for a minute think that I was hiding your
>true intent by snipping the bit about little green men. I
>addressed that in detail in a separate post in this thread.
I understand this; one can't quote everything. But wanted to make sure that
people knew that I agreed with Howard.
The
>interesting thing is that it seems your point concerning "little
>green designers" actually *necessitates* ID rather than
>invalidating it. Is it not correct that if little green men in
>alternate universes were to create a universe with sentient beings
>as you suggest, that the scientifically inclined amongst those
>sentient beings would *require* ID to truly understand the
>universe in which they found themeselves?
No, because they couldn't rule out disembodied spirits as the creator.
Logically, there are two very major flaws in ID. First, ID assumes that God
would create anthropomorphically--that is, in an identical way as we
conceive creation should be carried out. There is absolutely no to prove
this. If God created via evolution, then the current ID agenda is taking us
in the direction of falsehood. That option is ruled out a priori. The ID
folk often cite things like recognizing design in stone tools, or a watch.
The reason design inference works in that case is that we have ruled out any
possibility that natural forces create in this way. But that isn't the case
with evolution. We can't a priori rule it out, except that is what they do.
Thus in some sense, they make the logical fallacy of affirming the
consequence.
With stone tools, we rule out natural 'design' on the basis of probability.
It is hihgly unlikely that stones jostling eachother together would create
the angles seen on the stone tools. And since we logically rule out God
creating stone tools, that leaves only mankind as the designer. We rule out
nature based upon observed probabilites. With evolution we have no observed
probabilities--only assumed probabilities.
The second thing logically wrong with ID is what is above--it says nothing
about who the designer is (assuming that you accept that God can only
operate in a human-like fashion).
glenn
see http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm for
information on creation/evolution and stories
of personal struggle.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Jul 30 2003 - 06:22:51 EDT