Re: Phillip Johnson

From: Brian Harper (harper.10@osu.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 13 2003 - 17:23:34 EDT

  • Next message: George Murphy: "Re: Phillip Johnson"

    At 03:52 PM 10/10/2003 -0400, George Murphy wrote:
    >Ted Davis wrote:
    >.............................
    > > Ted: How does Phil propose that we do natural science? That's a good
    > > question that I won't try to answer for him--many critics of ID would like
    > > to see it answered. In vague terms, however, I think he would say, "not
    > > entirely naturalistically," in other words to have a science in which "the
    > > design inference" can and will be made, by scientists themselves and within
    > > science itself and not simply in philosophy or theology.
    >
    > & once the "design inference" is made - what? Do we investigate
    > the designer
    >(i.e., God) by the methods - or Phil's methods - of natural science? Or
    >do we just stop
    >at that point? Maybe there are other possibilities but I can't think of
    >them.

    Koons offered a possible "then what" in his summary of the NTSE conference
    in 1997:

    "3.If theistic science or intelligent design theory is to
    become a progressive research program, it must do more than
    poke holes in the evidence for Darwinism: it must acquire
    auxiliary hypotheses about the intentions and preferences of
    the designer from which we can generate specific, testable
    predictions and informative explanations." -- Koons

    Discussions of the intentions and preferences of the designer
    is, of course, the most natural follow up. I'm sort of curious
    though whether ID has moved away from this view over the past
    few years. I mean, as soon as one has the idea that the designer
    might be Yahweh then one starts to get uncomfortable about
    compressing His intentions and preferences into formulas.

    [BTW, its been six years now since that report and still all they
    are doing, as far as I can see, is poking holes in the evidence for Darwinism]



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Oct 13 2003 - 17:23:39 EDT