Re: Intelligent Design question

Brent Foster wrote:

> The second type of argument is to pose the question: Is design detectable?
> Dembski argues that yes, indeed design is empir!
> ically detectable and therefore is within the realm of science. I find this
> type of argument more difficult refute than the first type. There is much
> discussion and debate that addresses the first type of argument, but I have not
> found much that addresses the second. My question is this: How do those of
> you who are opposed to the I.D. movement address assertions that design is
> empirically detectable and therefore within the realm of science?
>

Dembski's idea stems from probabilities. It would be something that one
could use to tell the difference between say an extraterrestrial signal
from an intelligent source, and one that is probably part of the cosmic
noise. In short, if someone is trying to communicate with you, I would
say that you would have to be stubborn to not admit that there was some
intelligence involved. But I'm not all that persuaded that one really needs
Dembski's Design Inference to reach that conclusion. It is basically
intuitive.

On the dark side, career criminals know that they need to hide
their tracks. The investigator must struggle to find some way to dig
out the facts and somehow pin the criminal down. "There is more
between heaven and earth than your [probabilities] my dear Haratio".
To hide a crime is also, in a sense, an "intelligent design". The better
hidden it is, the more "intellegently" it was done.

Returning back to the light....
Yet another situation is where you have designed a system that
"self assembles". Most of our current so-called self assembly
projects are rather humble (to find a charitable word). But it's not
a leap to recognize that God is the author of our existence and
if God called forth the cosmos with self assembly in mind, who
are we to complain (like the pot to the potter)? We would not
prove God did anything at the microscale, because God was working
at a penultimate macroscale. Again, probabilities don't work here in
proving God, because the whole thing is perhaps highly probable to
form (where I emphasize the "perhaps"). Yet it takes nothing away
from God's majesty, indeed, it adds to it manifold.

It seems like I'm constantly repeating myself, but the issue is about
faith. Although it has endlessly been perverted and twisted by man,
religion was never about the strong position, it was about Grace, and
our often torpid obedience to respond to it. But coming to the other
side, we cannot get on the soap box and shout "you punks better listen"
as we didn't listen either.

By Grace we proceed,
Wayne
Received on Tue Dec 20 19:03:17 2005