Re: Intelligent Design question

Would you think of the gestation and maturation of a human being as
self-assembly? JimA

Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:

> 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 19:26:05 2005