Re: The El Tajon situation [was Judge Jones sided]

On 1/13/06, Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> While there are a very few ID supporters who accept common descent
> (Behe being one), most do not. Virtually all of the public support for
> ID is from those who oppose common descent. Where individuals place
> the discontinuities in the history of life varies widely -- from two or
> three interventions (special creations), to the special creation of
> every species. ID as argued in the public square is essentially an
> argument for discontinuity in the history of life. To say that a
> particular structure or event could not have been produce by the action
> of any possible series of cause-and-effect processes is to argue for
> special creation and a break in the continuity of life's history. I am
> not here talking about divine guidance and direction of natural
> processes, which is in no conflict with an evolutionary view of life
> history.
>
> Keith
>
>
> Keith B. Miller
> Research Assistant Professor
> Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
> Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
> 785-532-2250
> http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
>

Keith,

While I am sure you are right that the majority of support for ID comes from
those who oppose common descent, and as you write, Behe is an exception, it
also appears to be the case that Dembski is an exception. Some while back I
emailed him a question on where the design is conceived as being inserted,
as I don't like the idea of God intervening to fix a broken creation (except
though the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, which is a spiritual rather than
scientific intervention). Dembski gave me permission to quote his
response. Here is the question that I sent to him:

--------------
A question for you. Would you say that my current position - that the ID
takes place at the outset ("in the beginning" as it were), rather than via
discrete interventions by the Designer during history, is still broadly
compatible with the ID viewpoint?

There seems to be the view among the TE advocates on the ASA list that ID is
all about God going "POW" at some point in time and creating the flagellum
out of nothing. Though I can't discount that God would do this, it sounds
to me like fixing a broken creation that got stuck, whereas to me the only
fixing of the broken creation that God did was via the Cross & that is more
to do with what we did to Creation rather than it getting stuck.
---------------

Here is Dembski's reply, quoted with his permission:

Dear Iain,

I've been arguing for years now that ID is not committed to an
interventionist form of design (see part IV of my book *The Design
Revolution*). The crucial issue is always whether design can become
scientifically evident (a point of epistemology) and not how it got
inserted. The information has to come from somewhere, but how it got there
is an open question for ID -- nevertheless one to be decided by evidence and
not by a theological preference about what would be more worthy of the
designer. Bottom line: I see your view as entirely consonant with ID. In
fact, I'm almost tempted to rechristen ID as "intelligent evolution"
inasmuch as the proper contrast class for ID is unintelligent evolution.

Best regards,
Bill

-------------------

So there you are. I would say I was an IE'er rather than an ID'er. This is
also consonant with just about every paper I've seen where there has been a
successful application of Evolutionary Algorithms (aka Genetic Algorithm).
They are always very cleverly (and sensibly) designed at the outset,
specifically by designing the coding from genetic string (genome) to the
solution space of the problem under consideration. What is saddening to me
is that such fine work is then used as anti-Christian propaganda. One paper
I saw on use of a GA to design an electronic circuit by trying out random
configurations on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). It was a very
clever piece of work, but it struck me as a bit sad that one Powerpoint
presentation on the web had to have the statutory Darwin fish logo on the
slide, as if to say that because our program produced working circuit
designs, that a fish can grow legs. Their program was intelligently
designed - even though it developed designs that were unexpected, the
program required a fair bit of "fine tuning" and choice of constants in the
evaluation function.

Iain

--
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After the game, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
- Italian Proverb
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