Re: Re: [asa] Apologetics Conference

Deciding on whether something is designed or not is not easy to say the
least.

One of our favourite days out is to go to the Yorkshire Dales and en route
we go up the Lune Valley which was carved out by a glacier. Just before
hitting the hills of the dales the terrain is very hummocky as one passes
through a drumlin swarm with little hills (some glacial debris) up to 100ft
high. Approaching one village there was a superb example and I thought they
were more like kames - similar to some seen by Darwin in N Wales. A little
later I was looking at my map (1:25000) and found that these were "motte
and bailey" i.e mound of a Norman castle. Having lived within 200 yards of
a motte in Wales I was familiar with the obvious artificial structure of
that motte, but this one looked natural. What I would need to do is to dig
trenches in the side of the dales motte and look for stratification - if it
was well-developed that it was non-human.

Meanwhile my provisional conclusion is that it is a kame built up by the
Normans in about 1100 AD. I wonder what mathematical and statistical tests
Dembski could provide to help me to decide!

Michael

PS If you are a lover of bottled beer then the old 1960s Landrover has a
superb design feature. There is a little fold of steel below the steering
wheel which is perfectly designed as a bottle opener when you are driving
down a dirt road at 50 mph. Tell me of another vehicle with such a useful
design feature!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 8:56 AM
Subject: Fwd: Re: [asa] Apologetics Conference

>
> So, don't make it a rock thrown out of a window. Make it a boulder,
> loosened by strip
> mining, rolling down a mountain and smashing through a house and killing
> a sleeping
> child (this happened in Virginia last year:
> http://www.ohvec.org/links/news/archive/2005/fair_use/01_06.html
> Although in this case the boulder had some help from some careless strip
> miners,
> boulders can and do roll down hills without intelligent intervention
>
> I can see two "extremes" of explanations:
> "Pure" intelligent design, where a genius evil mastermind with extensive
> knowledge of the
> terrain, the laws of physics and the layout of the unfortunate boy's
> house intentionally sets
> the boulder rolling with the express purpose of killing the child.
>
> "Random and unguided" Boulder, loosened by natural and
> non-human-related events
> (soil erosion, etc) rolls down hill and kills child.
>
> I don't see how Dembski's process is especially useful in distinguishing
> those two
> explantions (which clearly are both incorrect) or in leading to what is
> considered the
> correct explanation: intelligent human activity (strip mining) increased
> the liklihood a
> boulder would roll down the mountain: once the boulder was moving, the
> child's death was
> a random and unplanned consequence.
>
> If you try to consider all the probabilities: from the mountain being
> formed where it was,
> that exact size and shape of boulder being deposited there, the child's
> parents meeting,
> conceiving him, moving into the house and placing his bed on that
> particular wall, this can
> only be considered an extremely improbable event. In the grand scheme of
> things , the
> actions of the strip miners in starting the boulder rolling probably
> increases the probabilty
> only very slightly. Yet they mining company is (rightly) blamed for the
> child's death.
>
> So, was this child's death "designed" or "chance"?
>
> __
> Louise M. Freeman, PhD
> Psychology Dept
> Mary Baldwin College
> Staunton, VA 24401
> 540-887-7326
> FAX 540-887-7121
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> To: "Jim Armstrong" <jarmstro@qwest.net>
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 17:18:57 -0500
> Subject: Re: [asa] Apologetics Conference
>
>> Sure you would. Check its angle, velocity, etc. It likely would be
>> pretty
>> clear that it was thrown out the window.
>
>
>
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>

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Received on Fri Nov 17 06:44:22 2006