Re: [asa] Confusion about Science and ID

Well said, the claim that science is incapable of determining if life
was designed. As even Dawkins admitted, there are forms of design
which are more open to scientific inquiry than others, so if the
argument is that science cannot address the issue of design, then
design is by definition outside scientific inquiry and thus
supernatural.
I also agree with David that ID's chosen approach to detecting design
is one which remains unreliable by its inability to compete with 'we
don't know'.

As to ID serving a role as to 'question Darwinism', such a role does
not require an ID assumption, in fact science itself seems quite
capable of raising 'questions' regarding the efficacy of Darwinism and
in fact has already done so by showing how natural processes of drift
have played an important role in evolution and in fact, I argue that
such processes as neutrality are essential components to the success
of evolution and evolutionary theory.

One can of course always argue that even though science has found
sufficient explanations, that design is never ruled out as a
possibility. That of course remains to be true, however if design does
not propose ways of being tested by proposing positive hypotheses, it
will remain without much real content.

For instance, look at the bacterial flagellum as an example. ID has
claimed that the structure is 'irreducibly complex' and thus Darwinian
processes are unable to explain it. This precludes however two likely
possibilities: 1) not all steps need to have been Darwinian in nature
(selective) 2) not all steps need to involve a maintenance of a single
function. In fact, theoretical work by such people as Gavrilets have
shown how fitness landscapes tend to become quite flat when going
beyond the single function gene interactions and incorporate the
multidimensional nature of such landscapes.

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:06 PM, David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So we are left with a cultral illusion – the misguided notion, shared by the
>> ID movement and most ID critics, that science is capable of determining
>> whether or not life was designed. Science can provide information and ideas
>> for addressing that issue, but science cannot answer it.
>
> I would propose two possible ways for science to detect whether life
> was designed:
> 1) Have a set of examples of known designed and known undesigned life.
> Look for differences between the sets. See which provides a closer
> match to life on Earth.
>
> 2) Have a known set of principles as to how a designer would or would
> not implement things. Compare life to these standards. This requires
> a certain amount of knowledge about the designer.
>
> I believe that the ID movement is generally trying to do 2 but without
> having established how a designer would do things nor how to translate
> that into appropriate criteria for a test.
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>
>
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Received on Tue Aug 12 19:58:36 2008