Re: [asa] serious talk about ID and TE

I disagree, but of course we come from different backgrounds which may
likely bias our perceptions.

I am quite impressed by Jack Krebs providing such a compelling defense
or at least compelling description of theistic evolution and showing
how the UcD posters are quick to reject TE based on a misunderstanding
of their position. Jack does a great job at describing the concept of
randomness in evolution, so commonly misunderstood by the common ID
proponent.

Nevertheless both Jack and Timaeus stand heads and shoulders above the
common crowd.

My biggest disagreement is with Timaeus's statement

<quote>Be this as it may, I would maintain that Jack's exposition,
however orthodox or accurate, is gloriously irrelevant to the main
point in contention between ID and TE (or at least, most TEs), that
point being whether or not design is detectable.</quote>

While some forms of design are quite open to empirical detection by
science, a point well presented by Wilkins and Elsberry in
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/theftovertoil/theftovertoil.html, they
also point out that rarefied design suffers from a major shortcoming,
namely that it cannot compete with our ignorance, or in other words,
as so well explained by Gedanken on the now mostly defunct ISCID site,
the design inference, lacking a positive hypothesis cannot be compared
to the hypothesis that a yet to be explained pathway, or mechanism can
explain the observations. From history we have seen countless examples
that show why such an inference is doomed to be unreliable, even
Darwin understood that attributing thunder and lighting directly to
God(s) was caused by an unfamiliarity with the scientific principles
behind thunder and lightning.

By conflating common design with rarefied design, Timaeus is making
the same mistake as so many ID proponents before him. And yet it is
this bait and switch which is the foundation for ID's approach. First
argue that science is ill equipped to detect design, then point out
how the design inference promises a 'reliable' detection of design
(where design is now redefined to become the set theoretic complement
of regularity and chance) and then point out that such an approach is
scientific because that's how science supposedly detects design, where
design is now redefined once again and ignores that not only is the
design inference ill equipped to detect design reliably but also that
the design which science has succesfully detected is fundamentally
different from the design proposed by ID.

Pim

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com> wrote:
> Ted Davis:
>>
>> I invite anyone interested serious talk about ID and TE to peruse a
>> current
>> thread on UcD, with special attention to the comments of "Timaeus" (one of
>> many people in the ID movement who for good economic reasons wants to
>> remain
>> anonymous) and Jack Krebs.
>
> Thanks for pointing that out. Jack kicks it off with a very impressive
> posting. Yet Timaeus' counterarguments are just as impressive. As the man
> without a country, I find areas of disagreement with both, but Timaeus comes
> across as having the upper hand on this one.
>
> -Mike Gene
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Aug 29 00:33:38 2008