[asa] Re: [asa] Rejoinder 8A from Timaeus – to Randy Isaac

Timaeus wrote:
"2. ID, therefore, can affirm design without affirming “God of the gaps”.
It is not inherently committed to God of the gaps explanation."

Thank you for your reponse but you have not answered my question. I think I
am having difficulty expressing myself clearly or else I am too dense to
understand what you are saying or both. Forgive my persistence but I would
like to try again.

I don't need any further analogies whether to Martians or otherwise. They
don't work. And I understand all the other arguments you make as well as the
creationist connections and the various distortions. And I understand the
theoretical range of what works and what can be done in principle. But
please flesh out your comment #2 for me. That's what I'm asking. I know that
ID "can affirm design" but how, in the ID model that you advocate does ID
detect design in the absence of gaps, namely in the case that the
probabilities of the variations, that for example lead to the "irreducibly
complex" biomolecules, are found to be within a reasonable range of
probabilities. Lay it out specifically for me. How does the ID argument flow
to show that design has been detected in living cells in this scenario? Are
you drawing a distinction between "affirming" design and "detecting" design?
If it's not "inherently committed" then how strong is the argument for
having detected design without such an explanation?

I'm also not making a judgment as to whether "god of the gaps" or ID is good
or bad or otherwise. I'm only trying to understand the essence of the ID
argument.

Randy

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Received on Tue Nov 4 11:24:50 2008