RE: [asa] Dembski on ID & TE

The article by Dembski is highly consistent with Meyer's new book "Signature
in the Cell". Dembski's conceptualization of information is a supporting
parallel to Meyer's work. However there's another article on UD that is of
great interest, and perhaps appropriate to this conversation:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/respected-cornell-genetici
st-rejects-darwinism-in-his-recent-book/

This is from Sanford's book "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome".
Interesting read, and even more interesting - Sanford is YEC.

James P

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 7:50 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] Dembski on ID & TE

I thought this may be of some interest to those on this list, since ID v TE
often comes up.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evolutionary-informatics-a
s-intelligent-design-and-not-as-theistic-evolution/

While Dembski/Marks' paper on this subject is the main point of Dembski's
post, I want to point out couple of lines that should be of particular
interest here. My emphasis added:

"One criticism is that it at best is consistent with theistic evolution but
does not support ID. I think this is a mistake. I've said for over a decade
now that ID is consistent with the most far-flung evolutionary change. The
key contention of ID is that design in nature, and in biology in particular,
is detectable."

...

"Theistic evolution, by contrast, accepts the Darwinian view that Darwinian
processes generate the information required for biological complexity
internally, without any outside source of information."

Considering that ID's compatibility with evolution (and really, ID's
definition, maybe even TE's definition) seems to come up a lot on this list,
this should be some pertinent information.

Off the top of my head, I get the feeling that Dembski is wrong about TE. Do
all TEs believe that "Darwinian processes generate the information required"
without any outside source of information? I think most TEs would simply
argue that design cannot be detected scientifically, and that therefore
"outside sources of information" of the type Dembski's talking about
(designers, etc) couldn't be detected even if they took place.

On the other hand, Dembski seems to be explicitly saying that ID is totally
compatible with evolution, but not "Darwinian" evolution.

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Received on Tue Aug 25 07:17:45 2009