Re: [asa] ID question?

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>wrote:

> William Paley used the ‘watchmaker analogy’ to demonstrate the idea of
> intelligent design. We can just tell, by looking at nature, that things are
> obviously designed by God by fiat, such as man, because of their complexity.
>
>
>
> Darwin creates a stir with an alternate hypothesis of man’s creation via
> biological evolution instead.
>
This completely ignores supervention. It is based on ignorance.

> It is a competing hypothesis. Evolution has now won, for explaining the
> biological creation of man, because of DNA evidence like pseudogenes.
>
Polkinghorne writes about the non-biological evolution of the mind.

>
>
> So my question: Isn’t Behe’s ‘moustrap’ irreducible complexity the same
> EXACT situation? It is basically saying since we don’t know how it could
> have evolved, therefore it was intelligently designed (by God or aliens).
>
Ken Miller's tie-clip adds a tie and a shirt to the springclip and produces
an irreducibly complex and artificially designed contraption called a
tie-clip. He shows no evidence of how the origin of the primordially
non-designed springclip (an extruded wire made into a spring shaped just
the right way in a hurricane slams into a 1/4 x 3 x 3 piece of wood, again
this latter being made separately in a hurricane) could be formed
trillions of times so as to produce the pre-cursor of the tie-clip.
The point is, nature doesn't produce the require pre-cursor, and this isn't
an argument against pre-planning of pre-cursors. If it were a valid
argument, would it then be a valid argument against TE?
I don't think so. Its an important distinction because Miller either is a
TE or he is not a TE. I've always thought Miller was a TE. But it is
becoming clear that his argument is that Behe's pool table is covered with
all green balls. He is saying to the Dover court that there are no red
billiard balls on the table because red billiard balls don't exist and
aren't allowed to exist. That is actually an anti-TE argument (as far as I
can tell). So I have been changing my mind about what I believe that Miller
believes. I hope I am not being unfair to him.

> The only difference is that Behe goes into great detail trying to explain
> how it can’t be done by known “Darwinistic evolutionist” mechanisms, but
> Paley could have (and maybe did?) done the same thing (explaining why/how
> known science of his day could not explain evolution for humans).
>
>
>
> I would like to know what is so different about Behe, compared to Paley.
> Paley has a ‘complexity’ argument with the watch, and Behe introduces
> irreducible complexity, but both are proposing ID because known science
> can’t explain it… yet.
>
>
>
> It is interesting to me that Paley’s argument for the biological creation
> of man is not discarded because it is wrong with the idea of complexity, but
> because the evolutionary process has evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
> So complexity may still be a valid way to detect ID, yet in this case, it
> turned out wrong as science accumulated more facts. It could be the same
> with irreducible complexity. A valid way to detect ID, yet disproven in the
> future when more facts become available.
>
>
>
> But what is the evidence to prove irreducible complexity? It seems like
> the only evidence is “evolution can’t do it or explain it… yet.”
>
>
>
> …Bernie
>

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Received on Thu Oct 15 13:50:56 2009