Re: ID and Utility (DEFINING UTILITY)

Eduardo G. Moros (moros@castor.wustl.edu)
Mon, 29 Sep 1997 04:06:19 -0500

I don't thint that ID is being presented adequately or understood properly so far
in this forum. By ID I understand that there are some things in nature that
certainly look/appear like someone intelligent has put them together (as I said
before I don't particulalrly share this view 100% since you cold not show me
something in nature I could not see as evidence for a designer; I also said that
nature can be fully explained by naturalistic means because God so created it).
This appear to be most evident when structures or functions in nature are of the
catch-22 type. I don't believe that ID people would then say, "we can stop now
this since we hit the wall". I have read the M. Behe interview, for example, and
he talks about new theories based on I.D. This is not at all "new", however. As
an engineer I have applied "reverse engineering" and "inverse analysis" many
times. Some of the technique implicitly assumed that there is a design (or code)
that must be discovered (broken), etc, you can follow my drift. So, assuming that
nature has been designed by an intelligent agent could be, in my humble opinion,
very benefitial for scientific pursuit as in the sciences of reverse engineering
and inverse analysis (for example).

Salu2

Craig Rusbult wrote:

> In the first reply to my "ID and Utility" post, George Murphy says,
> > "Intelligent design" is a part of science in a limited sense:
> >If a paleontologist finds a piece of bone abraded in a certain way,
> >he/she may hypothesize that it was a product of such design, & then try
> >to predict things about the designer & test those predictions.
> > BUT - ID in the sense in which it is now being used, _theistic_
> >ID (whether the theistic element is explicitly admitted or not) is not
> >"scientific" in that sense, for a simple reason. God "can do anything".
> > Thus if unrestrained divine action is allowed as an explanatory
> >element, literally "anything goes". The theory can thus explain
> >anything. You found something your naturalistic theory can't explain?
> >Mine can - God (or The Intelligent Designer) did it.
>
> This is a good summary of the standard arguments against ID-as-science,
> if scientific utility is based *only* on ability to MAKE PREDICTIONS (or
> non-adhoc retroductions). In my post I stated that I agree with these
> arguments (although I still want to think about the arguments of Meyer,...
> more carefully, and I reserve the right to be eventually persuaded) that ID
> is typically not strong at making specific predictions. { Plantinga, in
> PSCF Sep-97, accurately refers to claims that "God did it" as "science
> stoppers" }
> Therefore, in the hope of making a defensible case for "the utility of
> ID in science" I suggested that ID can be most scientifically useful by
> providing a basis for good CRITICAL THINKING during evaluation. So far
> there has been only one direct comment (by Don Page) about this.
> Is this because everyone *wants* ID to fail, so that MN will be the
> dominant viewpoint of scientists who are theists? And if so, is this due
> to thinking that God is never active (except for "sustaining") in nature?
> Or because you think that a better way to argue for theistic action is to
> emphasize the distinction between methodological naturalism and
> philosophical naturalism?
> Or is it because you think that ID contributes nothing to critical
> thinking during evaluation? (see the AREA-SEPARATIONS post)
>
> *******************