From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Tue Dec 17 2002 - 12:18:13 EST
John Burgeson wrote:
> Once again I ask if we can talk about the science, and not about either the
> theology or the motivations of Dembski, Johnson, et. al. I am sure that to
> many those subjects are interesting; they are not interesting to me.
Basically, "The Design Inference" is presented in a
way that does not emphasize any applications to ID.
The current exchanges about "side information" are
what he calls "specified".
The major problem with the method is finding some
objective way to estimate the probability of a
certain series of events. If you know their probability, then
estimating whether there is
design is probably fairly good.
For subject matters other than evolution, I
think there may be places where it could be useful.
One of them might be in identifying possible fraud.
Of course SETI is another application. In that
respect, the useful repetoire that ID _could_ develop
would also potentially lead to advances in
information science.
I do not consider the methods useless, but I don't
think they are much help in the evolution/creation
debate or the evidence of God sorts of arguments
that they have been sold on. Fortunately (or
unfortunately), God seems to require us to have
faith, and "facts" just don't require very much faith.
by Grace we proceed,
Wayne
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