From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 10:22:05 EDT
I've been gone for a while; time to catch up on a few items.
In place of the term, "Intelligently Designed," I had suggested:
>> How about MD, Mindfully Designed, or some other term that focuses
> attention of the idea that the universe exhibits a
>> character that strongly points to the prior intentional action of Mind?
Dick Fischer replied:
> I think that is trouble. The problem is the word "designed." Where does it
> end? If God established natural laws at the beginning, commissioned the
> impersonal acts of nature to do the work, and set it all in motion at the
> Big Bang, there is no "design" to it.
Interesting comment.... In common parlance today, to "design" something is
to use one's mind to conceptualize or plan something for the accomplishment
of a purpose. The ID movement, however, seems to have been remarkably
successful in shifting the meaning of "design" (as an action) to the
hand-like action of forming, making, or assembling something.
As I have said on many occasions, the term "intelligent design" -- as it has
been employed in the bulk of the ID movement literature -- has attained a
very peculiar meaning. In ID-speak, to say that "X was intelligently
designed' is to say that "X was actualized (assembled, formed, configured,
constructed, fabricated) in a way that required one or more episodes of
non-natural, non-miraculous, non-energetic, form-conferring action performed
by some unidentified, unembodied, choice-making agent."
Given what mischief has been done to the word "designed," I think you may be
correct, Dick, to say that it should be avoided. But making up new words
like "Creavolution" has its problems as well. I'll keep thinking of some
alternative.
Howard Van Till
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