From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 07:44:49 EDT
I had asked Josh:
>> Why did you (Josh) change the terminology from
>>"intelligently designed" to just "designed"? Was that an intentional
>>choice? If so, what was the operative intention?
Josh responded.
> No intentions involved. I don't believe that a God that uses natural laws
> to accomplish creation is thus unintelligently designing things.
I agree. Now I must confess that I had an agenda (not a very well hidden
one) in asking the question in the first place. It seems to me that we are
just plain stuck with the reality that the term "intelligent design" has
been, for the moment, kidnapped by the ID movement(Johnson, Dembski, Behe,
Wells, Meyer, ...) and given a rhetorical meaning quite different from what
common usage of such words would ordinarily suggest.
That's why I said in another post:
> The key to evaluating the claims of ID theorists like Dembski is
> to understand the restricted and, by comparison to common contemporary
> usage, unconventional meaning that most ID advocates give to their
> marketing logo, "intelligent design." The movement is not about design (in
> the usual sense of the term), it's about getting things assembled (in a
> manner that requires non-natural action in the course of time).
That being the case, I think we have to be very careful when we use a term
like "intelligent design" and give readers a clear indication of our working
definition of it.
Howard Van Till
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