From: John Burgeson (burgythree@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 12:09:47 EDT
Howard wrote, in part: "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.""
Since you have not yet replied to my "Creaturely ..." suggestions let me
discuss this from a slightly different position.
Aristotle posited the "four becauses" as
1. Formal (A plan)
2. Final (A purpose)
3. Material (What is used)
4. Efficient (What causes the change)
Since the time of Epicurious (~200 B.C.E.) one definition of "science" has
been to address only causes 3 and 4 ("ascribe nothing to the gods"). An
exposition of this is on page 6 of my website. At various times causes 1 and
2 have been reconsidered (even Newton once posited angels who kept the
planets in their proper paths) but by the mid 19th century the Epicurian
position had generally prevailed -- we call it "methodological naturalism).
What seems to have happened with the present ID people is that, by denying
"ascribe nothing to the gods," and thereby allowing supernatural causation
into cause 4, they are necessarily having to deal with causes 1 and 2 also,
and this is what causes (sic) all the trouble, for it is not likely that we,
being creatures created by God, can have the slightest chance of properly
assessing either God's plans or purposes (1 & 2) insofar as those plans and
purposes relate to specific entities in the physical universe.
Now if we postulate a concept of "Creaturely developed" (CD) in place of the
mess Johnson & company have made, we can return to the vision of Epicurius,
methodological naturalism, and still see where the ideas might lead. I would
guess to a null set, but I'd not think persons looking for evidence to the
contrary were doing "bad science."
Yeah -- CD does seem to require some sort of non human intelligence, but not
necessarily supernatural or divine intelligence. And a "positive" (even a
false positive not immediately recognized) from the SETI experiments would
(will) provide the "creature" to which the developed entity can be
attributed.
Burgy
www.burgy.50megs.com
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