From: Sarah Berel-Harrop (sec@hal-pc.org)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 16:27:17 EDT
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 15:31:41 -0400
"Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net> wrote:
>From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
>
>> Perhaps someone can tell me why isn°¶t, say, an
>>electron intelligently
>> designed? A brick is just as intelligently designed as
>>a house!
>
>Yes, but only if you use the term "intelligently
>designed" in the ordinary
>manner of contemporary usage.
>
>The problem, as I have stated on numerous occasions,
>rests with ID
>advocates' peculiar use of the word couplet,
>"intelligently designed." In ID
>speak, to say that "X was intelligently designed" is to
>say, in effect, that
>"X was actualized (assembled, formed, fabricated...) in
>such a way as to
>require one or more occasions of non-natural,
>form-conferring intervention
>by an unidentified, unembodied, choice-making agent." If
>one uses THAT
>definition, then an electron would not be "intelligently
>designed" because
>it is produced by purely natural processes.
To be fair, I am unsure they would actually say
that the electron is not "intelligently designed".
I think everything is "intelligently designed" in
the sense of being created by God (or Vorlons), just
the ID design is *detectable* because it is complex
& specified or IC or whatever else they are going
to think up next. This is where the "ID" as a
rhetorical strategy comes to fruition. It is
meaningful as a made-up objection to whatever
"claims" of "science" are objectionable to them
(Blind Watchmaker Thesis as a specific example).
In ID-speak, frequently words have (at least)
two meanings, and it is very important to watch
the argument to see where the meaning changed.
Terry Gray's review of I think _Defeating Darwinism_
makes this point, Pennock also does in _Tower of
Babel_ (although he is somewhat sarcastic, which
may offend some readers).
An irony of the ID movement is that it draws so
strongly from the argument from analogy to *mechanistic*
processes (eg, the revisting of the watchmaker argument,
so-called "molecular machines", etc.). Mayr strongly
makes the point in _This is Biology_ that a mechanistic
conceptual framework for biology is inadequate and in-
appropriate. Lewontin's _Triple Helix_ also makes
this point. I suspect quite a lot of misconceptions
about biology stem from over-applying the mechanistic
metaphor.
>
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