From: Steve Petermann (steve@spetermann.org)
Date: Thu Sep 25 2003 - 10:07:19 EDT
Howard wrote:
> 1. That's a remarkably generous way of scoring this game. Your are saying,
> in effect, that even the nuttiest of proposals may be given credit for
> stimulating responsible scientists to do better science. True, perhaps,
but
> that doesn't make the nutty proposal any less nutty, does it?
Nutty? Can you make a case for that characterization? I suppose that would
be fair if there were already some examples of detailed descriptions of the
Darwinian evolution of something like the flagellum. But there aren't. Why
is that? As an engineer I can fairly quickly offer a plausible description
of the evolutionary path of a machine or piece of software. An incline
evolved into a screw, a lever evolved into a gear, gears into a
transmission, etc. Why can't Darwinian biologists do that as readily?
Ironically, any appeal to "it's complicated" is just a counter argument to
their own position. Perhaps they will someday but until then I don't think
it is fair to label other theories as nutty. BTW, do you characterize the
idea of divine action in general as nutty?
> Can anyone give me an instance in which ID-based research
> produced a uniquely ID-grounded explanation that could be held up as a
> better scientific explanation than those contributed by conventional
> science?
I guess it all depends on how you define <a scientific explanation>. If
that definition excludes a priori the possibility of some sort of divine
action, then by that definition ID will and has not. Seems to me that the
spirit of science is not a priori to find an RFEP answer to a question but
to follow the data to wherever it leads. Hoyle is a good example when even
though he was an atheist followed the data concerning the fine tuning of the
universe to its logical conclusion.
Hoyle wrote:
"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent
has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that
there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe
that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the
inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed
with regard to the consequences they produce within stars."
Steve Petermann
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