Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

Personally I cant discuss your analogy with Engineering Design, because I
dont understand what point you are trying to make.

I would like to step back a bit, and clear up what I see are some
misconceptions in the thread.

I do not think that anyone here would deny that the universe is designed.
But making the claim that the universe is designed is a statement of faith,
not science. Science, via MN has so far not been able to prove that there
is a designer, and it probably never will because it is a limitation of the
method. But science cannot disprove a designer either.

Of course there are atheists who would claim that MN is the only source of
truth and knowledge (PN), but I have not heard anyone here make that claim.
It seems very clear to me that MN is a robust method of discovering how the
universe works, but cannot discover the meaning of the universe, or who
created it and how.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Loose" <peterwloose@compuserve.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>; "'Iain Strachan'" <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 4:27 AM
Subject: RE: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific
Naturalism

>
> My friends - I just don't get it - sorry!
>
> Those who disagree with my analogy simply are disagreeing. BTW - I do know
> what a straw-man is! But what I don't see is anyone explaining, WHY it is
> that everything we know about Intelligence and Design (in the engineering
> world in my example) is different from the Biological world.
>
> Some of you are saying that it is not circular reasoning or special
> pleading. But it is as I see it. Let me explain:
>
> One says "but evolution is clearly nothing like that". Isn't that special
> pleading? It is a statement made without evidential support and is of
> sweeping generalisation. Simply by claiming that evolution is nothing like
> that is unconvincing and would have no evidential merit in a Court for
> example. Show me why evolution is not like that?
>
> The circular reasoning is that you assume RM+NS to be evidentially true.
> So
> of course RM+NS is an example of design. But you proved nothing: you
> simply
> made a tautological statement.
>
> So may I propose that before we attempt to move on in this discussion and
> consider other aspects I raised about MN and its relationship to ON (or
> what
> some call PN), it would perhaps be helpful to focus on the evidential
> aspects of why my analogy with Engineering Design (Software - Hardware
> Integration) is false, or a straw-man as someone wants to characterise it?
>
> Blessings
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
> Behalf Of Dave Wallace
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:16 PM
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific
> Naturalism
>
>
> Iain Strachan wrote:
>
>> The second point that occurs to me is that, as I'm also a software
>> engineer, I'm also well aware of the intelligent design effort that goes
>> into a complex piece of software.
>>
>
> As a software engineer I agree with Iain's point about problems with the
> analogy. As a former lead designer on a large software product
> sometimes I would despair as to whether or not some of the design that I
> saw coming out of some groups was intelligent or not.
>
> Dave W
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Jul 19 06:52:24 2007