Re: [asa] ID without specifying the intelligence?

> A note to Keith Miller:
> Just because an all powerful God COULD design life just like a semi
> intelligent alien biologist does not doesn't mean you have to jump
> to the supernatural before you eliminate the alien.

An "alien" with unconstrained capabilities is indistinguishable from
a supernatural entity. Both are also equivalent to ignorance as
scientific agents, and both equally uninformative. Neither are a
useful part of a scientific description. Only when theoretical
"aliens" are given limited capabilities (when they are basically
viewed as human-like agents with plausible technologies) can their
actions be potentially discerned.

> How would you know a microbe was genetically engineered by a human?
> You certainly don't need to know the motive. One could determine
> that a death was not an accident but a murder without knowing who
> the murderer was or the motive of the killer. ID is not the null
> hypothesis because we don't know exactly how an IDer would act.

But we assume the agent is a human. We know about humans as natural
agents. We can even directly observe human actions. We know their
capacities, and the limitations of those capacities. Human actions
are subject to scientific study for that reason.

> Random mutations is the null hypothesis just like random shuffling
> of chromosomes during independent assortment for genetics. You can
> still continue to look for secondary causes even if you have
> concluded an intelligence is behind it. It doesn't stop science.
> People thought an Intelligence was more directly involved in rain
> production now we know there are more secondary physical causes
> such as evaporation and condensation. With ID we may be getting
> closer to the first cause but there could be radiation or viruses
> carrying genes etc. Science goes on.

Science cannot deal with ultimate or first causes. Its study is
secondary natural causes and agents. In your statement above, ID is
simply a statement of the doctrine of Creation -- which no one here
is disputing. God is the intelligent designed of all that is. What
science seeks to understand is the secondary causes by which God has
acted and continues to act in Creation.

I think that my views have been clearly articulated over the years
both here on this list and in numerous writings. I will end my
comments here as I am very swamped with teaching-related
responsibilities at the moment.

Keith

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Received on Sat Sep 15 11:48:09 2007