Somehow this was supposed to show
that people can recognize design, but I submit these primitive people were
simply reasoning that nature doesn't make things with polished surfaces,
some of them transparent, and with clean lines not softened by feathers,
and with rotary moving parts like wheels and propellors. They were
identifying the _source_ of design, not the fact of design.
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This is plausible, but it plays right into Mike Behe's argument that
*JUST THESE KINDS OF SYSTEMS* are found at the cellular and molecular level
in living organisms! So what are we to conclude about the lens of the eye,
for example? (polished, transparent) And about the other kinds of "molecular
machines" Behe discusses? Is there a difference in how we should regard
macroscopic objects like the airplane and microscopic objects which display
many of the same characteristics we "intuitively" associate with a designer?
Also, your last sentence does NOT follow from what came previously. If the
primitive people were simply reasoning that "nature cannot make such things",
then they were not necessarily identifying WHO the designer was. They
identified the fact of design *without* identifying the source.
Stan Zygmunt
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383