FMA
>I am trying to find out what ID exactly means. Please feel free to add other
>resources or definitions.
>
>http://www.nabt.org/resources_panda1.html
>
>"First, it is defined (p. 150) as the theory that biological organisms owe
>their origin to a preexistent intelligence, God presumably being this
>preexistent intelligence."
>
>It should be interesting to note that present inferences of ID cannot
>exclude natural forces as the designer.
>
>"Second, observing that "Darwinian evolution locates the origin of new
>organisms in material causes, Pandas declares that (p 14):
>
> Intelligent design, by contrast, locates the origin of new organisms
> in an
>immaterial cause in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern devised by an
>intelligent agent. "
>
>A plan or blueprint is a very subjective indicator. Is there a purposeful
>arrangement of parts? Purposeful in what manner? That it works or that it
>works according to a plan?
>I'd argue that no evidence of purposefulness exists.
>
>"And third, in a discussion of fossils, a further declaration offers yet
>more precision (p. 99-100):
>
> Intelligent design means that various forms of life began
>abruptly
> through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features
> intact fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks,
>and
> wings, etc.
>
>That seems to be disproven by the evidence.
Chris
And how!
But, it is clearly not necessary for "new" forms to be discontinuous with
earlier forms for life to be subject to design. However, *if* this were the
case, it would conflict with evolution.
I would suggest that we separate out the design from the implementation. We
may design something without actually carrying it out. Design is
*primarily* a verb, and activity, something that is done. It may be done
before that which is designed is created, or during (as when a programmer
designs a program on the fly).
Thus, design would not be something that is present as such in the result,
but which is present *only* in the designer himself (more on this later).
Design would be the choosing of desired features that something is to have
in order for it to serve some purpose(s) the designer has in mind. Thus,
whether living things were designed or not, they would not be, strictly,
examples of design but examples of the *results* of design (and
implementation).
Thus, we could say that design is the process or activity of choosing the
features that something is to have. We say, "He is *designing* a house,"
not, "The house *is* a design" (though we might say, "The house is of his
design(ing)").
While we're at it, and since I have it handy, we have this from the
American Heritage Dictionary:
deásign (dÕ-z¼nã) v. deásigned, deásignáing, deásigns. --tr. 1.a. To
conceive or fashion in the mind; invent: design a good excuse for not
attending the conference. b. To formulate a plan for; devise: designed a
marketing strategy for the new product. 2. To plan out in systematic,
usually graphic form: design a building; design a computer program. 3. To
create or contrive for a particular purpose or effect: a game designed to
appeal to all ages. 4. To have as a goal or purpose; intend. 5. To create
or execute in an artistic or highly skilled manner. --intr. 1. To make or
execute plans. 2. To have a goal or purpose in mind. 3. To create designs.
--deásign n. 1.a. A drawing or sketch. b. A graphic representation,
especially a detailed plan for construction or manufacture. 2. The
purposeful or inventive arrangement of parts or details: the aerodynamic
design of an automobile; furniture of simple but elegant design. 3. The art
or practice of designing or making designs. 4. Something designed,
especially a decorative or an artistic work. 5. An ornamental pattern. See
Synonyms at figure. 6. A basic scheme or pattern that affects and controls
function or development: the overall design of an epic poem. 7. A plan; a
project. See Synonyms at plan. 8.a. A reasoned purpose; an intent: It was
her design to set up practice on her own as soon as she was qualified. b.
Deliberate intention: He became a photographer more by accident than by
design. 9. Often designs. A secretive plot or scheme: He has designs on my
job. [Middle English designen, from Latin d¦signÒre, to designate. See
DESIGNATE.] --deásignãaáble adj.
Now, about the locus of design. It is clearly in the designer, not in the
thing designed. This may be easily understood, if we understand that a
designer may design something that is identical to something that is not
designed. Thus, a designer may even strive for a "natural" look, a look of
something that is not designed (by deliberately avoiding the typical
results of design).
The importance of this is that it means that there is no "magic bullet" of
design that will necessarily be unambiguously found in nature, even if it
*is* designed. The designing activity can be completely hidden from viewer
of the result, because it is in the designer, not in the thing designed.
This is why, barring *very* odd forms of evidence (such as finding exactly
the first ten million digits of pi blatantly encoded in a long stretch of
"junk" DNA in the human genome), there is a good chance that design, even
if present, might not be detectable to us (especially if God is the
designer, rather than aliens or "metaverse" residents).
The appearance of design in something is relational; either the thing
designed is in some context in which it would not be by naturally-occurring
events, or it has features that are themselves related in ways that would
not be naturally-occurring, or both. Pi-in-the-human-genome would be both,
as far as we can tell.
But, again barring such evidential oddities, it is very risky asserting
design of things in nature because it is *so* easy to be wrong about
claiming that Nature can't do things. It can't make a bumblebee that can
fly (but they do). It can't create order out of chaos, a tiny bit at a time
(ah, but it *can* create order in just this way). Just because a *human*,
such as Behe, or Johnson, or Stephen Jones, cannot think of a way for
something to happen in Nature without outside purposeful help does *not*
imply that it can't happen; they could be wrong. Their claims are nearly
always claims based on their own ignorance or incredulity. Until they find
something akin to pi-in-the-genome, something that really *is* irreducible
in construction to a series of small steps (and I'm not even absolutely
sure about the pi), they would do well to be much more conservative in
their claims than they have been. Behe's ludicrous assertion that alternate
pathways to a particular "irreducibly complex" structure are inherently
improbable is an example of the nonsensical results of this kind of
self-inflicted no-nothingism. When you have to keep from examining evidence
or from engaging in rational analysis to maintain a claim that something
cannot or is not likely to happen naturally (and without design), it's time
to back off and start over. Nature, fortunately for us naturalistic
evolutionists, just "loves" to refute people like Behe. The bumblebee
*does* in fact fly. There *are* transitionals between dinosaurs and birds.
Why does this "upsetting" of the opinions of humans occur in Nature so
often? Because many humans have ideas that arbitrarily limit what they can
think of without a lot of outside help, and also because the human mind
simply cannot generally consider all the possible prospective ways in which
something might be tried. Nature has time and quantity on its side, and it
is limited only by physics, not by the accidents of concepts and ideas, not
by preconceptions.
The bumblebee is able to fly because of the way its wings flex. The "proof"
that bumblebees could not fly did not take this flexing into account. The
person generating the proof probably did not know about the flexing, and
certainly did not think it relevant. Thus, while Bertvan, following her
usual pattern, might argue that it is in fact improbable that the bumblebee
flies, or even that it must have outside (i.e., "designer") help when it
*does* fly, the bumblebee nevertheless flies and does not in fact seem to
be getting a boost from God.
Until Johnson and Jones and company can show that there is a contradiction
involved in the claim that something happened (or probably happened)
naturally in Nature, we must assume that their claims, like the similar
claims of the impossibility of bumblebee flight must be presumed to be
false. The bumblebee flies. Nature finds ways to create complex structures
in *very* roundabout ways that Behe probably would not normally think of on
his own even if he thought about possibilities for decades.
If the panda-precursor has a need for a thumb but does not have one, the
advantage of any small step in the direction of having a thumb-substitute
will give those panda-precursors better survival/reproduction odds than
those that don't have such thumb-substitute precursors. Nature does not
care that *we* might not think of making a "thumb" out of non-thumb parts,
and is thus free to go ahead and make a little bump that helps the
panda-precursor eat bamboo shoots, and to gradually make the bump into a
thumb-like projection in small steps. Nature's limitation is different
from ours. Nature is only limited by the lack of "fitness" paths in certain
directions, where human minds are almost always limited *much* more
severely (and certainly *differently*).
If an organism needs a complex molecule of a certain sort, but does not
have it handy and it cannot make one out of a *simpler* molecule, it *may*,
just to spite "mainstream" ID theorists, create such a molecule by
modifying one that is already *more* complex than the one it wants but
which *is* achievable by more-nearly-direct means.
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