Reflectorites
On Wed, 13 Sep 2000 13:08:24 -0700, Troy Britain wrote:
[...]
TB> It is a curious thing that Behe's principle of IC as an argument for design
>turns traditional arguments from design on their heads. No longer are those
>features of organisms that seem perfectly "sculpted" to suit their needs
>necessarily evidence for design. No longer are the features of organisms
>which are well designed from a engineering POV necessarily evidence for
>design.
>
> Now, under Behe's IC principle of design, it doesn't matter how clunky,
>ungainly, and poorly designed from an engineering POV something is, it only
>matters that it is supposedly IC.
>
>Apparently the "Designer" under the new design theory is a (supernatural)
>cosmic Rube Goldberg.
[...]
Actually Troy has it *exactly* wrong. The "traditional arguments from design"
(i.e. as used by Paley) was, paradoxically, based on nature's *imperfection*:
"One question may possibly have dwelt in the reader's mind during
the perusal of these observations, namely, Why should not the Deity
have given to the animal the faculty of vision *at once? Why this
circuitous perception; the ministry of so many means? an element
provided for the purpose; reflected from opaque substances,
refracted through transparent ones; and both according to precise
laws: then, a complex organ, an intricate and artificial apparatus, in
order, by the operation of this element, and in conformity with the
restrictions of these laws, to produce an image upon a membrane
communicating with the brains Wherefore all this? Why make the
difficulty in order only to surmount it? If to perceive objects by
some other mode than that of touch, or objects which lay out of the
reach of that sense, were the thing purposed, could not a simple
volition of the Creator have communicated the capacity? Why
resort to contrivance, where power is omnipotent? Contrivance, by
its very definition and nature, is the refuge of imperfection. To have
recourse to expedients, implies difficulty, impediment, restraint,
defect of power. This question belongs to the other senses, as well
as to sight; to the general functions of animal life, as nutrition,
secretion, respiration; to the economy of vegetables; and indeed to
almost all the operations of nature. The question therefore is of
very wide extent; and, amongst other answers which may be given
to it, beside reasons of which probably we are ignorant, one answer
is this. It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence,
the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, *could* be testified to his
rational creatures." (Paley W., "Natural Theology," 1972, reprint,
pp.28-29. Emphasis Paley's)
When you think about this it must be so. Darwinism has no problem
providing an explanation for simple things like colour changes in moths
(even if the explanation turned out to be false!).
It is *precisely* the "clunky, ungainly...Rube Goldberg" things (like the
vertebrate blood-clotting cascade) that Darwinism has the *most* problem
explaining naturalistically. These contrivances are in the words of former Reflectorite
Walter ReMine "a biotic message" which "resists naturalistic explanation"
(ReMine W.J., "The Biotic Message," 1993, p.206)
Indeed, as Dembski points out, it *precisely* the deistic natural laws
Designer (which many so-called Theistic Evolutionists favour) that
Darwinism had the *least* problem replacing:
"According to Paley, if we find a watch in a field, the watch's
adaptation of parts to telling time ensures that it is the product of an
intelligence. So too, the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in
organisms ensure that organisms are the product of an intelligence.
Thus from its inception British natural theology conceived of order
in terms of *contrivance*. But order can also be conceived in terms
of lawlike regularities. The laws of nature, and in particular
Newton's laws, could as well be regarded as instances of order in
the world. From its inception British natural theology therefore also
conceived of order in terms of natural law. These dual notions of
contrivance and natural law were to have an uneasy alliance within
British natural theology, with natural law in the end swallowing up
contrivance. ...
Here we see the course by which British natural theology died.
When during the heyday of British natural theology in the late
eighteenth century William Paley and Thomas Reid fashioned their
design arguments in terms of contrivance, their arguments fell on
eager ears. By the time the authors of the Bridgewater treatises
recycled the same arguments for their readers in the 1830s and
"played endlessly on the theme of God's wisdom and goodness
deduced from nature," their arguments fell on deaf ears. By the
1830s the action in natural theology among the British Intelligentsia
was no longer in contrivance but in natural law. ...
Babbage's approach to natural theology ultimately failed to carry
the day. ... At first blush it seems far more sophisticated and clever-
and far more worthy of an exalted Creator-to locate design not in
contrivances but in natural laws. ... But in fact the effect of locating
design in natural laws ... rather than in the objects of nature ...[is] it
becomes impossible to form a coherent connection between nature
and any putative designer of nature. For natural laws produce their
effects by an impersonal, automatic necessity. ... as soon as design
is located in natural laws, design becomes an empty metaphor. I
know what it is for a watch to be designed. I only know what it is
for the *process* of making a watch to be designed in the
derivative sense that I know what it is for a watch to be designed.
Locating design in natural laws has the effect of reversing this
ordinary logic and thereby vitiating design. If I can't ascertain that a
thing is designed, I can't ascertain that the process giving rise to the
thing is designed. Unless we can infer an intelligent agent from the
structure, dynamics and function of things, we are not going to
infer such an agent from the processes that agent supposedly used
to bring about those things. If imputing design to things is
problematic, then imputing design to the processes that give rise to
those things is doubly problematic. ....
Of course one can always choose to explain natural laws by
recourse to a designer, as Babbage did, but one can explain them
equally well as brute facts. Both approaches become empirically
equivalent as soon as natural laws are regarded as empirically
adequate to account for all the objects of nature. Indeed, it's only
when natural laws are viewed as incomplete, so that without the
activity of an intelligent agent it is not possible to bring about a
given object of nature, that natural theology can remain a valid
enterprise."
(Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design," 1999, p.75-79. Emphasis
Dembski's)
It is of course not merely ironic that Troy, who is AFAIK a non-theist,
urges theists to adopt this picture of an invisible, undetectable designer,
who is indistinguishable from (and hence easily replaceable by) a `blind
watchmaker'!
Steve
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"Before Darwin's time, some of the best and the brightest in both
philosophy and science argued that the adaptedness of organisms can be
explained only by the hypothesis that organisms are the product of
intelligent design. This line of reasoning-the design argument-is worth
considering as an object of real intellectual beauty. It was not the fantasy of
crackpots but the fruits of creative genius. (Sober E., "Philosophy of
Biology," Westview: Boulder CO, 1993, p.29, in Dembski W.A.,
"Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology,"
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1999, p.71)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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