Hi Richard,
You wrote:
> Paul, thanks for the references, but unfortunately I don't have
>access to a university library. Is any information about this work
>available online?
I don't know. But if you send me your surface mailing
address in the UK, I'll mail you copies of the articles,
along with other relevant materials (e.g., a long unpublished
paper by Peter Rust dealing with what Dembski later
called CSI).
> Also, I wonder why it is that Dembski did not cite these
> papers in his reply to me on this subject. Perhaps it's because
> the fit to his Design Inference is not sufficiently close for them
> to be considered an application of it.
Again, I don't know -- although from many conversations
with Bill, I know that the Scherer/Rust-type calculations
figure in his thinking, at least as rough approximations to
the sort of probabilistic estimates one might attempt with
the origin of biomolecules.
> What we really need is for Dembski to give his seal of
> approval to a particular calculation. Until then, we will be
> left guessing about whether this or that calculation really is
> a valid application of the Design Inference or not.
You shouldn't need Bill Dembski looking over your
shoulder to apply TDI. Try it yourself.
Here's a puzzle for you. Every e-mail message you've
sent me is an example of CSI. The messages are real
physical patterns, encoded on magnetic media (although
they might have been encoded in sand, brick, ink, God
knows what). What natural cause accounts for these
patterns?
Or is it reasonable for me to infer an agent, namely
Richard Wein, at a computer somewhere in the UK?
Paul Nelson
Senior Fellow
The Discovery Institute
www.discovery.org/crsc
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 29 2000 - 10:40:18 EDT