Hello people,
Since the ARN forum is down for now, I thought I'd check in on the
old Calvin reflector to see what's up.
In another posting, Howard Van Till wrote:
>When all the rhetoric is over, however, the fundamental working meaning of
>ID is most evident in the examples offered for "empirical evidence that X
>was designed." Nearly all such "evidences" have as an essential component
>the assertion that, "since object X has quality Y, it could not have been
>assembled (for the first time) by any natural means."
That is not the fundamental working meaning that I employ. My meaning
is more along these lines: "since object X has quality Y, it's ultimate
origin
is best explained by a teleological cause." However, I can understand why
critics of ID would want me to argue that something "could not have been
assembled" by non-teleological means, as that would be baiting me into
trying to prove a negative.
>Once again I say that what its proponents (strategically and misleadingly)
>call "Intelligent Design Theory" is nothing other than "NOn-Natural Assembly
>Theory." Furthermore, since ID really means NONA, all talk of "natural"
>designers (assemblers) is irrelevant to what the chief proponents of NONA
>(mislabeled 'ID') are striving for.
No, I view ID as a TAT (Teleological Assembly Theory) and TATs can come
in at least three forms concerning this issue: 1. Key origin events owe their
occurrence
to intelligent intervention; 2. Teleological origin events front-load systems
and
thus constrain their subsequent development and evolution; 3. The process
of evolution itself was designed. And of course, none of these three paths
are need by mutually exclusive and I am finding each one to be quite fruitful.
Mike
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