In a message dated 10/1/2000 2:49:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
rwein@lineone.net writes:
>
>
> >What is design?
> >
> >Behe
> >
> >It might be interesting to try to establish what Behe means by design or
> >intelligent design.
>
> Up till now I haven't given much thought to this question. I thought it was
> pretty obvious that the ID lobby was using the term ID to refer to the
> action of a conscious being.
>
It seems to me that through equivocation or conflation these concepts were
often confused to jump from the design inference to the intelligent
design(er). Stephen definitely seems to be under the impression that ID has
shown "intelligent design" to be refering to a conscious being but if that is
the case then the design inference and Behe's IC hardly support this form of
intelligent design.
> But I realize now that this is a significant issue that ID proponents really
> need to address (but don't). Consciousness cannot be the criterion, because
> a non-conscious computer is capable of design. And, if the criterion is not
>
Definitely.
> consciousness, what is it? Intelligence? But, as Bertvan has just pointed
> out, even a single-celled organism can have intelligence. And non-living
> systems like computers can have intelligence. The Earth or the Universe as a
> whole could be considered an intelligent system, capable of creating complex
> objects. So what good would it do the IDers to demonstrate the existence of
> intelligence in the origin of life anyway?
>
They have to show that the "intelligence" and the "design" cannot be
explained by natural forces and then they have to show that there is a
non-natural pathway.
> Stephen Jones even claims that ID does not necessarily entail a designer.
> But, if it doesn't entail a designer, what's the point of it? What *does* it
> entail?
>
I am not sure what Stephen's position is right now.
> > "Design is simply the purposeful arrangement of parts."
> >
> > pp 193 Darwin's Black Box
> >
> >But this means that we have to detect purpose. Can natural forces lead to a
> >purposeful arrangement of parts? Of course. If design is merely defined as
> >above then natural forces can lead to design. So how does one eliminate
> >natural forces as the designer?
>
> Quite. What does "purposeful" mean? Can a non-conscious entity, such as a
> computer, act with purpose? It can *have* a purpose, fixed by its creator,
> but that's not the same as acting with a purpose of it own. If a
> non-conscious entity can't act with purpose, Behe must be talking about a
> conscious intelligence, and he's back with the problem I mentioned above
> (how can he differentiate between the action of conscious and non-conscious
> designers?). If it's claimed that a non-conscious entity *can* act with
> purpose, then how do we know that the Earth or Universe (or natural
> selection) is not such an entity?
>
The same applies to apparant and actual specified complexity, actual and
apparant design, actual and apparant intelligent designers etc.
> Of course, this is a relatively subtle argument. When arguing against IDers,
> it's probably better to concentrate on showing up their more basic logical
> errors. If they can't see those, then they're certainly not going to be able
> to see more subtle points like this one.
>
I disagree that this is a subtle argument, it's the foundation of the ID
argument. But imho it's only through equivocation of the words design,
intelligent design, purpose etc that they can achieve their goals.
I agree though that there are plenty of other problems with ID.
I just wish ID'ers would deal with these and other issues. So far it seems
hard to get them to argue.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 01 2000 - 18:50:14 EDT