Sometimes the debater focuses on the political dimension to the question of ID and argues that it will hurt science education in the US if ID is taught. This argument is sound only if ID is faux-science. And I certainly would grant both that creationism is faux-science and that teaching it if it were better than that would be harmful to education. But ID, at least in its most evolution-friendly incarnation, may not deserve such a harsh judgment. And to argue against ID w/o having already offered a sound argument against ID's being a genuinely scientific proposal is an example of begging the question... kind of like a prosecutor arguing before the jury that they should convict the defendant of rape because murder is such an evil crime and murderers must not be allowed to go to kill new victims.... arguing in this manner without ever offering support of the claim that the person on the stand is in fact a murderer. To argue in such a way would both be a distraction and a circular argument.
Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
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