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. But in both cases that purpose is something extrinsic to themselves. They have an extrinsic rather than an intrinsic teleology.
How might this extrinsic teleology relate to the intrinsic? That is, how does the specification in SC relate to the common sense intuition that organisms act for their own sake? If this specification doesn't arrive from the organism itself then is it imposed on it miraculously? If so, then isn't Dembski treating the organism as if it is not different from a machine or from the lines on a page that form a word? Isn't he leaving out a lot -- including the most important part -- of the evidence of the divine?
Wouldn't it be more helpful to look at the intrinsic teleology of organisms? That is, look at organisms as naturally signifying something greater? Or is that a topic more suited to philosophy than science? Maybe that's the proper venue for this whole discussion... but then every chiropractor is all too ready to diagnose problems as having to do with the back...
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