Dembski seems to be using a quantitive approach to demonstrate that novel biostructures could not have arisen as a result of either chance (or rather, that the improbability is such that it is as good as impossilbe [he multiples the number of quarks in the cosmos by the number of plank moments or something like that to get the denominator for the inverse of his threshold of so-improbable-that-it-is-as-good-as-impossible) or necessity. He concludes that these forms have arisen as a result of specified complexity. But the specified in this term is another name for something that a rational being, especially an engineer, would think of. So it's kind of a way of talking about teleology via quantification.
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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