While debating with my friend __,it occurred to me that his anti-organized religion screeds were one-sided because he lacked an appreciation of the desires that lead one to regard religion as good. I would like to construct an analogy with a tone deaf person who can't recognize the beauty of violin playing, but winces with pain whenever a violinist squeeks a wrong note or something like that. Such a fellow would look at violin music as pernicious. Similarly, with __.
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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