Let's apply it to mathematics. Let's suppose that many different rational animals on different planets are capable of knowing the same mathematical truths, just as many different animals on our planet have independently evolved eyes for seeing light. It would seem that just as the many seeing animals share in common a light-filled environment, so too the many calculating animals share the same (think Plato) mathematical environment in common. Especially if what they know is the same.
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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