The Human Question

A lot of what Freud said seems unscientific in the sense that it's hard to imagine how to test, or, if it has been tested, it has not been found to be universal trait in human nature (Oedipus complex, for example). How ready have some been to accept Freud's speculative remarks.  But how much higher they place the bar for ID. Truth is, I don't think ID can clear the bar.  If I took the double standardness as supporting the genuiness of ID, then that would be pretty lame.  But it is interesting how we raise our standards of demonstration when someone proposing something that we don't want to believe.

... may be that it distracts so many from doing natural theology.

its focus on intervention conforms to their focus on divine Will.

BD cites the following as a defense against the criticism that IDers use of mechanistic reasoning when doing ID stuff.  According to BD, this article distinguishes two senses of the word 'mechanistic,' which two terms are confused by critics of ID: Polanyi, Michael.  "1960s Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry," in the August 1967 of Chemical and Engineering News.

One bit of evidence that it might be is the fact that (I think in chapter 19 of The Design Revolution ) BD makes an analogy with art (not art as in paintings but art as in techne: e.g., the art of ship building, medicine, carpentry, etc.), saying that, just as the art of shipbuilding is not in the wood, and the art of letter writing does not reside in the letters, so too the art of building life lies not in the stuff that constitutes life (as with the other two cases) but in its designer. I am not remembering this very clearly, but it IS worth noting that he may be denying that an inner teleological principle guides the actions of cells, etc.... I dunno.

That is, a version of ID that places all of the intervention at the point of the creation of the first cell. Noteworthy: that it is consistent with neo-Darwinism simply for the reason that the latter is a theory of biodiversity rather than biogenesis.

Dembski argues that the arrangement of parts in the human eye, far from being the result of a bumbling design, it necessary to get enough blood flow to enable sensitivity to minimal levels of light (as low as one photon).

Michael Shermer first criticizes the ID/creationist crowd for committing the fallacy of false dilemma (although he doesn't use that name exactly), and THEN he asks us to chose between methodological naturalism and methodological supernaturalism.

ID is neither sufficient nor necessary to buttress natural theology.  But it is interesting.  And it's not irrelevant.

The difference is, according to Dembski, that Miller denies that you can be scientific about that.

To the theist who is not familiar with ID, this program seems to be problematic in the two following ways: 1. ID makes it look like theism is grasping at straws.  For the proponent seems to find it necessary to refer to the miraculous to give a a justification of theism (here "theism" is the conviction that there is a provident God).  But to rely on the supernatural to justify theism seems to involve the assumption that natural phenomena offer no evidence for the existence of God.  The proponent of ID seems, therefore, to be oblivious to the appropriate role played by natural theology in the defense of theism against its critics. 2. ID advocates seem to be convinced that they can actually demonstrate that miraculous interventions have occurred.  Such a conviction is thoroughly problematic, for miracles are by nature an object of faith rather than of demonstration.  And to claim to demonstrate what cannot be proven is to make the critical listener suspect that ...

That's the correct contrast, rather than between the terms "intelligent design" and "unintelligent design." For "intelligent design" is redundant and "unintelligent design" is a contradiction. Let's take away the word "design" and replace it with the non loaded term "functionality." Oh well, that sounds good at least for the present.

Most theories, once regarded as confirmed, become the basis for further studies directed not at reconfirming the original thesis but getting deeper insights. So what would happen if someone managed to confirm one instance of ID: what research program would follow? What deeper insights might one seek? I suppose one could turn to other events in nature and see if they too exhibit ID. One could keep busy dealing with new apparent counter-examples as well. And one would also keep pretty busy answering the never-ending objections of philosophical skeptics (perhaps one of those objections would be that "ID is just a theory...?"). The latter, however, might be a philosophical rather than a strictly scientific enterprise. But none of these controversies would actually move scientific knowledge forward to a new level. The only way in which that might happen would be by trying to discern what the intelligent designer is like. But that seems likely to be a dead end for science, for (as ...

If it is to be based upon analogy with genetics, then where is the analog of sexual reproduction? memetics: the new phrenology Why is it that the most enthusiastic proponents of this pseudo theory go onto to excoriate ID for being a pseudo theory?

R Dawkin's strongest arguments against intelligent design point out how badly engineered bodies seem to be. Examples include the following: 1. the vagus nerve, which starts from the brain and wanders needlessly through the body (around the heart) before comiing back up and linking to the trachea (the length of this nerve is most notably excessive in the giraffe, points out RD); 2. the vas deferens, which starts at the gonads and then circles needless around the bladder on the way from gonads to penis [I wonder if the inefficiency here has to do with the parallel role played by correlate in females]; 3. the human back [I wonder if those stone age guys in New Guinea have backaches: perhaps it's our chairs that are unintelligently designed]; and 4. the eye, which places the nerves inside the area where light must pass, creating an obstacle course for signals [I need to recheck each of these examples to see if I've accurately represented them] and creating a blind spot in th...

In The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins describes a decades long experiment in which, after 33,000 generations of bacteria, one of twelve flasks developed the ability to ingest citrate. This required two mutations. The (the A mutation, he calls it) first happened in the 20,000th generation, providing no benefit. But 13K generations later, a second, B mutation made possible something quite radically new. All of the other adaptations were linear, but this one jumped off the charts. He cites this as a result that disproves the impossibility of the arising of structures that have irreducible complexity. Worthy point, but I can't help but wonder whether it actually supports the argument made by Behe, for he argues not that it is impossible, but that it is improbable. The worthwhile question is: what about those other eleven flasks: did they also eventually undergo both the A and B mutations? After 40k generations? 60K? 80K? 120K? 2M? In other words, given the long terms r...