Comments on: A Singular Lack of Imagination in ID

By: Threads from Henry’s Web » Blog Archive » Boundaries of Science and a Shocking Lack of Curiosity

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:17:26 +0000

[...] One of the things I have noticed about intelligent design (ID) is its shocking lack of curiosity about the designer. One can guess that they’re either afraid of what they will find (God) or what they won’t find (God). Take your pick. ID proponents regularly claim that they have no need to identify the designer; they have only to identify his work. Yet the scientific approach, upon detecting design, would be to promptly look for the designer. (I have previously discussed this natural desire here.) [...]

By: Henry Neufeld

Henry Neufeld — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:51:41 +0000

But an ID supporter or for that matter a theistic evolutionist like myself would have to argue that God�s principles of design are not like ours!

Yes, that seems to be a point where many of us can agree!

By: Henry Neufeld

Henry Neufeld — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:50:20 +0000

That has been one of my questions throughout the ID debate. What’s wrong with “I don’t know”? When we don’t know how something came to be, we could just say so, and then those in the proper field see that as an open field for research.

Of course Dembski and Behe both believe they know ahead of time what scientists will be unable to explain naturally. Personally I suspect existence itself will defy explanation, but that’s a ways down the road.

By: Peter Kirk

Peter Kirk — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:17:51 +0000

It has occurred to me that a good example of what is different between our ideas of design and that of the putative Intelligent Designer is that the Designer never invented the wheel! That is to say, nowhere in nature, as far as I am aware, is there any kind of wheel or rotating mechanism. I don’t count things like tumbleweed which roll as a whole, I am thinking of any one part turning continuously relative to another part. Why not? Surely there are environments which could be exploited most efficiently by a creature with wheels.

Evolutionary biologists would of course point to how difficult it would be for such a mechanism to evolve, but I don’t see how a wheel made of bone or horn would be any less likely than to evolve than an eye. But an ID supporter or for that matter a theistic evolutionist like myself would have to argue that God’s principles of design are not like ours!

By: pwe

pwe — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:44:05 +0000

Hi Henry;

Interesting post! You touch upon an interesting subject: how much can we know about non-human designers. As I understand IDists, they claim that design is design, no matter the designer. William Dembski’s Explanatory Filter is based on that no assumptions about a designer are made. All you put into the filter is the probability of an event to occur not-designed and its specified complexity, that last being a universal measure.

Is Dembski right? Can we conclude from human design to divine design? Heck, can we even conclude from human design to alien design? How are we to know?

Those of us that have not been blesse with Dembski’s ability to obtain universal knowledge may never know.

- pwe