M.J.Thomas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bernard
>
> As I explained earlier, I am very much a layman on
> this subject so I am sure you will understand my
> skipping the technical aspects of your interesting
> and informative post.
>
> You write, “… it is NOT teleological l- it does
> not have an ultimate end in mind.”
>
> Science does indeed hate the notion of teleology,
> particularly when it comes to Evolution, but I see
> this as solely due to the necessarily restrictive
> nature of the Scientific Method.

But we are talking about science after all :-). What IDers claim they want is to have it taught in the science classrooms. If we were teaching religion and/or philosophy, teleology would certainly be an important component. But if we are to teach science, then that's what we should teach

Science cannot
> disprove that Evolution is purposeful

Here we have a definitional problem (what do you want "purposeful" to mean?). Was it purposeful to have thousands of species of anearobically adapted animals develop only to have a mass extinction when the atmosphere became rich in oxygen? Could evolution plan as part of its purpose that a massive comet would strike the earth and cause a massive extinction of perfectly adapted species? If you agree that these events were not planned, then science HAS proved that evolution is not purposeful. A real evolutionary biologist could multiply these examples a thousandfold. I'm an Organic chemist and medical anthropologist, I only play evolutionary biologist on Maat :-).

. Equally,
> I.D. cannot prove that it is.

You really need to get a good feel for what ID claims and does not claim. ID agrees with the age of the earth, it agrees with mutations and natural selection, it agrees with speciation. Where it disagrees is with the very beginning of life-- Dembski claims that 1) based on Behe's "irreducible complexity" that using information theory he can prove that the odds that Behe's examples have an extremely low probability to have been formed randomly or according to some law and therefore there has to be a "Designer<" and 2) "The No Free Lunch Theorem" that information cannot be created from a system with no information, i.e. that organized life cannot come from simply chemistry and therefore there has to be a "designer." After these initial steps, ID and "Darwinian evolution" are not much different so that the same critique applies


As I said before,
> when it comes to the question of Darwinism or I.D.
> (or, as I favour, a mix of the two) the jury is
> still out.

Depends on who sits on the jury. If the jury is one of scientific peers, the verdict is in. The overwhelming majority of scientists have ruled that the modern synthesis is valid.


IMO it just happens that a lot of
> people have already made up their mind about what
> the jury’s verdict will be, but I see nothing
> wrong with that.
>
> You write, “If a real designer were planning life
> he (she, it?) would never have done it in such an
> inefficient way. For example, humans are bipedal
> (i.e. walk upright) to enable to do so our spinal
> column is bent in a curious shape and BTW has
> condemned us to be very susceptible to lower back
> pain. Any designer should have done better.”
> You later continue, “people like Behe, Dembski,
> and Phillip Johnson make clear that the only
> acceptable "designer" is God (and the Christian
> God to boot) -- no superior aliens need apply for
> the post.”
>
> But is this not simply a case of people
> anthropomorphising this Intelligence(and
> unnecessarily so, IMO)? The use of the term
> ‘designer’ implies an entity with human or
> human-like intelligence.

Here again, we have to distinguish. We have been talking about what ID says. They really think it is the Protestant Christian God, but for selling purposes they are ambiguous-- could be an alien, or an unnamed "Designer".

But why does it have to
> be such? Is it not possible that this intelligence
> is some nebulous part of, say, the Earth’s
> biosphere? Rather like human intelligence is a
> phenomenon produced by a mass of atoms, compounds,
> etc. arranged in a particular way – i.e. our
> brain. IIRC, a British mathematician has mooted
> that when electronic circuits get down to a
> certain microscopic level they will will become
> rudimentarily intelligent. Perhaps we would all
> fair better if we were to let I.D. stand for
> Intelligent Darwinism in preference to Intelligent
> Designer.
This however is NOT what ID claims. These are your own hypotheses. The proper person to answer these would be a proponent of ID, who might or might not agree with you. I would doubt they would agree because, if you look at the nature of the forces you invoke, you use no supernatural or superhuman being but rather appeal to the sort of natural phenomena that science invokes in any case. As a matter of fact, you are approaching the sort of theories described by Dennett (in the book I cited for you)-- horrors intelligence emerging from inanimate objects. You just violated Dembski's No Free Lunch Theorem-- you evolutionist you :-).


> BTW, and on a lighter note, if our here
> hypothetical Intelligent Designer were human-like,
> I could happily point out that even we very clever
> humans design things that turn out to be
> imperfect… As they used to say, “Contrary to
> legend, even a Rolls Royce breaks down.”

But hopefully not so ill designed that an engineer would recoil in horror-- a common event in life forms.
>
> To close, I again thank you for your interesting
> and informative feedback. I value your not simply
> dismissing my posts on the grounds that they were
> written by a layman with a limited knowledge of
> Evolution and only a tentative view on the subject
> of I.D. I’m sure I am not the only person here to
> gain some better understanding of this complex
> subject from your erudite responses.

I appreciate the opportunity for civilized discourse. As an old university professor, I love any opportunity to try to instruct and pass on some knowledge and/or critical thinking. If you search around in my posts in Maat,you will see that I always try to provide references and citations so that my respondents will have an opportunity to check for themselves if I'm being accurate in my posts. Take a look at my long post on ID for a description ad critique of ID.
Bernard






> If knowing this is of any value to you, your posts
> have gotten me sufficiently interested in the
> "modern synthesis" to want to some when have a
> look at Richard Dawkins’s The Ancestor's Tale.
> Meantime, I shall continue to think that the
> process of Evolution incorporates something more
> than mechanical, something intelligent.
>
> MJT
>