Attn IDers, what would it take...?

NWR: Wouldn't that make billiards a machine?Warren: No. Where are the well-matched interacting parts? Colliding balls aren't the same as a piston connected to a drive shaft and causing rotating motion.In any event, I don't have to prove that something in nature is a machine. I only have to have a good reason to suspect it is a machine. Investigations begin with suspicions not absolute proof.

Warren: A machine is a thing consisting of several well-matched interacting parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy in performing a basic function.Nuggin: By this definition, an elephant is a machine. You're casting your net so wide so that every single thing is a "machine". You might as well substitute "noun" for "machine".Warren: Sorry, I meant to say a molecular machine is a thing consisting of several well-matched interacting parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy in performing a basic function.

Warren: Therefore, to say that my viewing them as machines is comparable to believing in Santa Claus is just plain ridiculous.Nuggin: Not what I'm saying. What I AM saying is that believing in ID / Creationism is tantamount to the belief in Santa Claus.I don't believe in magic. I'll admit that openly.Warren: I take quite seriously Arthur C. Clarke's dictum: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." What you call magic I call advanced bioengineering. I do not think that an appeal to nanotechnology at the origin of life requires us to posit a supernatural force.Paul Davies says:"The key to existence will be found not in primordial sludge, but in the nanotechnology of the living cell."I think that viewing life as carbon-based nanotechnology rather than something strung together by an irrational tinkerer has the potential to inspire the generation of testable hypotheses that will help us better understand biotic reality. Will ID will prove to be a fruitful research paradigm? Time will tell.This message has been edited by Warren, 09-17-2005 02:34 PM

NWR: In any case, I'm not sure where you are going with this. Even if you show that some biological thing is a machine, that would not prove intelligent design.Warren: How many times do I have to say it, I don't claim to be able to prove ID. I'm simply stating why I suspect ID, what data would strengthen or weaken my suspicion and that there appears to be no data from the natural world that would cause an ID critic to merely suspect ID. They need proof of ID in the form of seeing the designer designing or evidence that evolution is impossible in a particular instance.NWR: Note that I don't have any principled objection to ID. I have only a pragmatic objection, due to it not being science. If the ID proponents would do something to make the investigation scientific, that would be fine with me. I have indicated how I think it could be made scientific in Message 6 (Thread Can't ID be tested AT ALL?).Warren: I agree that at the present time ID is not a scientific theory. But as one ID theorist puts it:"Scientific inquiry proceeds in the absence of theories. Scientific theories do not come into the world like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, perfectly formed. 'The transition from data to theory,' argued the philosopher of science Carl Hempel (1966, p. 15), 'requires creative imagination....and great ingenuity, especially if the [new ideas] involve a radical departure from current modes of scientific thinking, as did, for example, the theory of relativity and quantum theory.' Hempel might have added that a lot of hard work is also needed, mainly in hypothesis generation and testing -- to start the difficult cycle of reasoning Karl Popper (1962) called 'conjectures and refutations.'...At the moment, we -- that's all the people who care, both design theorists and anti-design theorists -- are in the midst of the first major cycle of proposed refutations... The dialectical activity of proposing and weighing new ideas is underway. Either a theory of biological design will emerge from all this work or it won't. I say it will."This message has been edited by Warren, 09-18-2005 11:16 AM

NWR: Science starts with clear definitions.Not always. Biology is rarely captured (in a clean sense) by definitions. Any biological definition becomes fuzzy and unclear when you probe deeper. In fact, W. Ford Doolittle recently pointed this out:It is ironic that the words we seem to need in order to think productively about biology, words such as 'homology', 'individual,' 'organism', and 'species,' have no precise meaning.

Crashfrog: Then maybe these people should get to work and get some results before they complain about not being allowed in the journals and not being allowed to have their beliefs taught in school.Warren: Who are "these people" you refer to? Most of the design theorists I'm familiar with do not advocate teaching ID in school.

Annafan: You claim to favour a non-supernatural intelligent designer for the origin of life on earth, because you find it hard to believe that it came about through purely natural causes.Warren:Belief has nothing to do with it. I don't believe, I hypothesize. I can hypothesize a teleological origin of life that I think is as testable as the non-teleological origin of life hypotheses I've seen thus far.This message has been edited by Warren, 09-18-2005 11:56 AM

From an ID theorist:ID hypotheses don't have to disprove non-teleological
interpretations. They don't have to be needed. They don't have
to be flashy. They only have to work, which is to say, they follow from the logic of the teleological approach and help us understand the natural world.

Annafan: In that respect, it doesn't really seem to help. It's just a relocation of the problem.Warren: What problem? Are you referring to "Who designed the designer"?This message has been edited by Warren, 09-18-2005 12:27 PM

Who Designed the Designer?
Jay RichardsWe recently received the following question:I hope my query can be directed to someone able to respond to my question regarding to the theory of intelligent design.
My question is: "WHO DESIGNED THE DESIGNER??????"After a few moments of stunned silence, I realized what a powerful objection this is. In fact, it's a universal acid, a show stopper. Its application is almost limitless. For example, people say that Mt. Rushmore was sculpted. But that does nothing to explain the origin of the sculptors! Similarly with respect to all examples in which we infer the activity of an intelligent agent. All those explanations fail to explain the origin of the agent itself, and are therefore unjustified. Therefore, we can never infer design in any case. Therefore, if you are reading this, you have no justification for inferring that someone has written this post. It's best just to stop the regress of explanation at the computer screen itself.

Here are some comments from IDers on the regress issue:"The regress argument is not as significant as you seem to think it is. Even if one must propose a supernatural designer at some point in the progression, there is no reason to pick this point over that point. For example, a Christian might claim that God designed the human who designed the mousetrap. If we are trying to understand the origin of the mouse trap, the origin of the human is a tangential issue.""Take the example of stone tools that were mistakenly attributed to geological processes. Obviously, the explanation that they were designed by humans who then arose some other way involves more regress than the explanation that the stone tools simply arose by themselves. In fact, explaining the “complexity” of a flint axe is considerably easier than explaining that of a human. The reason why we prefer the explanation involving humans is that this was in fact what happened."This message has been edited by Warren, 09-18-2005 01:39 PM

Another IDer speaks to the regress issue:I view ID as a specific hypothesis that may help account for life-as-we-know-it. That is, I don’t view ID as some abstract principle used to account for some generalized phenomena. I view ID as a possible historical explanation that has never truly been tested by science. It is worthy of investigation. Those who disagree with this assessment are invited to send references where science explores the possibility of life’s design, employs a method to test the possibility, and churns out a negative result. Note- this is not the same thing as articles critical of Dembski or Behe.Using this historical approach, it makes no sense to rule out some form of ETI as the designers of life with the philosophical argument used by ID critics. For example, it is not unreasonable to suppose that within a mere 1000 years, humans will have the ability to design life forms and use them to seed distant planets, say planet X. If the critics objection is valid, atheists are obligated to deny this as a possible future. To accept this as a possible future is to allow for a future where we’ll be required to invoke a religiously motivated explanation. That is, if we wanted to explain how life got on planet X, we could not appeal to human design, as that would not answer the question about where humans came from. Therefore, to avoid this religious conundrum, we would have to postulate that life on planet X was spawned from the geochemistry of planet X. Even though it would not be true. That’s what happens when you write history with philosophy.This message has been edited by Warren, 09-18-2005 01:52 PM

Annafan: until we find a highly obvious sign left behind by the Intelligent Designer (a sort of Killroy Was Here) or at least independant indications of the possible existence of candidate Intelligent Designers (ETs), an ID hypothesis is utterly useless and a waste of time.Warren: I disagree. You see the world through a non-teleological prism. Non-teleologists need either a message from the designer or some kind of extraordinary evidence (like a demonstration that something could not possibly be explained by a non-teleological process). There is nothing new here. But from where I sit, the non-teleologist is asking for something that would shock them out of their approach. Now, I’m not interested in providing some type of shock for the non-teleologist. I’m interested in whether an explicit teleological approach can carry out a progressive investigation that serves to weaken or strengthen ID hunches and whether it can help expand our understanding of biotic reality.Here's something for you to chew on:"We treat organisms - the parts at least -- as if they were manufactured, as if they were designed, and then we try to work out their functions. End-directed thinking - teleological thinking - is
appropriate in biology because, and only because, organisms seem as if they were manufactured, as if they had been created by an intelligence and put to work.”
Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does evolution have a purpose?, p. 268 (Harvard, 2003)This message has been edited by Warren, 09-19-2005 01:59 PM