Intelligent Design Class to be taught at Cornell University

I don't see why you disagree. If evolution is able to produce things that look more "designed" then the products of other natural processes his is a fact that needs to be taken into account when constructing a distinction between designed and undesigned things. And this is the comparison that is under discussion.

ID will always be pseudoscience until it can be based on positive hypotheses that are falsifiable. As it stands ID argues from ignorance, makes no positive assertions (relying on negative assertions about the ToE) and dares make no predictions (this would be tantamount to predicting God's intentions).On the other hand Darwin began with a clear hypothesis, produced some evidence to support it and used the findings to make predictions that could later be tested.

The idea isn't so much as to infer design on some subjective level but to investigate attributes of (for instance) the very best of what human intellignece can design to see what that looks like. And then to compare this process to the...er..natural world and so come up with items there that share these attributes.Say a list could be compiled of 100 markers which are characteristic of intelligent designs (human designs being the reference point). All kinds of things could be included say for example aspects introduced simply to allow the item to be manufactured and which are redundant to main purpose afterwards.You now have something to test for and you now have something to predict if you begin to get a feel for a particular item in natureAnd say some item is investigated which scores highly (for the science would be to develop ways to test and to comment on this). Say it score 9/10 on 98 of the attributes to which it is being compared?Would that not allow that items evidence to support the theory?

Suppose we do it your way, and it happens to be the case that human design and evolution produce some of the same diagnostic traits. By your method you would tend to infer design in evolved objects, because you hadn't bothered to consider that possibility. Granted that is in keeping with the objectives of the ID movement but it is hardly scientific.The real issue is whether some living systems are the products of evolution or design. Your method essentially assumes that evolution is not possible which inevitably biases the result.

"Diagnostic traits" that is the phrase I was looking for!Lets suppose it wasn't 'some' but very, very many - like I proposed. That one infers design is not so much ignoring evolution as examining whether or not a better explanation is to be had.And say as things progress and it is found that even more refined diagnostic traits (yum) associated with human intelligent design are found also in nature.Could a day be reached when this theory (for it would now have a hypothesis, a way of doing its science, be able to pose predictions etc) better explains even 1 item (blood clotting, the eye etc). For the day it does, either ToE modifies or it gets dumped.The fact that human intelligence is the standard against which things are compared so as to infer design poses no problem. That same standard is the one used to infer evolutionThis message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 11:01 AM

The only way to determine whether design or evolution was the better explanation involves comparing the explanations. But you have explicitly ruled out that comparison. So really you are ignoring even the possibility of an evolutionary explanation.Even worse for your case, ID is not interested in developing design explanations. They simply want to stop with "design" without considering "hows" or "whys". But a good explanation, that can be extended to make useful predictions would consider how and why a particualr design was created and implemented. On this issue ID is not just unscientific, ID is refusing to even try to be scientific.

Not at all. There is no need for a new approach to take into account the existing approach as it seeks to establish itself. It is its own affair and is only bounded by the principles of scientific method in establishing itself - not some other product of scienfific method. Sure, comparison needs to be carried out - but only as one stand alone aspect of a theory (no design at all) against another (some design).And it isn't really comparison which is going on it is competing. ID will deal with the findings and conclusions of ToE if and when it reaches the point of being able to - not by dismantling ToE but by offering a explanation that better accounts for the observations. I'm not all that au fait with the current ID position but I'll take your word for it. But as I have said a couple of times already. This is early days. I was just posing some ideas as to how ID might enter the realm of science it seems so far to have been excluded from (by its own making if folk here are correct)This message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 11:32 AM

There is a crucial problem with this. If these "design markers" are based on human activity this would:1. provide no markers for life in the natural world.
2. assume that the creator's design methods mirrored humankind's.Would we, for example, use Apple's Ipod click-wheel as some basis for evalutating the creator's design concept?The best way to support the hypothesis that something has been designed it to identify who or what designed it, how and why. In short, if ID chooses to point the finger at a creator (they clearly mean God) then they must demonstrate who that creator is, how he works and to what end. ID is afraid of the implications of this so it forever skirts the issue.Now I can say that a cactus looks like it was designed by the Great Lord Belex to resemble the sexual appendage of a Gaag-Alkev Warrior from the Seventh Dimension, but until I can show some evidence of Lord Belex himself and his reasoning then I have absolutely nothing in the way of a working theory.This message has been edited by RickJB, 04-26-2006 07:40 AM

Not sure what you mean by 1.Regarding 2. The only design methods we would recognise would be ones which are intelligable in terms of our own design markers. Which means we could only infer intelligence in so far as it rowed along side our own. If we were "made in its image and likeness", if our intelligence mirrored its intelligence in some derivative* way.It could be that it designed but in ways we do not find intelligable. It could be more intelligent than us in other words, but we may not be able to see that.But we don't need any more that inferring intelligent design up to the limit of our own ability to design in order to infer intelligent design. And the closer it approaches our best (the better the score on more and more markers) the higher the probability that design is 'fact' That wouldn't support design, that would prove it. But it is not necessary to prove hypotheses, only to provide explanation for observations which gives ever-higher probabilities that this in fact was the way it happened. If its good enough for ToE it is good enough for ID.* I say 'derivative' for if probability-of-design reaches levels which mean it can be taken (like ToE currently, popularily is) as 'fact' then it would be apparent that the intellect which designed things like the cell is more advanced than us. The designs can at best only be scienficially recognised as equal to our own ability to design (we cannot produce design markers which we ourselves don't employ in some way) But its manufacturing ability would infer an intelligence currently not demonstrated to be possessed by us.I think of that little centipede crawling across my newspapers. There was a time, a more ignorant time, when I would have shook it off and stood on it

I am not arguing that a particular approach needs to take into account a previous approach. I a arguing that if we are looking for distinguishing features then we smhould make sure that they really are distinguishing features, and not features that would be expected to occur in other cases.

You seem to be arguing that there cannot be two competing theories. The game is "the best theory wins" not "I hold all the best cards already so bugger off"

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1. provide no markers for life in the natural world.

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This is the problem. The way that Gould divides gradualism INCLUDING creationism vs evolutionism AS PART of his notion of gradualism makes it actually NOT an issue within the tissue of Gould's very wide naming process. One does not have to agree with Gould that Adam Smith's worked wedged out Paley's thought in Agassiz's about fish geology and so one might indeed find that Gould thought "time" where "motion" actually was. Thus the "markers" it would NOT provide life would be about "time" abstracted and not the motion that is happening IN THAT time but as we no longer have the clear categories that Kant had between time and space, the concepts get in the way of the intuition and your transition to #2 from the uniformity in ONE is error filled as well with the same collective problem. Division here does not resolve the plausible problematic IN comparision.

Where are there examples of human-designed cheetahs? Gotcha! You've just been caught quoting the Bible and Begging The Question. We can't make any assumptions about a designer until we know in what form he/she/it exists. No pedantically speaking it would support it - science doesn't deal with absolute proof, it just uses the accumulation of evidence on which to base theories. So, as the ToE has amassed a huge amount of observed evidence and has made sucessful predictions about further observations it stands as a theory.***** Side note *****
You don't think Tiktaalik was found by accident do you? It was found because the ToE predicted that a creature of its type would be found in rock dating to a particular time-frame. They knew where to look!
*******************Now on the other hand ID has made NO hypotheses about how intelligent design actually works or can be observed in action. As a result it can make no predictions about how we should see intelligent design manifest itself in nature. In short, ID has nothing. Pure speculation does not constitute a viable scientific theory. Until ID shows physical evidence that indicates either the existence or the operation of a designer it hasn't got a leg to stand on as a scientific theory.This message has been edited by RickJB, 04-26-2006 10:09 AM

I thought I'd reply to this as it reflects a misconception that appeared in your replies to me. The rejection of ID has nothing to do with a resistance to competing theories and everything to do with the fact that ID cannot stand as a theory as long as it lacks a hypothesis backed by evidence.This message has been edited by RickJB, 04-26-2006 10:06 AM

There is one parked outside my office. A Yamaha Fazer 1000.Sorry RJ I don't see your point here. Its markers of design I was posing could be looked for, not resulting end product. *sigh* From my positon within your cunningly laid trap I would repeat that we can make assumptions about the unknown designer. We can presume that if we find a our design markers closely (to be fought tooth and nail over) match 'its' design markers then the probability increases that intelligent design occured. And the only way for our intelligence (we put down design markers) to percieve its intelligence (it puts down comparable design markers) is if the intelligences are in some ways similar. The higher the correlation between markers the more similarities there are between the intelligences.This is not begging the question - this would be a basic starting position. I'm sure SETI operates on the same basis (the design and implementation of a search for extraterrestial life). We throw up markers as to our intelligence on the assumption that if there is a response (analogous to sharing design markers) then its intelligence is shares sufficient aspects of our own to recognise our markersLast I heard, this was considered scientificSETI@homeCan I be released now? This thread is not about ToE. Its about a 'theory' which aims to compete with a single aspect of ToE to whit: no intelligent design anywhere