XXXX Science

You and NJ both mentioned the "appearance of design" (and others have used the same phrase in other threads). Without getting too far afield from the topic, I'd like to point out that both creation science or ID science and legitimate science are all quite capable of detecting apparent design. However, after detection is where the non-science and science part company. Creation science (and ID science and whatever XXXX-rated non-science you'd care to name) immediately default to "apparent design = was designed for some usually-inscrutable reason by a designer for which no other evidence is available and whose capabilities and intent are unfathomable, and go no further. Science notes something that has the appearance of design and means something like "if we were to design something like this that is what it could look like, however well-understood natural processes can also produce the same result, therefore there is no reason to suppose they didn't in this particular case in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary". This is just one of the many reasons that ID/creation/XXXX-rated science isn't science.

This is probably a pretty good formulation. It's like Dawkins wrote on page one of his book Blind Watchmaker:

quote:

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Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

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Legitimate science (the only "true" XXXX science in my opinion - and the only real distinction necessary), strives to understand the workings of nature - and differentiate between "apparent" design and "purposeful" design. Unfortunately, I think we're getting too far off topic here. Suffice to say I agree with the rest of your post.