Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   What exactly is ID?
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 1188 of 1273 (550618)
03-16-2010 7:25 PM
Reply to: Message 1182 by Smooth Operator
03-16-2010 4:43 PM


Re: ID and the Designer
Smooth Operator writes:
Based on just the signal they would detect from space, they can not know anything about the designer.
Are you daft? Based on just the presence of a signal and the way it is modulated we'd know their minimal level of technological achievement. and based on the direction we'd know where in the sky they were. Based on the content of the signal we'd know whatever they care to tell us, maybe that they have two heads and three legs. If they tell us the original frequency of the signal then we'd know their motion relative to us, and if it reached cosmological levels of red shift then we'd know they're outside our galactic group.
SETI does not hold as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to learn anything about an extra terrestrial intelligence whose signal they eventually detect. If they're ever successful they expect to find out a great deal about them.
This is in stark contrast to ID, which unlike any other field within science and in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to know something, specifically, anything about the designer.
Care to try again? Can you name any other field within science that in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that there's something we cannot know?
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
Edited by Percy, : Clarify.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1182 by Smooth Operator, posted 03-16-2010 4:43 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1197 by Smooth Operator, posted 03-19-2010 10:50 PM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 1205 of 1273 (551004)
03-20-2010 8:38 AM
Reply to: Message 1197 by Smooth Operator
03-19-2010 10:50 PM


Re: ID and the Designer
Hi Smooth Operator,
You seem to be having trouble understanding the question. It's irrelevant what you believe about SETI. It's what SETI believes about SETI that counts.
So I repeat the question yet again: Can you name any other field within science that in the absence of evidence holds as a fundamental premise that there is something it isn't possible to know.
I hesitate to clarify because it seems that the more words that are written the more opportunity it affords you to veer off the path of rationality, but ID holds that it isn't possible to know anything about the designer. It is ID, not me, saying things like this from Of Pandas and People:
Of Pandas and People writes:
But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy.
So can you name any other field within science that makes an equivalent claim? Note once again that an affirmative response to this question must involve what this scientific field says about itself, not what you say about it.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Improve clarity - probably pointless, I know.
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1197 by Smooth Operator, posted 03-19-2010 10:50 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1220 by Smooth Operator, posted 03-23-2010 11:55 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024