The Design Revolution by William Dembski

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To deny that nature is stochastic is to ignore voluminous evidence. But stochastic does not imply purposeless. That's a metaphysical assumption.
  —paisano

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Absolutely correct, and if I may add to your ideas . . .Even in the absence of religion or appeal to a "higher order", humans are able to find purpose in life. If Dembski is correct, then merely denying the existence of the supernatural designer would render our lives meaningless and without purpose. What we find is that athiests do find purpose in life, and find very deep meaning. Somehow, the reality of our intelligence HAS to have a purpose, but Dembski never says why, or even how the process that resulted in our intelligence in any way has bearing on how we should use it. The properties of a waterdrop are no different than if they came from a cloud or a garden hose; a blade of grass is no different than if it was purposefully planted in a pasture or randomly seeded in the wild. The problem I see is that Dembski, himself, needs the existence of the supernatural for his life to have meaning and so he mistakenly projects this need onto all of mankind. You could as easily argue that man's intelligence needs to have stochastic or natural origins so that man may create his own future and use his intelligence as he sees fit. Instead of purposeless, perhaps we are unconstrained from a predefined destiny.

More from Dembski's preface: Dembski is using intelligible as a synonym for decipherable, rational and consistent and playing it off against intelligence to imply there's a contradiction in the scientific position. This type of approach is common among the Creationist lower tiers, but one would hope that Creationists of reputation wouldn't engage in spurious wordplay. But instead of addressing the relevant concepts Dembski instead obfuscates by trying to confuse the issue.--Percy

I think that this demonstrates one fo the clear contradictions in the ID position. Complexity, order and function must be explained - except when it is awkward to their beliefs. This is the real issue - Dembski demands that this intelligence must simply be assumed to exist without any explanation of how or why it exists. Yet the whole argument FOR such a designer involves insisting that similar phenomena must have an explanation. That is the real inconsistency

More from Dembski's preface: Finally Dembski makes it very clear where he's coming from. He wants scientists to accept evidence that is personal, non-objective and unreplicable. Can any Creationist out there name a successful scientist who operates this way? What scientific discovery ever resulted from this approach?Dembski goes on to discuss why even many theologians are reluctant to accept intelligent design, and attributes this reluctance to theodicy. He spends a couple pages on this, but since this is a theological and not a scientific issue it need not concern us, but at one point he does relevantly say: One might be inclined to give Dembski credit for honesty because this is precisely how many us view intelligent design, but he goes on to say this is a misperception: Anyone out there believe intelligent design isn't motivated by a desire to find a role for God in the universe? The only group who believes this are fundamentalist Christians. Though stated in different terms, this is the old Creationist saw, "More and more scientists are abandoning the antiquated theory of evolution." This is as untrue today as it was when Creationists first began repeating it more than a half century ago.This concludes my comments on the preface.--Percy

Percy,Actually I have no trouble with non-christian advocates so much as I have trouble with the christian (of whatever sub-category) ones, as this is basically saying that god is a race of green aliens, a basic problem that should be irreconcilable. One could argue that ID is closer to hinduism than christianity.I think the problem is that most christians don't (or aren't able to) follow the basic precepts to their logical conclusions.This is aside from the problem that evolution can be incorporated into ID with no contradiction to it's basic precepts.ID may have an unintended benefit in drawing people to science and education and allowing them to continue with ID after learning that some creationist precepts are wrong ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Rouseau in "The Social Contract" is a good source for derived morality
The Social Contract onlineand there is also some information at
Atheist Morality
Ethics of Humanism Without Religion
Universalizability and the Golden RuleThis is getting off-topic so I just want to post the links to let those who want to pursue it to do so. This could be a new topic (if it has not already been tried before ...)I believe that morality is a set of socially derived and agreed on customs. These would include religious overtones in religious societies, of course.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I think it was from a NASA abiogenesis press release paper, I believe about a year ago. Problem with finding the retraction is that the press release is modified and you had to have saved the original.If memory serves (this was mentioned by rocket on another board)

RAZ Is this the one you guys were talking about?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

see Jar's post #53 ...

not sure: it seems similar, have sent e-mail to rocket to confirm.

confirmed - that's it.
http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/~astrochm/vesicle.html
"Scientists find clues that the path leading to the origin of life begins in deep space"

I wonder if Dembski ever bothers to define intelligence. I'm beginning to worry that he's satisified just believing he can recognize intelligence without ever defining it. It appears, at least at this point, that Dembski *is* going to sidestep the issue of defining intelligence and instead just define intelligently designed objects. It will be interesting to see just how precise these methods are. Once again Dembski confuses the issue. Forensics and archeology are not seeking evidence of intelligent causes, but of human presence and actions, and are as able to detect a moron as a genius. I can't figure out how he thinks cryptography might be related to detecting intelligence, so I won't comment until he explains. He's correct in mentioning SETI, but it searches for the modulation of information onto radio waves, and I think pretty much everyone grants this requires intelligence.--Percy

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He's correct in mentioning SETI, but it searches for the modulation of information onto radio waves, and I think pretty much everyone grants this requires intelligence.

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Actually, pulsars are modulated radio waves by natural means. They are so regular that when the first one was found, it was a credible possibility that it was a signal from another intelligence.More to the point, we assume that other intelligences are sufficiently like us so that we can predict what a modulated radio wave from such an intelligence will look like, if it were indeed trying to communicate with someone.

Yet, I don't think you can derive morality from logic. What may seem logical to you may seem strange to someone of a different culture. If we derive morality from anything it would be from within a social context. My ancestor told my ancestor who told his ancestor who told my great, great, great grandmother that doing such in such was wrong. Or his ancestor, who was told by Mark's ancestor, had a preacher (who learned a set of morals written by a bunch of people's ancestors) who told him what the morals of that society were.I see a long connection with society determining what being moral is, and this changing over time. At one time a woman who wore pants might have been considered "immoral" in some societies. Or in some societies women who don't wear a covering over their head are considered "immoral".You may "think" you derive your morality by logic, but logic can be used to satisfy many forms of morality. You most likely derived your morality from your parents ansd peers, and possibly from reading a book written by someone who in turn derived their morality from his/her parents, peers or reading a book. Perhaps a somewhat simplistic but...The "How" is buried in the long tradition of human culture.

but pants fails the universality test (and hence it is no longer immoral in enlightened societies not hide bound by old social traditions)see post #51 for more.
EvC Forum: The Design Revolution by William Dembski

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}