The design inference

Mr. P:
O don't be sorry, just tell me how DNA is specified in Dembski's sense.John Paul:
From what we know about DNA not just any ordering of nucleotides will give rise to a living organism. The sequences that do allow for life would then be considered specified. Pretty basic actually.OK, so Dembski's EF should be able to tell the difference between an actual DNA sequence vs. a randomly-typed batch of A's, T's, C's and G's. Has this been demonstrated?

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Originally posted by edge:
Hey, JP, did you ever get around to telling us who designed the designer?

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No Edge, you're missing JP's point. Using his logic, we don't have to know who designed the designer, it's enough to know that the designer was designed -- presumably by a being whose intelligence is even greater than the intelligence of our designer. ;-)

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Originally posted by John Paul:

John Paul:
You are missing my point also. ID doesn't care about the designer, only the design- how to detect it, how to understand it and what to do with it.

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Perhaps if you did a little research such a concept wouldn't be so foreign to you.

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I'm not talking about trying to figure out who designed the designer, merely to settle the question of whether the designer was designed. Shouldn't ID be able to figure that out?And if we take a putative designer (Jehovah, Brahma, the Invisible Pink Unicorn), shouldn't we able to examine their traits to determine whether they could have arisen by law, by chance or by design?

brachinus:
I'm not talking about trying to figure out who designed the designer, merely to settle the question of whether the designer was designed.John Paul:
When you have it settled be sure to let us know.Brachinus:
I'm not the one who claims to have a tool capable of settling the issue of whether a given life form was designed. You're the one who claims to be able to do that.brachinus:
Shouldn't ID be able to figure that out?John Paul:
Possibly, once we know who or what the designer is.Brachinus:
But didn't you say earlier that ID isn't concerned with who the designer is?JP:
ID, as it stands today, only concerns itself with the apparent design we observe in living organisms. ID first wants to detect that design and then understand it.Brachinus:
But isn't the designer a living organism?brachinus:
And if we take a putative designer (Jehovah, Brahma, the Invisible Pink Unicorn), shouldn't we able to examine their traits to determine whether they could have arisen by law, by chance or by design?John Paul:
I suppose, but first things first.Evolutionists often accuse Creationists of putting the horse before the cart. Here is a classic example of two evolutionists almost forcing ID to do that.Brachinus:
I would never accuse creationists of putting the horse before the cart -- it's been my experience that they tend to do the opposite. ;-)JP:
What would be the purpose of doing this? Why would someone want ID to do something it wasn't intended to do?Brachinus:
Um, because searching for knowledge is good?

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Originally posted by Cobra_snake:

"With no proof it is a belief, and by dragging in an intelligent designing entity, for which there is no evidence for the existence of, it becomes a religious belief..."

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Really? So, you're saying that belief in a theory that has no supporting evidence makes it a "religous" theory? Actually, IDers do claim to have evidence, and that is the apparent design of living things in nature. It's rather unfortunate that detecting design generally tends to imply a designer, making ID "religous" in your view.

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"c)Athiests driven by religious conviction????? Que?????"

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Yes, the religion of humanism.

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A theory with no supporting evidence may not be religious, but it certainly isn't scientific. In fact, it's not a "theory" at all, but a hypothesis. And even most hypotheses have some supporting evidence (a hypothesis is usually formulated as an attempt to explain evidence).As for the "apparent design" in nature, it seems to me that that's a matter of interpretation. Also, natural selection has been shown to create the appearance of design (e.g. antibiotic resistance in bacteria).And what divine being does "the religion of humanism" worship?