Intelligent Design just a question for evolutionists

Correct. The ID movement is fundamentally based upon a teleological argument for the special intervention (almost universally) of a deity in the origin of the species constructed so as to appear to be a mere philosophical argument so as to 'wedge' Christian talking points into science classroom discussion.

Meh, the Bible beat him to it. Aquinas after that. The Greeks beat all of them.

Well Paley did say during his Watchmaker and Eye analogy:

quote:

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If any thing can abate our admiration of the smallness of the visual tablet compared with the extent of vision, it is a reflection, which the view of nature leads us, every hour, to make, viz. that, in the hands of the Creator, great and little are nothing.

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So yeah, Paley was using a teleological argument to defend the position of Creationism.

Teleology certainly could - but the ID movement, Aquinas, Paley, The Bible and the Greeks? Not usually, they are usually driving towards the notion that the designer is the Creator.

Can you recognise this?

Agreed.

That would be rare, but not unheard of.

Yes.

I agree with your syllogism. However, you didn't include intelligence in this, so I can hardly say you presented an intelligent design argument here.

Agreed.

Exactly. It could be a God, aliens or evolution by natural selection. Your argument is neutral to all these possibilities.

Except for the part about it not actually concluding 'it is intelligently designed'. Which seems to me like a rather important issue.

That said, it is not really much use as far as arguments go. Like basically all syllogisms, it isn't very useful at all except in so far as to explain some basic part of your position. If you are hiding the premise 'if something is designed, it is by intelligent agency', which you seem to be based on your extra-syllogistic discussion then you are making a logical error. But if we assume this additional premise, the syllogism can be entirely valid. I don't see any reason to suppose it is true, but valid? Sure.

I'll let you have it all if you will acknowledge that a thing that designs other things strongly implies 'the elements of design', and if that is so, it must also be designed...thus rendering it somewhat useless or at least trivial. To be saying anything of interest, you'd need to start discussing the course of the regression.

Materialists tend towards explaining things in ever more simple with the argument that wherever the regression ultimately leads, it could hardly be called 'intelligent'.

If you are proposing an ever increasing series of intelligent designers {interplanetary alien scientists, interstellar alien scientists, intergalactic alien scientists, pan-universal alien scientists} you'd have to keep a tight leash to avoid the tempting offer to cut things off before you started describing typically divine properties (transcending time and space, eternal, an intelligent unmoved mover etc).

Agreed. All believers in some kind of Creator deity or deities for thousands of years have used 'the argument from design' to support their particular worldview.

Yeah, that's because ID is a specific thing. If you don't want to be tarred with that, avoid the term 'ID'. Go with teleology. At least you'd be signalling to the educated that you aren't necessarily arguing for a Creator - although those that know you will probably perceive a man furiously working behind a curtain you'd like us to pay no attention to.

I made this post without having actually read any of the replies, so apologies for repeat points. I thought it might be interesting to get my blind response.

Well the 'we know this feature is designed, so this suggests this similar feature is also designed' idea is in fact a theory. A theory is what you apply to data (the object and its features) in your case for making an argument that this is evidence for you theory that similar features were intelligently designed.

You explain, I suppose, the eye as having been intelligently designed based on the theory that it has (for instance) lots of clever parts interacting in a specific way so as to allow vision. And intelligent agents can in fact arrange parts cleverly in a specific way for optical purposes. Your theory then is that the data you find in the eye suggests the explanation for the existence of the eye lies in some kind intelligent designer having deliberately designed it much like, for instance, a camera.

So it would be foolish of you to throw out the concept of using theory when analysing data because then you would have no evidence to support your conclusions.

Right back at you.

I'd say 'what is the theory?' and 'what data do you have, that in light of this theory serves as evidence for it?'

Which, according your theory, all indicates an intelligent designer - right?

Likewise I could list a number of features that suggest unintelligent design, and even more - a specific kind of unintelligent design by recourse to a different theory.

So it comes down to 'how do we assess different theories?', 'Are there methods for determining which theory is the stronger, or better, in some way or my some measure?'

Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Sure, but they are messy stochastic machines that operating by bumping into each other with bias. If my car drove 2 miles forwards and then 1.5 miles backwards I'd hardly regard it as intelligently designed. Likewise if it proceeded down the road by bumping into the wall on one side, bouncing off, hitting on coming traffic and spinning around, driving the wrong way and being turned around again and then stopped working altogether and used gravity to direct itself for twenty minutes, then started up again at a normal angle to my destination, drove off a bridge, got carried half a mile off down a river where it hit a rock that knocked it back on course and away I went....that'd hardly be the hallmark of intelligence.

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If the genetic code is to be thought of as a code, it is not passing on its messages in a way that any intelligent agent ever has. Optimised? Maybe. Messy, ugly, referential, double meaningly, ambiguously and contingent on very specific conditions to be read? Sure.

Nope, the more messy and stochastic and chaotic and disorganized it becomes.

That behave in a way that no intelligent person would design something to work if they wanted to keep their job as an engineer.

Only if you look at simplified representations of them for the purposes of understanding stochastic tendencies without showing those stochastic tendencies because they typically confuse the crap out of people who are trying to learn what's going on in general.

They've taken us no further than the ancient Greeks managed to get. Did Paley advance the argument in some compelling way? There is no explanation present.

Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.