Posted on 07/04/2009 3:39:53 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
The general question, “How does one distinguish between what is natural, and what has been designed?” is a valid question.
Interesting. All I wrote was (or follows from) that ID'ers explicitly distinguish "design" from any possible effects of natural law alone, such that "design" is inferred where natural law alone supposedly cannot explain the phenomena (whereas Jefferson included natural law and all it's effects in God's creationistic power and activity).
You seem to disagree with me somehow in the first paragraph, and suggest that my characterization of ID'ers has been dishonest, but then in very first sentence of the second paragraph you affirm that very characterization: that ID'ers do "distinguish between what is natural, and what has been designed," and that this is indeed the "general question" behind ID.
So I guess I have to ask you to explain more clearly where you think I am wrong and dishonest, 'cause I'm not seeing it.
Are those who see design open to the idea that God may be the designer in a particular case? Many are.
Yes, many are. And many of those, like Jefferson, are open to inferring that God is the Designer and Creator in ALL cases. But this does not include ID'ers, who are only willing to infer design in SOME cases, and then aren't even willing to credit God for it, but only some unspecified "intelligent designer" who might or might not be God. (Unless, of course, ID'ers aren't being straight with us?)
“But what exactly is the theory of intelligent design?
......... the theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause. The theory does not challenge the idea of evolution defined as change over time, or even common ancestry, but it does dispute Darwin's idea that the cause of biological change is wholly blind and undirected.
Either life arose as the result of purely undirected material processes or a guiding intelligence played a role. Design theorists favor the latter option and argue that living organisms look designed because they really were designed.”
But if the rules of a designer produced everything in the world by natural processes then either the processes are directed according to those established rules and hence are not natural and only have the appearance of naturalness or an appeal to a designer is superfluous.
The whole idea behind naturalistic evolution is that none of it gives evidence of a designer and needs none as all results can be explained by natural processes.
” There are very few evolutionists who would argue against that possibility.”
But would they argue for it?
I'm not sure what you're saying in that last part. But when you say "the processes are directed according to those established rules and hence are not natural," would that also apply to the formation of a thunderstorm? Is that not natural because it's "directed" according to the established rules? I've said before, I'm willing to grant that evolution is no more natural and no more unguided than the formation of a storm.
The whole idea behind naturalistic evolution is that none of it gives evidence of a designer and needs none as all results can be explained by natural processes.
Well, none of it gives evidence of a designer any more than all of it gives evidence of a designer. Lowercase intelligent design can credit a designer with setting things up to operate on their own just fine; Intelligent Design demands a designer that fiddles every so often to get the desired result. Intelligent Design is about special cases; intelligent design is about every case.
But would they argue for it?
Some would, and have, right here on FR.
Like Ha Ha, I find this sentence puzzling. It seems like you're saying that if natural processes follow natural law ("establish rules") then, if there is a Creator of the universe, they're not actually natural. So God, although He can do anything, can't create a complex and orderly universe with natural law, but can only "appear" to do so.
If your sentence is serious, rather than confused or incoherent, it sounds quite a bit like the doctrine of occasionalism, which has been almost universally rejected by Christian theologians, but is accepted, and even insisted upon, by many fundamentalist Islamists. (And often taken as one of the reasons Islam has often been inconducive or hostile to science.)
From the wiki entry linked above:
Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God Himself. ... The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's habitual causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other.Islamic theological schools
The doctrine first reached prominence in the Islamic theological schools of Iraq, especially in Basra. The ninth century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari argued that there is no secondary causation in the created order. The world is sustained and governed through direct intervention of a divine primary causation. As such the world is in a constant state of recreation by God...
Hence my question about how a person looking at some object would determine whether it is the result of intelligent design by someone or just a natural oddity.
What sort of mental process would we use to reach a conclusion? What would we look for? What general characteristics are unique to intelligently designed things
so that we can separate them from all other things?
That's what intelligent design and I.D. encompasses.
I’m sorry you didn’t understand.
“Like Ha Ha, I find this sentence puzzling. It seems like you’re saying that if natural processes follow natural law (”establish rules”) then, if there is a Creator of the universe, they’re not actually natural. So God, although He can do anything, can’t create a complex and orderly universe with natural law, but can only “appear” to do so.”
If natural processes (natural law is something else) can produce all the world, why appeal to a designer with rules?
If we have a designer with rules then how is it natural and undirected anymore than the creation of a dam is “natural and undirected”?
Either creation has an intelligent designer or it doesn’t, if creation does have an intelligent designer then we can either discover that intelligent design or we can’t, if we can discover that intelligent design, the question is still, How?
Anyone?
You posted what they currently claim their ideas to be. Since I'm asserting that they're changing the way they describe ID to give it more widespread appeal, I'm not surprised that what's on their website now supports that.
In fact the I.D. folks go to some lengths to avoid a designer let alone one that fiddles around in creation every so often.
Well yes, they do. That's part of the strategy. But you can't have design without a designer, even if you don't want to say who it is. I have never heard an argument for ID that claims the intelligence in the design arose naturally--it always involves some intelligent agent standing outside of nature. (But shhh, we don't want to talk about that.)
It's inescapable, though. If the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex and therefore indicative of design, then that means the first bacterium that had one was either created out of nothing, or was an existing bacterium that had the flagellum installed as a functioning system. Unless you argue that nothing is older than bacteria, then you have a designer who fiddles. (And, of course, some have claimed the eye is irreducibly complex, which means you have a designer who's fiddling as late as the development of eyes.)
What general characteristics are unique to intelligently designed things so that we can separate them from all other things?
Your wording exemplifies what I mean. You want to find some things that are intelligently designed as distinct from other things that aren't. That means the designer has a hand in some things and left others alone. Hence, a designer who fiddles.
What general characteristics are unique to intelligently designed things so that we can separate them from all other things? (This is what I asked and that is what I meant. It seems to be a question that is like garlic to Dracula).
“Your wording exemplifies what I mean. You want to find some things that are intelligently designed as distinct from other things that aren’t. That means the designer has a hand in some things and left others alone. Hence, a designer who fiddles.”
No, I asked for MEANS not ends.
Then by your reasoning if I intelligently designed a clay pot and chose not to fire or paint it I’d be fiddling with it? Or if I later fired and painted what I intelligently designed I would be “fiddling” with it?
Yeah, the I.D. folks do tiptoe past the “designer” like evolutionists do with the origin of life, using the same sort of reasonings. But if you assert that the I.D. folks have changed the way they describe I.D. you didn’t show any citation to demonstrate it.
Anything else on the question I asked concerning by what means I could tell if a piece of fired clay I found was intelligently designed or not?
I’m attempting to at any rate! But nonetheless it’s enjoyable for the most part.
certainly there are many imperfections. But everything created by God is good, and if imperfections do occur it can be used for good, if man submits himself and whatever imperfection it is to God's will. He does give us the free choice to do or not to do.
” But everything created by God is good,...”
I am in complete agreement with that statement. As my original query concerned perfection, I appreciate your clarification.
I've given the question some thought, and I don't have an answer. I'm not sure there is one. Maybe every intelligently designed thing is identifiable by its own unique set of characteristics, but there is no set that can identify them all.
This seems to me more a question for design proponents, and is one of a bunch of related questions they seem to avoid. Why do some things show evidence of design and others not? And if everything shows evidence of design (as Jefferson seemed to think), then why should we expect some things to show it in a way we can measure (irreducible complexity) and others in a way we can't (the water cycle)?
Then by your reasoning if I intelligently designed a clay pot and chose not to fire or paint it I’d be fiddling with it? Or if I later fired and painted what I intelligently designed I would be “fiddling” with it?
If you made a clay pot, used it for a while without firing it, then fired it and started using it for a different purpose, than yes, I'd say you'd fiddled with it. I'm not sure how relevant the analogy is, though, since no one claims that clay pots reproduce themselves or evolve.
But if you assert that the I.D. folks have changed the way they describe I.D. you didn’t show any citation to demonstrate it.
I'll work on that. I still maintain that any discussion of irreducible complexity, which was part of ID since I first started hearing about it, necessarily implies a designer who tinkers with his design, which is a subset of what lowercase "id" encompasses.
Anything else on the question I asked concerning by what means I could tell if a piece of fired clay I found was intelligently designed or not?
I'm neither a potter nor an archaeologist, so I don't have a lot to offer that question. My first thought is that we could ask if we knew of any way clay could get like that without intelligent design. (We already know clay can get like that with intelligent design.)
If I find a Clovis point I have no doubt that it is intelligently designed, but if find a chip of flint I can't say for certain that it was or wasn't.
Somewhere in between these two extremes I put the stone fragments I find into one class or the other or a “I can't tell” group.
If I can detect intelligent design in a piece of flint chipped into a Clovis point why cannot the same principles of logic and deduction be applied to that flagellum?
Or does intelligent design only apply to non-living objects?
Clovis points but not cloven hooves, as it were.
Or a pottery shard? True clay pots don't reproduce themselves as far as we know, but we might be able to construct a scenario using known processes whereby they could, however unlikely. What sort of scenario?
A round stone is partially buried in clay. The sun heats the stone more than the clay around it so that a crust of dried clay forms around the stone. A forest fire comes through baking the clay red hot while the stone shatters under the heat. We have our clay pot without invoking intelligence or unique, unobserved processes.
Unlikely, impossible? How do we decide?
“I've given the question some thought, and I don't have an answer. I'm not sure there is one. Maybe every intelligently designed thing is identifiable by its own unique set of characteristics, but there is no set that can identify them all.”
A principle suggested by I.D. is looking at the information embedded in the item under consideration. Taking my Clovis point as an example, it is not the chipping or the material that makes it a tool, there is plenty of chipped flint around, but the relationship of each chipped part to all the others and the overall organization of the various parts into an integrated whole. In short information.
As in the case of my clay pot, we might mentally construct a scenario whereby observed processes could result in a Clovis point but would we seriously accept that as a possibility?
Or would appeal to an intelligent designer provide a better explanation?
To this degree I.D. theories and intelligent design overlap.
Design implies designer? Indeed yes. Which is why the I.D. folk avoid the question since speaking of a designer raises questions about his nature and identity, and not doing that allows one to accept I.D. apart from a particular belief about who the designer is.
One reason that occurs to me is that we have examples of flint chips that aren't Clovis points, so we know what a non-designed chip looks like. As far as I know, we don't have any examples of flagella that don't work right or have parts missing or whatever it would take to decide they weren't designed. We do, as I understand it, have examples of the parts of the flagellum being used for other things, but IDers reject that as evidence that the flagellum could have developed from those parts.
I suppose one could argue that we don't know for sure those non-Clovis chips aren't designed, too. But the identification of Clovis points as designed items isn't just based on what they look like--it's confirmed by finding them in association with other evidence of human habitation and/or with the remains of animals they were presumably used to kill and dress. Someone who wanted to assert those other chips might be designed would have to bring some evidence beyond a simple suggestion.
Unlikely, impossible? How do we decide?
Well, you could try it and see if what you had to do to get that "natural" shard matched any known processes. How much heat will fire clay and also shatter a stone? Does a forest fire generate that kind of heat? Is there any other evidence of a fire? Is the surface of the fired clay smooth or show fingerprints, or is it rough, the way the boundary between dried clay and undried clay might be? Are there lots of examples of this kind of shard around, indicating that it was a common process, or is this the only one, indicating that it might be an accident? Is it found in conjunction with other signs of human activity?
I guess in conclusion I would say that the things we seem to produce with such ease, points and pottery, are really more difficult to produce than we realize.
They only seem easy because there are so many bits of information that we have and take for granted.
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