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To: Right Wing Professor
So if I say that the reason I discount ID as an alternative scientific theory is where and how it is being used - not to foster real research, or to develop a better understanding of the world, but to alter the way we teach science in schools - then that would be a second reason, and I've falsified your statement, no?

Only if naturalism has a credible explanation for design. So far as I've read, the bulk of the effort has been invested in attributing the appearance of design to illusion. This is not an explanation of what we observe, but a denial of it.

422 posted on 11/29/2004 11:37:11 AM PST by Dataman
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To: Dataman
So far as I've read, the bulk of the effort has been invested in attributing the appearance of design to illusion.

All this comes down to finding objective criteria for design, and no one has - at least there's no consensus. I might be able to come up with some, but you wouldn't like them. As I suggested previously, in intelligent design, form follows function - but in fact, in nature, form very often follows phyogeny, not function. Intelligent design is parsimonious, efficient, and rational - but nature often 'solves' problems several different ways, and makes irrational choices between alternatives, at least viewed from the standpoint of function. Why design a penguin flipper like a bird wing; and not design a bird wing like a bat wing, or a penguin flipper like a whale flipper or a fish fin?

The closer you look at nature, the less designed it looks.

427 posted on 11/29/2004 11:44:16 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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