Excellent point, cornelis. Godel's incompleteness principle shows that the logical and the existential can and do diverge; and when they do, it is the existential on which we have to rely to get to the truth of the matter at hand.
general_re wrote: "If the design inference consistently passes or consistently fails such tests, we may then inductively reason our way to a conclusion about the worth of it." But it seems that the only objects to which we can apply such tests are the things around us in the here and now -- like basketballs (which are probably better described as artifacts than designs), ice crystals, or whatever the subjects of the pictures that general-re hasn't posted yet.
Would we then suppose that from such "logical tests" we are therefore in a position to "inductively" reason our way to the validation or falsification of an Intelligent Designer which is not bound to our finite timescale?
It seems to me we might learn a good deal about how and why human beings design things in the "game" general_re has proposed; perhaps we'll decide the creative act is a product of conscious will, and perhaps that would be a true generalization. But if my suspicion is correct that the Intelligent Designer is an infinite mind, unconstrained by the conditions applicable to finite human designing -- which conditions the Intelligent Designer has laid down as the laws and principles of the universal design, including humans.
We're "in the stream" of four-dimensional, finite existence; we cannot see either the beginning or the end, either of ourselves or of the universe as a whole. Building up a proof (or lack thereof) of a universal conscious designer on the basis of currently-available empirical evidence subject to falsification tests hardly strikes me as being adequate to the problem of deciding whether the universe is intelligently designed or not. All it can tell us about is ourselves -- or so it seems to me.
Rather than the experimental approach to accreting "proof" incrementally, it may be more fruitful to take the Aristotelian approach, and simply assume a Prime Mover or First Cause of everything that is, and then see if there's anything we come across that disconfirms or refutes our universal premise.
But this would be the very approach that is most strenuously avoided these days as thoroughly "unscientific." I gather that's because "phenomena that would not fit materialistic concepts have been made anathema and estranged," as Walker writes. "Science's investment in materialism has itself turned into a creed, with its own high priests ready to torment the unorthodox. Many phenomena have been ignored in the name of this materialism."
Thanks for the ping, cornelis -- and your provocative post.
Rather than the experimental approach to accreting "proof" incrementally, it may be more fruitful to take the Aristotelian approach, and simply assume a Prime Mover or First Cause of everything that is, and then see if there's anything we come across that disconfirms or refutes our universal premise.
That would make sense to me, too; however as you say But this would be the very approach that is most strenuously avoided these days as thoroughly "unscientific."
On the very long thread I offered a hypothesis with methods of falsification, as follows:
Falsifications: That such algorithms or information content do not exist - or that such algorithms or information content can arise from null.
After about 3000 posts on the big thread (and a lot of research since) - I remain convinced it is a good layperson's scientific hypothesis to determine intelligent design.
Good point. The same faulty inductive method was used to "disprove" miracles.
I won't expand upon this topic, since it's well expressed, here and elsewhere by others. But I'll wonder out electronically: why is it that God is so often and easily referred to as all powerful, but so rarely and apparently with some difficulty referred to as all subtle?