Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I disagree. The difference between design and non-design lies in the intention of the designer. "Letting them evolve" is a design if the intention is, for example, to produce diverse living organisms through natural selection acting on variation and mutation.
So what you're describing is intelligent design, as opposed to evolution via natural selection.
2) There's no big distinction that I am aware of between ID beginning-of-life and ID constantly-tinkering; unlike the case with Darwinian Evolutionary theory.
I know from these crevo threads that many adherents to Darwin's theory explicitly disclaim any application of that theory to the question of how life originated from abiotic matter. The theory is only about how forms of life change into new forms.
If I see a dog who's about to lie down, and I say, "Lie down", he's not really obeying my command.
I know from these crevo threads that many adherents to Darwin's theory explicitly disclaim any application of that theory to the question of how life originated from abiotic matter. The theory is only about how forms of life change into new forms.
Be that as it may, we are discussing the boundaries of ID, not Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Given that they're mutually exclusive, their boundaries are with each other.
Well, obviously not only must there be intention but the designer must bring about or cause the intended result. I didn't think I'd need to spell it out, but I will know better in future when replying to you.
Setting in motion a chain of events that results in something happening is not the same as designing the outcome. I can play the semantics games just as well as you can, but they're not the same thing.
So what you're describing is intelligent design, as opposed to evolution via natural selection.
Um, yea.... You understand there's a distinction between "naturalistic" and Darwinian evolutionary theory, right? If the thetan lizard people, should they prove to exist, and were responsible for guiding, initiating, or messing with our evolution that would still provide a naturalistic, not a super-natural explanation--which would not obviate Darwinian theory; it would only show that evolution was not confined to the planet earth, as we had originally thought. The thetan lizard people had to come from somewhere, and, being naturalistic, would be subject to investigation by science, including, most likely, evolutionary biology. Hence my original prediction that got your motor going: that naturalistic ID will probably be swallowed by Darwinian Evolutionary theory without much distortion, should ID prove to hold water.
Who says you had to design every outcome of a process, in order to be credited with designing that process?
I can play the semantics games just as well as you can,
Substantially better, I would say, from this example.
but they're not the same thing.
So...may I take it that since the people who build computers don't build the programs that run on computers, that computers aren't designed?
(by the way, did you get the impression that it was computer-translated from another language?)
No, simply buying a dog that lies down when you command it does not make the dog's lying down your design. There are three required components to design. First, the result must be intended by the designer. Second, the result must act to bring about the result. Third, the intended result must obtain.
One could make an argument for a stronger version of #1, that the designer must choose the design. IOW one could rationally argue that a purported designer who is compelled to intend and bring about a result is not the designer of the result.
For your dog scenario to be considered a design, some other fact must be added. If, for example, you believed the dog to have been trained to lie down on command then the dog's lying down at your command would be a design.
I don't see why you're so antagonistic toward these points which seem to me to be wholly uncontroversial.
I think we're coming to the crux of the issue. Most people have a different understanding of what Darwinian theory is than you do. His theory is based on natural selection. That phrase was coined specifically to distinguish it from the type of selection that gets used in, say, breeding dogs.
Of course the computers are designed. But the programs aren't designed by the people who design the computers.
LOL!
Yes. But I said it wasn't very good.
This one's better.
This is not remotely true, even if you say it six times over and hold your breath. Evolutionary theory will not die if any currently known form of ID prevails. Darwinian evolutionary theory does not insist that God or little green men can't tinker with genomes, so if we discover he does, or they do, it won't make a big dent in evolutionary theory. We'll still dig oil, protect and enhance crops, guide veterinary medicine, create commercial chemicals, and track, predict, and destroy new pathogens using Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Just as a for instance, I am a programmer and have created many programs and sometimes there are bugs, some bad enough to corrupt a user's data I'm ashamed to say. I don't think there's any rational way to consider those bugs my design and yet also no rational way to consider the programs that contain them undesigned.
So? That wasn't the question. The question was "Does seeding a planet count as design?"
The controversy over ID versus Darwinism is that the ID position is that the development of species could come about only through intelligent design. Simply letting nature take its course, even if you intend the result to happen, is still just letting nature take its course. I could set a forest on fire, or I could let it burn from a lightning strike. Either way, the result is the same. Therefore, my "design" didn't really cause anything different to happen.
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