Intelligent Design and Peer Review

Discovery Institute ^ | November 1, 2003 | William A. Dembski

[js1138]

I think you are wrong. I think love is embedded in our nature. I think even "lower" animals have this understanding.

[general_re]

But it shouldn't take a million years. it should take a nano-second. Here you have this single-celled creature, now it's a multi-celled one.

You should google up "slime molds" for fun. Start here.

Actually, no. Has this been done?

You started out life as a single-celled creature, didn't you? ;)

[js1138]

The discovery of an animal (A) that can fertilize the seed of animals (B) and (C) while animal B cannot fertilize the seed of C.

That would be called a ring species.

The business of "can't fertilize" is somewhat bogus. There are all kinds of gray areas here. There are humans with anomolous chromosome counts who can have children, some of whom may be fertile. There are varieties that never interbreed, even though they can be mated by artificial insemination. Then there are mules.

The notion that fertility is all or nothing doesn't match reality.

[RightWingNilla]

That doesn't prove anything! All you've shown is that intelligent agents can cause craters! You still can't prove that they happen without intelligent intervention! </ID mode>

Looks like a pock mark from the Earth's teenage years to me.

[RightWingNilla]

This is clearly an example of micro-craterformation, which has been reproduced many times in the lab and nobody doubts. However Macro-createrformation, one which would destroy most life on earth has NEVER been observed much less reprodcued in the lab and therefore is IMPOSSIBLE.

[Right Wing Professor]

Inferring the attributes of a painter -- or a painting -- is not a scientific problem. The latter is a problem for aesthetics, art appreciation, etc. Is not science!

You don't think examining brushstrokes for evidence of left-handedness, age of the painter, stature of the painter, is science? You don't think chemical analysis of the paints he uses is science?

[PatrickHenry]

Macro-createrformation, one which would destroy most life on earth has NEVER been observed much less reprodcued in the lab and therefore is IMPOSSIBLE.

Indeed. Verily, you have the scientific spirit. Besides, is not this crater irreducibly complex? You have the central depression, the outer ridges, the rim, the debris field, the errosion ... how could all of these features have flown together by purely random events? The odds against that are at least 1⁷²⁰ to one. If ever there was an undeniable example of design, right in front of our faces, the so-called "meteor" crater is it.

[Right Wing Professor]

But I am not positing an ineffable designer -- at least not as a scientific problem.

You are claiming the designer is ineffable and inscrutable from the standpoint of science.

[js1138]

Indeed, what are the odds of that much matter self-assembling into a nearly perfect hemisphere?

[general_re]

Indeed. And notice the shape of the crater, how very nearly circular it is. Surely such a perfect shape could not have arisen by accident.

[RightWingNilla]

Indeed. And notice the shape of the crater, how very nearly circular it is. Surely such a perfect shape could not have arisen by accident.

Beautiful isnt it?

[betty boop]

Another way to look at it is that without God there is no evil.

Great insight, Tribune7!

[betty boop]

You are claiming the designer is ineffable and inscrutable from the standpoint of science.

Yes. Absolutely, Professor -- IF the designer is God. If it isn't, we might bump into the designer via empirical researches sooner or later.

[RightWingNilla]

Besides, is not this crater irreducibly complex?

Indeed. The great works of Behe have shown us that the crater cannot exist if you take away any part of the hole. Any attempt to refute this has to be taken as so much evolutionist verbiage.

[PatrickHenry]

The biggest hoax of all time:

So, what we have here is an unwitnessed event, one which can't be reproduced in the lab (except as absurdly unpersuasive micro-impacts), an event comprised of numerous features which can't be explained by themselves, but only as part of an integrated whole, an event which can't be dated due to the unreliability of radiometric dating techniques, an event which thus far has received only Godless, naturalistic "explanations" in the form of rocks randomly falling from the sky, an event which -- even if it happened as long ago as the naturalist scientists claim -- can't be verified due to their ignorance of conditions so long ago, an event which seems to defy the odds by its very uniqueness, an event which mimics the shape of recently-observed crop circles, and this is the event which the Godless naturalistic scientists want to each to the children as a purely natural event.

Oh, the horror! What can it do to young minds to contemplate the chaotic, random world of these so-called scisntists? More and more, scientists are abandoning the foolish and unsupportable "meteor theory" and are turning to the much more scientific Intelligent Crater" theory (or IC). Thankfully, meteor theory is a theory in crisis!

[general_re]

It's truly amazing. If you take the circumference of Meteor Crater and divide it by the diameter, you get an approximation of pi accurate to one decimal place! Surely this is no coincidence...

[RightWingNilla]

The biggest hoax of all time:

Is Cheap Trick behind this one too?

[longshadow]

The odds against that are at least 1⁷²⁰ to one

Yeah, and the crater has a "wildly elliptical" rim, too.

;-)

[betty boop]

You don't think examining brushstrokes for evidence of left-handedness, age of the painter, stature of the painter, is science? You don't think chemical analysis of the paints he uses is science?

Those things are definitely capable of direct observation and analysis, Professor. As such, scientific techniques are appropriate. But with art, in many if not most cases, we already know who the artist is, and so may already have this information before we view the art work.

But when we regard art, we usually are not primarily interested in such considerations, but are engaging in an act of contemplation. The purpose of a work of art -- to communicate something of the spirit of the artist and his vision to us, to share it with us, to lift us into a "transpersonal, transcendent realm" is radically different than the purpose of science. Science cannot "go there," no more than art can step into a physics laboratory.... Different disciplines, different realms or modes of knowledge, and radically different objectives....

[general_re]

I don't think anyone has really stopped to consider the implications of the materialistic Meteor Theory. If that were really true, large rocks could randomly fall from the sky at any moment and kill us all. Clearly, this is too horrible to contemplate - such materialism running amuck could spell the end of life on earth.

But if we accept the "Intelligent Cratering" theory, that possibility resolves itself immediately - in that case, we can see that such craters are created in situ by a benevolent agent, and the possibility of worldwide destruction as suggested by the materialists becomes zero.