[Alamo-Girl]

Hi there, js1138! Merry Christmas and thank you for your reply!

I have no problem wit intelligent design being a hypothesis. When it accumulates 50 years or so of supporting evidence then it might be called a theory.

I keep muddling around with what to call the arguments raised by Intelligent Design "theorists". I realize there is a huge objection from your side on using that term - but then I look at Crick's musings on cosmic ancestry and Kauffman's on autonomous agency - and they aren't exactly formally structured, falsifiable, theories either.

On another thread, betty boop observes that Kauffman speaks of his musings as "proto-science" instead of "science" - that it opens "the conceptual space in which science can (hopefully) fruitfully proceed in the devlopment of its work." Perhaps we can find a good moniker in here somewhere...

You and I have been round and round on this. I have no problem with considering the possibility that existence is designed in order to bring about life. But that says nothing about the process or the history of life.

Indeed, we have had many wonderful discussions. It is always a pleasure to debate with you.

One point though, the Intelligent Design theorists do not dispute the age of the universe, the fossil record, or much of evolution theory - and thus would not argue about the evidence for the history of life. The dispute arises over the complexity that all of science and mathematics continues to observe in biological life, i.e. that evolution is not an adequate and/or complete explanation.

And indeed, Darwin's formulation "random mutations + natural selection > species" is no longer adequate because of the "randomness" component. It wouldn't be adequate if there were never such a movement called "Intelligent Design". That part of the investigation will surely continue regardless of format: formal, falsifiable scientific theory, mathematical theory with logical proofs, observation of historical records, proto-science - etc.

[js1138]

...evolution is not an adequate and/or complete explanation.

Do you mean evolution as a history, or evolution as a specific set of explanations in the realm of molecular biology and game theory? I have no trouble admitting that biology has no complete description of the sources and processes of mutation.

But I do believe that selection is adequate to explain which changes survive. I have been posting this over and over for several days now, but will try one more time. Darwin did not discover anything about the cause or nature of mutation. He really threw up his hands at trying to explain the mechanism of variation.

What Darwin revealed was the process of selection, which shapes life over the long run. Selection is an observable phenomenon. It is amenable to experimentation. In fact it was artificial selection that suggested natural selection.

If you believe there is some miraculous computer program setting up specific changes in the genome -- whether these changes are determined by initial conditions, or twiddled with on the fly -- selection still shapes life. The final arbiter of good design is survival and reproduction. This is true in biology and it is true in the marketplace (where everything is presumably designed, but chaotic and indeterminate forces -- the invisible hand -- shape things in ways that are beyond the control of mere inventors).