Replies

Admit it, PH. You have never even read an article, let alone a book, by any proponent of ID. You can't argue with its science, because you don't even know what its scientific arguments are, let alone what its data are. All you can do (as usual) is assign ignoble motives to it and falsely claim that ID has not been peer reviewed and published in scientific venues. It has been peer reviewed and it has been published in scientific venues. Just as one example, The Design Inference, the scholarly work par excellence in this school of thought was thoroughly and rigorously peer reviewed by a distinguished committee at Cambridge University before its approval for publication by that insitution.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Just as one example, The Design Inference, the scholarly work par excellence in this school of thought was thoroughly and rigorously peer reviewed by a distinguished committee at Cambridge University before its approval for publication by that insitution.

That's not what is considered peer review in the scientific world.

Your attempt to represent ID as scientific is disingenuous. As evidence I submit the Table of Contents of Dembski's own latest opus:
"Intelligent Design. The bridge between science and theology." by William Dembski.
1999
InterVarsity Press.
312 pages.
Table of contents:
Foreword by Michael J. Behe
my note: the usual suspects...
Preface
Part 1 Historical Backdrop
1 Recognizing the Divine Finger 25
2 The Critique of Miracles 49
3 The Demise of British Natural Theology 70
Part 2 A Theory of Design
4 Naturalism & Its Cure 97
5 Reinstating Design Within Science 122
6 Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information 153
Part 3 Bridging Science & Theology
7 Science & Theology in Mutual Support 187
8 The Act of Creation 211
Appendix: Objections to Design 237
Notes 280
Index 303

It appears Dembski is far franker about his agenda than some of his supporters.

I have a perfect system to demonstrate Intellegent Design.

In my lab, I have a crystal of rock-salt, weighing about an ounce. I've done some X-ray diffraction on it, and it appears to have a perfect ordered arrangement. In the lattice, along not just one dimension (like a puny DNA molecule) but three dimensions, every sodium ion is followed by a chloride ion, in exact order. If we call a sodium ion 1 and a chloride ion 0, then in any single dimension the crystal can be represented by an exactly ordered series of bits, 1010101010101010....

I've calculated the probability of this arising by chance. The total number of ions in the crystal is about 10^23, so the probability of chance occurence of an exact sequence of bits is 1 in 2^(10^23), which is about one chance in 1 followed by 10^22 zeros (I'll let you divide this by eight to allow for the fact that we could start each dimension with either sort of ion). This is far, far more unlikely than the chance occurence of the human genome (ask your pal Dembski to check the math, if you like).

This is far, far more unlikely than the probability of the chance occurence of the human genome. And while I was under the impression my crystal grew by a natural process of slow evaporation over a period of months, Dembski has shown me this is impossible. I therefore conclude some Designer, or more likely an entire team of Designers, has been sneaking into my lab. at night and arranging the ions with a pair of molecular tweezers.

Think CSI will fund my further research?

Ever hopefully

Gerry Harbison

aka Right Wing Professor

Admit it, PH. You have never even read an article, let alone a book, by any proponent of ID.

No problem. Although I've read several articles about ID which have been posted here over the past three years (about eyes, flagella, etc.), and I've seen such arguments torn to shreds -- to my satisfaction at least, I freely admit that I haven't read an entire ID book. I also admit that I haven't read any books about astrology, pyramid power, the Bermuda triangle, ESP, UFOs, haunted houses, or Afro-centric history.

When ID achieves some degree of mainstream scientific respect, by making reasonably conclusive demonstrations that various biological structures are truly impossible to evolve, then I shall look into it. Until then, the mere declarations of evolutionary impossibility by the advocates of ID don't impress me any more than the ancients' claim that lightning bolts, being inexplicable to them, had to be the work of the gods.