10.31.07
Design ambiguity principled?
Principled (not Rhetorical) Reasons Why ID Doesn’t Identify the Designer.
This defense of ambiguity isn’t convincing, not at all. If you can’t prove the existence of a designer by getting specific, then it is better to drop the idea. This issue has taken over all the energy of the Darwin debate, and allowed Darwinists to simply disregard the basic critiques of natural selection.
Further, in a distinction between G-design (agent based, God?) and N-design (natural teleology), often made on this blog, we need to be very clear which we are referring to. The ID group is deliberately vague here, suspiciously so.
Why not drop this ambition to hijack the Darwin debate for theism, and simply concentrate on the exposure of a Social Darwinist Darwinism allowed free reign in society. One needs to travel light, and drop these metaphysical sleights of hand based on design.
Mike Gene recently posted on Telic Thoughts responding to professor James F. McGrath, who accuses intelligent design (ID) proponents of being dishonest when they claim that ID does not identify the designer. This professor wrote: “That isn’t an instance of humility, but of strategy, and we all know why the strategy is being used: to wedge ID into science classrooms by disconnecting it from religion.” Similarly, I recently read a law review article co-authored by Barbara Forrest where she asserts with Stephen Gey and Matthew Brauer that “an intelligent designer is simply a subtle reference to God.” (More on problems with this article in Part 2.) Professor McGrath is perhaps unfamiliar with writings and position of ID proponents on this point. Thomas Woodward clearly explains the principled reasons why the biological evidence for ID may not allow us to identify the designer:
There is no ‘Made by Yahweh’ engraved on the side of the bacterial rotary motor—the flagellum. In order to find out what or who its designer is, one must go outside the narrow discipline of biology. Cross-disciplinary dialogue must begin with the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, and theology. Design itself, however, is a direct scientific inference; it does not depend on a single religious premise for its conclusions.
(Thomas Woodward, Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, pg. 15 (Baker Books, 2006).)
James said,
October 31, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Comment upgraded to post
http://darwiniana.com/2007/11/01/id-a-serious-scientific-theory/
James McGrath said,
November 1, 2007 at 1:44 pm
In the post Luskin asserts that the identity of the designer is a THEOLOGICAL question. I thought the designer didn’t have to be God! It is a very instructive slip, if you ask me. His second post tries to undo the admission, but it doesn’t work - he tried denying that ID leads inevitably to God, yet his language made it seem that what he REALLY thinks is that the discussion will inevitably be theological.
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/11/discovery-institute-responds.html
Stephen P. Smith said,
November 1, 2007 at 2:32 pm
The deductive counter example is highly principled, and the DCE can be take from ID without mention of a white-haired designer. Honesty is always the best approach, the rest is censorship and paranoid falsehood.