Having temporarily put aside the MSUP ID anthology, I've recently started making a more concerted effort to get through Dembski's The Design Revolution. I previously posted some thoughts on two especially outrageous quotes I found (upon opening the book to a random page) over at EvolutionBlog, in my entry for March 16.
So I came into my office this morning all set to unload a real sockdolager of a post on the sheer, unmitigated awfulness of Dembski's latest, only to discover that Jeffrey Shallit had beaten me to it. Sigh. As it happens though, there is so much to criticize in Dembski's book that Shallit has only scratched the surface.
4 Comments
Pat Daley · 6 April 2004
Rather than worrying about drawing scientific conclusions about God from nature, I would ask what introducing Intelligent Design or some concept of creation does for scientific research? What problems does it solve? Just to take one example, how does these suppositions help determine whether present day birds are descendants of bird-hipped dinosaurs? As far as I can see, ID does not help solve this or any other scientific problem.
Now, I have been a Christian all my life, and indeed, I have an interest in the history of the notion of creation (I have found no reference to a systematic history of this subject, but there are quite a few concepts of creation), but I do not expect it to solve scientific problems.
Jason Rosenhouse · 6 April 2004
Pat-
I agree with what you say. I don't see how the idea of intelligent design furthers any sort of scientific research. However, the ID proponents claim that their ideas would be a great boon for science. They are the ones claiming that once we accept the idea that there is an intelligent designer lurking behind the natural world, we gain great insights into nature. I'm simply taking them seriously by asking what, to me, seems like the next logical question. Namely, what can we infer from the nature of the designer by examining what he has designed? It is in answering this question that instances of poor design become relevant. To put it another way, I think that the simplistic picture of design painted by ID advocates poses theological problems far more serious than anything evolution is saying.
In the context of Dembski's book I was simply observing that no one is arguing that because there are many instances of seemingly poor design in nature we conclude that there is no intelligent design at all. But that is precisely the view that Dembski attributes to his critics.
Steve Noe · 7 April 2004
IIRC, Dembski once listed "14 questions IDeology can answer." Among them were things such as design criteria, optimality, history of the design, the beauty and moral underpinnings of the design, and, finally, the identity of the designer.
Has he repudiated this list?
Steve Noe · 7 April 2004
IIRC, Dembski once listed "14 questions IDeology can answer." Among them were things such as design criteria, optimality, history of the design, the beauty and moral underpinnings of the design, and, finally, the identity of the designer.
Has he repudiated this list?