TOMASO wrote: This was merely an example of how one could avoid the "infinite regress problem." ID can hypothesize that a natural, intelligent life form seeded life on this planet, absent a theory of how this life form originated. If a structure similar to Mount Rushmore was found on Mars would scientists refuse to infer it was designed because they couldn't determine who designed the designers? There is no "ID versus Evolution" because ID isn't anti-evolution. I consider myself to be an intelligent design evolutionist and I don't think that a non-teleological origin of life is better supported by the evidence than is a teleological origin of life. DRTOMASO wrote: I disagree. The evidence for abiogenesis on earth is very weak but I'm not suggesting that scientists committed to abiogenesis research give up and switch to ID. DRTOMASO wrote: I don't know that abiogenesis can happen elsewhere. Again, the examples I provided were to show how "infinite regress" could be avoided. I don't consider "infinite regress" to be a problem for the design inference. Again, if a structure similar to Mount Rushmore was found on Mars would scientists refuse to infer it was designed because they couldn't determine who designed the designers? Design-theoretic explanations are proximal or local explanations rather than ultimate explanations. Once again, I would like to remind everyone that I started this thread to argue that ID is not creationism. I don't claim that ID is a full-fledged scientific theory or that it should be taught in school.
Thunderdog wrote: I've been following ID long enough to know that it is fundamentally different from creationism. Just changing the name wouldn't fool me. If you claim ID is creationism then define creationism and show me how ID is the same.
DRTOMASO wrote: Yes, I did miss it. ID doesn't posit that life was created by a deity. Therefore ID isn't creationism.
Duh and who cares. Intelligent design and creationism have one thing in common. They are both believed by ignorant people.
"Where's your contentment formula?" If you need a formula for contentment, you won't find it in science... "The supernatural, spiritual, etc, is highly subjective and exists outside the realm of science." Love exists outside the realm of science, but it is not supernatural. Simply because current instrumentation can't measure something, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
As I wrote in my earlier post, have a look at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg Ken Miller will answer your question better than I could hope to do. If you are serious about your question, then you will take the time to listen to his lecture. The lecture only covers about 70 minutes of the clip. The remainder is Q&A. Remember, this is the guy who was an expert witness at the ID trials. You won't be wasting your time listening to what he has to say. When you hear what he says happened in 1987, then I think you will have your answer. Even so, his whole lecture was a pleasure to listen to.
Well, I can see nothing's changed in the past 3 months since I've logged in here. Whether or not Intelligent Design is equivalent to Creationism is irrelevant. The relevant issue is: Is Intelligent Design "scientific." I submit that it is not, BECAUSE, Intelligent Design (ID) advocates do not conduct experiments to verify their hypotheses. The fundamental hypothesis of ID is that organic life is the product of an intelligent designer. As far as I am aware, no one has yet developed an experiment to successfully test this hypothesis. William Dembski has proposed a host of mathematical constructs which were claimed to prove the negative, i.e., that organic life is too complex to have evolved in the available time since the Universe's proposed start time (Big Bang), and therefore, said life must be designed. Unfortunately for Prof. Dembski, Dr. Thomas Schneider's little "EV" software program disproved all of Dembski's math, by evolving a mathematical organic structure in a very short timeframe, and, as of today, no one in the ID community has managed to conduct an experiment which demonstrates that Schneider's software doesn't work as advertised. Conversely, those who propose the hypothesis that organic life evolves, (1) do not make any claims as to how said life "began," and (2) conduct experiments to verify their hypothesis. Such experiments are not all empirical studies of fossils -- Dr. Richard Lenski has bacteria in his lab which have evolved new and different traits over the duration of his experiments. The point here is not to suggest that it isn't possible that a "hidden" designer is responsible for organic evolution, but merely to demonstrate that when an experiment measuring evolutionary change is conducted, the scientist, either records that the change has occurred or that it hasn't. The scientist does NOT impute the change to the unseen hand of an intelligent designer, because that action would not be scientific. The scientist will simply state that random mutation occurred, causing the organism to evolve. Could that random mutation be the product of a divine or alien intervention? Absolutely. However, it falls to the Intelligent Design advocate to prove that hypothesis, not to the Evolution advocate to disprove quantum mechanics. So, until someone in the ID community successfully proves that random mutation is not random, ID will remain a completely speculative, mathematical postulate, rather than a scientific discipline. It would be no different were scientists unable to set up experiments to confirm Einstein's relativity equations -- they would have remained purely theoretical. And, so we wait (or, at least I do), for the Intelligent Designer to appear and tell us what he/she/it did to create organic life, or for some person who wants to prove ID is science to conduct an experiment which proves that it is. But, until that occurs, whether or not ID is Creationism is irrelevant, because ID is not science.