From: Morgan Grey <cynical_prophet@yahoo.com>
To: <DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-to: <DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2001 12:10 pm
Message: 21340
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [DebunkCreation] Any books on evolution?
--- lflank@ij.net wrote:
> On 7 Sep 01, at 12:17, Morgan Grey wrote:
>
> > I just discovered that my public library caries a
> > copy of Dembski's $64.95 "The Design Inference". I
> > suppose I know what I'm going to spend my weekend
> > doing...
>
> Laughing uncontrollably . . . . . ?
No, that is what I'm doing right now.
Actually, I find much of what Dembski has to say
genuinely interesting. Of course, it *is* his Ph.D.
dissertion, so it better not be too silly.
But this is propably because Dembski's design
inference, as presented in TDI, is very different from
how it is presented by most IDers, as well as by
Dembski himself in popular books and articles. For
one, Dembski doesn't claim that his filter can detect
*ingelligent* design:
"Although a design inference is often the
occasion for inferring an intelligent agent
(cf. the examples in the following sections),
as a pattern of inference the design inference
is not tied to any doctrine of intelligent
agency. The design inference focuses on
features of an event that bar it from being
attributed to chance, not on the causal story
underlying the event. To be sure, there is a
connection between the design inference and
intelligent agency (see Section 2.4). This
connection, however, is not part of the
logical structure of the design inference."
(Dembski, W. A., 1998, "The Design Inference:
Eliminating Chance Through Small
Probabilities", pp. 8)
In fact, Dembski defines "design" as "the
set-theoretic complement of the disjunction
regularity-or-chance" (pp. 36). Under this definition,
I would have no problem with life being "designed",
with the "designer" in part being the process of
natural selection.
=====
Morgan
"Evolution is to the social sciences as statues are to
birds: a convenient platform upon which to deposit badly
digested ideas." (Steve Jones, 2000, "Darwin's Ghost", pp.
xxvii)
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