Philosophy Now Forum

The scientifically collected data can't, in my view, force an inference to a supernatural designer, so that's why the ID trail stops short of that, at least as far as scientific inquiry is concerned. The ID critic will insist that ID itself is a regress to a kind of vitalism about cellular machiner...

If you are doing ontological parsimony then I think you are doing metaphysics, not science. We end up with things like, "God created the best of all possible worlds" It leads to apriori assumptions about how the natural world was designed. Ontological parsimony merely functions as an heur...

I'm on the road and probably won't be able to post for a few days. I just thought I'd let you all know I haven't disappeared, and I'll be back to resume my assault on science and civilization.

Later!

But my position is that the fact that science can't make an inference to a disembodied designer isn't an obstacle to making an inference to design, even if it appears that no embodied designer is available to fill the job. I would suggest that not only is it an obstacle, but it is a very big obstac...

We do, in fact, have various criteria for detecting ID, which is precisely why SETI and archeology are scientific enterprises. As you are using induction to argue evidence of design, the only thing you can assign intelligent design to is things that you have built you inductive reasoning from. To m...

I venture to say that another way of saying the above is that ID theorists want a partial science. In other words, they have the hypothesis based on induction and inference, but unfortunately they have no way of testing the hypothesis according to the scientific method. An intelligent designer in r...

Part of the problem I have with ID is that the question it asks, it seems to me, is not 'Is this designed by an intelligence?' But rather 'Does it look like it was designed by an intelligence?' To which I don't see that any objective measures apply, therefore the credibility of the people making th...

Since you haven't denied the possibility of ID, that leaves you with a theory that is possibly true, for which there couldn't possibly be evidence. As I say, I'll pass on that epistemology. I wouldn't be so hasty. You asked what aspects of nature could suggest a designer, in my view. The answer rem...

M: I can conjecture all I like, thank you very much. You are correct, I don't know you. So far, all I know about you is: 1. your thoughts and arguments presented here, as a follow-up to a 2001 article. 2. from: http://www.sju.edu/about-sju/faculty-staff/todd-c-moody-phd '...steeped in the Jesuit, C...

Arising_uk wrote:Only a small point but I thought "panspermia" was the idea that life came from meteorites, comets, etc. Not sure where this 'directed panspermia' came from other than sci-fi?

Directed Panspermia was put forward by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, I believe.

If you accept a conclusion such as 'It was god what done it.' you have ruled out any further meaningful investigation; there is no more science to be done on the subject. Unless there is the potential, at least theoretically, to investigate the agency itself, in other words, to 'see' the designer, ...

You are going around the houses to get back to where you started; why don't you just come clean. You are looking for evidence to prove there is a God. I find it offensive that you think it's appropriate to try to "bust" me by some kind of analysis of my motives. First, by some kind of sci...

What kind of discovery about actual living things would, in your view, amount to evidence for ID? Nothing. So, ID is possible but nothing could count as evidence for it. That means that even if ID were true, science couldn't discover it. I'll pass on that epistemology. You can't insist that there's...

I asked what, if anything, could count as evidence for ID in actual living things, not imaginary objects. According to some people absolutely everything is evidence for ID, to others nothing is. Since I don't believe that anything has been shown to be irreducibly complex, anything I suggest as a ca...

I would argue that archeology is not teleological in the most important aspect. Yes, science does discern the purpose of human activity,and perhaps acknowledges the goals of human activity when it comes to archeology. For example, the purpose of the pyramids was to provide burial chambers, with a g...