You are right,as are other ID proponents, that intelligent design is not supernatural. Intelligently designed things are designed by intelligent beings, not supernatural beings. Even Darwin himself believed in intelligent design of his pigeons. What a pity that Darwin never met Abbe Mendel whose investigations of the laws of inherited characteristics would have so filled out his theory of natural selection.

Right too about Shire horses, which is the most usual sort of heavy horse used for pulling brewers' drays.The Shire originated in the cold bloods of Flanders, and sires were imported into England from there to improve the native English cold bloods. This is obviously a case of very intelligent design not by any supernatural person but by horse breeders.

Quite right, Juice. The high butter fat ratio of Jersey milk is evidence of highly intelligent design. As is high protein Holstein milk intelligently designed, and not by any supernatural agency but by dairymen for a specific purpose.

Yes, I do see that intelligent design is not at all the same as creationism.

Musa Acuminata is a widespread, highly variable and prolific species of banana that is the primary parent of modern edible (and many ornamental) bananas. These seeds have been collected from the wild bananas in the Manipur region of India

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Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

Galapagos tortoises got to be different on different islands because of 1. natural selection

2. natural events such as tsunami, and variations in terrain. climate and vegetation.

There is no evidence of intelligent design in natural breeds and species outwith intelligent design as executed by humans.Moreover, the non-teleological theory of design is complete in itself and there is no need for any additional hypothesis.

I believe that the State vs Scopes, Scopes vs State (Tenn, 1926) (Scopes Monkey Trial) did a disservice to scientific inquiry, initiated by religious fervor, for future generations as it paved the way for a particular level of scientific dogma, pertaining to origins, to prevail over reasoning and logic.

(Juice)

Natural selection is not dogma, it's a scientific theory of great power and predictability.How else do you think pathogenic bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics?How else do you think that pathogenic bacteria can be developed in laboratories into attenuated strains for vaccination ?

Did gram negative Neisseria Gonorrhoeae (gonorrhea), the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease in the US, suddenly become gram positive, no it became penicillin, tetracycline, vancomycin, trobicin resistant. The ability to resist inherent in it's biochemical information database. But, it is still gonorrhea!

(Juice)

It 'is' still gonorrhoea because medics pronounce it to still be gonorrhoea for entirely pragmatic reasons, not for reasons of metaphysically irreducible form.

The pragmatic reasons include symptoms and signs together with dissemination and infectivity and ways of dealing with them. These are sufficient to distinguish gonorrhoea from other pathologies.

Categories are not God-given. Categories are human concepts which have finite applications.

This is precisely what ID theorists are currently striving to do, as well as to find such phenomena, and then to develop research programs of such phenomena based on the finding that they are intelligently designed.

(Meleagar)

But people who believe in 'intelligent design' believe that there is an other-worldy designer. Either design is natural and there is no final cause, or design is artifical and there is a final cause. Or to put it even more briefly, nature is either designed with final causes or it is designed without final causes.There is no way that there both is final cause in nature and that there is not final cause in nature.

Final causes are the upshots of intentions.Blueprints embody final causes. There is no blueprint that makes oak trees what they are, but only struggle for survival plus random mutations.

That man made artefacts are made with final causes is true. This fact added to Darwin's experience, he bred pigeons.The difference between artifical selection and natural selection is final cause.

The writer of the article forwarded by Meleagar apparently does not know the singular of 'criteria'.

if we found something like a very weird-looking spaceship on Mars, that had a power-source and computer-like controls, we wouldn't go around looking for a "natural" explanation to explain it; we would intuitively know it was designed by some form of intelligence.

(from article forwarded by Meleagar)

If I found this queer spaceship, I would assume that it was designed for a purpose, yes. I assume that a proper space scientist would not assume anything untilthere was significant evidence one way or the other. I imagine that if the queer spaceship thingy had working reproductive organs it would be able to reproduce itself by artificial selection if it was intelligent, and by natural selection if brainless.If they were brainless the race of spaceship thingies would evolve according to their struggles for survival in whatever ambience they inhabited.

Likewise Intelligent Design proponents can reproduce themselves if they want to do so by artifially selecting the characteristics they want their offspring to have, or Intelligent Design proponents who are themselves unintellegent can reproduce themselves entirely by natural selection.Only intelligent beings make blueprints.Nature is not intelligent.Scientists study nature.

An artefact is by definition something designed by an agent. Better say some unbiased name, for instance 'entity X'. Let's call it 'Entity X'.If there were evidence that this Entity X had an ancestry going back millions of years, I'd say that Entity X was a result of natural selection.

If there was no such evidence of any ancestry, I'd wonder if an agent designed and made it, or conversely if I had failed to find traces of its ancestry,I'd surmise that an agent may have made and designed it.This case wouild remain indeterminate until significant evidence came along, one way or the other.

Oak trees are easy to explain by natural selection.Oak trees have ancestors.

Belinda: your design detection model fails, because purebred Pekingese are not the product of natural selection, and they have ancestors going back millions of years.

Good answer Meleagar, and I agree that evidence of ancestry fails as a natural selection detector.It fails because it's necessary but not sufficient.


Please bear with me while I revise it.

An artefact is by definition something designed by an agent. Better say some unbiased name, for instance 'entity X'. Let's call it 'Entity X'.If there were evidence that this Entity X had an ancestry going back millions of years,and in the probable absence of any visible agents-- such as dog breeders-- I'd say that Entity X was a result of natural selection.

The only agents that can carry out artificial selection, i.e. intelligent design are human or humanoid to the extent that they will have left evidence of other artefacts such as tools, scraped or cut animal bones, burials, statues, cave paintings,storage pits, traces of shelters, standing stones,platforms or stakes for lake dwellings,hollowed out logs, potsherds, metal harness rings, metal weapons, etc. There may also be bog or ice preserved humanoid bodies.

This creature that you describe, Meleagar, given that there is evidence that it has long ancestry* and reproductive organs for transmitting information across generations, and in the absence of any evidence of agents with artefact capability as described above, will therefore probably have evolved by means of natural selection and will not have been artifically designed.

*Such as fossil record, or other similar 'life' forms within geographical striking distance.

You are not keeping up Alun . Material evolutionists have long ago agreed that evolution appears designed but contend that the appearance of design is illusory. "A magician’s trick, slight of hand, MYSTICISM!"

Design-Is a plan with a definitive purpose. The "Design Inference" takes the chance out of creation by calculating mathematical probabilities to events. The more complex a structure or event the less chance there is that it came about by chance. Intelligent Design merely studies signs of intelligence not the intelligence itself

. (Juice)

Okay, evolution appears designed. It is designed, but not by a designer rather by its own internal laws of evolution, whether the evolution is the evolution of life forms or plate tectonics there is no hidden hand of God in all this.

Design is not necessarilya plan with a purpose. An artist may design an artefact with a purpose in view. Not always though. Sometimes a work of art evolves from one stage of its making to the next stage because of the results of the earlier stage.Same with a scientific discovery. The scientist comes up with theories because of research and development, not because of her vision of a completed artefact.

Likewise the medical doctor, who does not have some idea of the perfect patient before he starts the cure or the preventative treatment.
The doctor has to be more flexible than this.

The engineer does usually complete the blueprint before the work is started, unlike the research scientist, the medical doctor, and the artist.

The fundamental flaw in your reasoning here is that in order to identify any item X as artificial, your model requires that there be artificial evidences of intelligent agents present, but none of those things, which are also classified as X upon discovery, can be identified as artificial (tools, shelters, etc.) in your model without first identifying other X's as artificial.

Your model contains a catch-22; no X (questionable item) can be identified as artificial until some or many such X items on that planet have been identified as artificial (tools, shelters, etc. for intelligent agents). This means that no X can ever be identified as artificial.

I believe you are right, Meleagar. The scientific approach is materialistic , or at least monistic. Being monistic it is deterministic. The ultimate view of science must be that scientific truth is a coherent body of knowledge. The ultimate view of science cannot be that scientific truth corresponds to What Is, because it's not within human capability to know tne total of What Is.

Come on Belinda the product of an artists endeavors are from an intelligence whether the result of random musings or deliberate thoughtfulness.

A Doctor also utilizes the products of his/her intelligence to do their job.

I did not say random musings I said that an artist may not work to a blueprint. An artist often uses a happy accident to improve on a work of art, or even to inspire a whole work of art. for instance probably Coleridge's Kubla Khan.

A doctor often has to work with a patient whose systems are closing down, or are at least multiply compromised, and treatment may have to follow from any progress from preceding stages of treatment rather than from a treatment strategy carried through to the letter from start to completion.

In any case and even in the case of random musings, for sure intelligence is much involved , as it is also when an engineer works from a blueprint until completion.

Therefore, since EVERYTHING (natural and unnatural) that is observable is finite, it must have a point of origin

What! Just one?

Carl Sagan a truly religious man. What beautiful and true sayings by him related by boagie!

ape, this quotation you have about naughty scientists implies a queer sort of love that is not up to your usual standard as prophet of love. There are many paths of love. Why you exclude the scientists's paths is not at all clear.

it is far from an assumption that mind must have been involved in ordering quanta according to such mathematical elegance.
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It's healthy cynicism that points out that, whatever the case may be, the popular mind tends to anthropomorphise laws of science.