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To: Physicist; KMJames
One of the fundamental claims of the IDers is that it's possible to construct mathematical tests that distinguish between designed things and natural things. I haven't ever seen such a thing, but if someday somebody comes up with such a test, I'll be glad to consider it. But right now I have no reason to believe that such a test is possible. All I know is that Dembski, et al. want one, and that they expect it to tell them that organisms are designed and not natural.

Christians believe that the entire universe and everything in it is designed by God. No-one can show that this belief is false. It gives rise to the unfortunate consequence (for Dembski), however, that Dembski's marvellous "design filter" could never provide a false positive if he ever managed to construct such a filter. After all, everything is designed, so the design filter can never be wrong when it says of a particular object, "Yep, Design!". Spectacularly useless.

356 posted on 04/19/2006 2:22:27 PM PDT by Thatcherite (Miraculous explanations are just spasmodic omphalism)
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To: Thatcherite
Dembski's marvellous "design filter"

Don't count Dembski out. He really knows design when he sees it. For example, here is his favorable review of Cracking the Bible Code.

362 posted on 04/19/2006 2:31:37 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Unresponsive to trolls, lunatics, fanatics, retards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: Thatcherite
...After all, everything is designed, so the design filter can never be wrong when it says of a particular object, "Yep, Design!"...

Hmmmm, that's an interesting observation.

...Spectacularly useless...

Well, that may be going a bit far. I can surmise there being great "usefulness" - perhaps in determining the intended purpose of a "design" - by being able to mathematically / objectively evaluate it. This may or may not be a stated purpose for Dembski, et al., but it could be a result of their work.

371 posted on 04/19/2006 2:41:49 PM PDT by KMJames
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To: Thatcherite; KMJames
After all, everything is designed, so the design filter can never be wrong when it says of a particular object, "Yep, Design!". Spectacularly useless.

I paraphrase Churchill, from his mandatory A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: "Both armies appealed to the Almighty, and the Most High, seeing nothing in zeal or piety to recommend one side or the other, must have allowed purely military matters to decide the contest."

The most zealous and pious design advocate must surely believe that there are some objects in the universe that owe their forms to the purely physical action of unconscious material. Having gone to the trouble of working out the laws of gases and liquids, can the Most High not trust them to generate, unsupervised, the shapes of the clouds?

480 posted on 04/19/2006 8:55:41 PM PDT by Physicist
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