Re: black holes and intelligent design

From: Jason Cortina (jascortina_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:19:07 -0600

On 27 Feb 2005 15:59:47 -0800, cafeinst@msn.com wrote:

> I sense hostility in many of the replies to my arguments. Why? The
> theory of intelligent design explains how life got here.

Really? Just how does it "explain". If I come home to find a lamp broken, I
don't consider my daughter saying "Sarah did it" to be an explanation of
how it came to be broken. Please supply a good statement of just what the
"theory" of intelligent design is and point out where it *explains* how
life got here.

>
> It is a good scientific theory which is testible and has passed the
> test: The fact that no one has ever been able to recreate life from
> scratch or even describe precisely the steps of how life evolved
> implies that the mechanism for producing life is too sophisticated for
> man to understand. And this implies that life could not have started by
> accident, since if so, man would be able to duplicate such an accident
> in a laboratory easily. Therefore, life must have come about through
> intelligent design.

So hurricanes are intelligently designed. After all, we cannot re-create
them, so they must be.

>
> I am sorry if you don't want to believe it, but it is the best
> scientific theory out there for explaining the origin of life.
>
ID uses undefined, unquantified and/or unsupported metrics in an attempt
to give some semblance of justification to an argument from ignorance:
it's just so "complex" that it couldn't have happened on its own, so some
unknown being or beings at some unknown point or points in history used
some unknown method or methods to apply design developed for some unknown
reason or reasons to some unknown number and type of chemicals and/or
some unknown number and type of cells and/or some unknown number and
type of biological systems and/or some unknown number and type of whole
organisms and/or some unknown number and type of populations. No
research into the resolution of any of the preceding unknowns has been
done, is currently in progress, is planned/proposed, or even postulated
as possible (even if only in principle).

Tell me, what is posited as the possibly detectable (even if not right now)
'agent(s)/mechanism(s)' whereby ID is/was applied and what actual research
is being done (or is planned on being done) to test such postulates?

In other words, just how is ID *NOT* an example of the 'occult'?

occult - (adj) of or relating to the occult; (noun) matters regarded as
involving the action or influence of supernatural or supernormal powers
or some secret knowledge of them.

supernatural - a: departing from what is usual or normal especially so
as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b: attributed to an
invisible agent.

ID cannot even compete with astrology! Astrology's adherents have claimed
for centuries that the influences of the planets are *real* and are simply
beyond our (then) current state of knowledge. They, too, offer a
mathematical argument, statistical analyses *proving* said influences.

But, unlike ID, they can actually posit quite a bit about *how* such
influences must work, some very specific attributes of their
hypothesized force/mechanism of influence: not effective before birth;
directional from certain solar system bodies; influences from different
bodies being qualitatively distinct from one another; such influences
combinatorial in that influences from different celestial bodies
amplify, modify, nullify one another depending on positions relative to
each other and relative to the background star field; and more. Nothing
even remotely as specific as these still vague attributes has been
postulated for any possible mechanisms by which ID might have been
applied.

Hard to be taken seriously as a scientific endeavor when it displays
less actual science than astrology. 

--
Jason A Cortina
"These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes
was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic
pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never
equalled the purity the sound achieved by the pig."
-- Alfred Hitch***