Het kloppend hart van Intelligent Design
Een boeiende quote van Nancy Pearcey op ‘the A-team blog’ over intelligent design. Ik laat hem nog een paar dagen in m’n hoofd ronddolen om de argumentatie op waarde te schatten.
Critics say the concept of design does not belong in science. They argue that it is a “science-stopper” that puts an end to scientific investigation. The head of an evolution advocacy group recently told CNN that design theory is “not a very good science, because it’s basically giving up and saying: We can’t explain this; therefore, God did it.”
But that accusation is based on a misunderstanding. The process of detecting design is thoroughly empirical. In fact, it is already an important element in several areas of science….
Today astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have worked out extensive criteria for recognizing when a radio signal is an encoded message and when it is just a natural phenomenon, like a pulsar. In other words, they have developed criteria for distinguishing between products of design and products of natural causes.
The same distinction is made in several other fields: Detectives are trained to distinguish murder (design) from death by natural causes. Archeologists have criteria for distinguishing when a stone has the distinctive chip marks of a primitive tool (design), and when its shape is simply the result of weathering and erosion. Insurance companies….Cryptologists….[etc.]
It should be possible to formalize the thinking process used in all these examples, which is exactly what design theory does. Its central tenet is that the characteristic marks of design can be empirically detected. As the title of one book puts it, in nature we can uncover Signs of Intelligence. [Total Truth, pp. 181-182, highlighted emphasis the A-Team Blog]
HT: The A-team Blog
Related items
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
