Quack
Posts: 1961 Joined: May 2007
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Quote (Patrick @ Sep. 30 2011,08:42) | Despite the always stiff competition at UD, I believe the Cluelessly Projecting Hypocrite of the Week award should go to Eugene S: Quote | I think to say: “we don’t know” or even “we can’t know” is more honest than to lie with smoke in mirrors instead of evidence.
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Yes, Eugene, that would indeed be more honest. I look forward to you applying that standard to Upright BiPed, gpuccio, Dembski, kairosfocus, and, of course, your good self. |
Might this case of "I-don't-know-honesty" be appropriate here:
From a transcript made at the DDD3 conference in 2002 (Source ARN): Quote | Question from the audience: I’d be interested in hearing you tell us a little bit about what your theory of intelligent design is, as opposed to what evolution isn’t.
Behe replies: Well, that’s a great question, and I know folks on the other side who are sceptical of intelligent design often get frustrated, but I try to be as conservative as I can and I don’t go out beyond what the data can support because I think overreaching is the bane of theories of design. You say that flagellum looks designed so everything is designed, or that everything that looks complex was designed, or something like that.
I think the short answer to your question is, for all of those things, I don’t know.
There not enough data. For the elephant, we have primelephus, the ancestral elephant of the Asian and African elephant, and mammoth. Well, could that happened by random mutation and natural selection? My instinctive answer is sure - it sure looks like it. It doesn’t look like any big deal.
The more careful answer, the actual answer, is I don’t know - cause I don’t know what’s involved in making one versus the other. I don’t know what molecular changes are necessary to make the small anatomical differences in those different species.
Suppose one believed that those things could have happened by natural selection, but maybe the origination of mammals needed some extra information - how would that have happened - how would the designer have done that? Would it have been, say, information embedded into nature at the big bang, or whenever nature started, or might it have been manipulations along the way, or some sort of input along the way?
The short answer is “I don’t know.”
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But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-------------- Rocks have no biology. Robert Byers.
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