Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006
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Of course Paley wasn't arguing from analogy, because he really was claiming to find real evidence of design, not using the dishonest strategy of assuming design to be the default that present-day IDiots assume:
| Quote | | Ought it then to be said that though we have little notion of an internal mould, we have not much more of a designing mind: The very contrary of this assertion is the truth. When we speak of an artificer or an architect, we talk of what is comprehensible to our understanding, and familiar to our experience. We use no other terms, than what refer us for their meaning to our consciousness and observation; what express the constant objects of both; whereas names, like that we have mentioned, refer us to nothing; excite no idea; convey a sound to the ear, but I think do no more. |
From a blogpost that I once made
I mentioned Paley's claim that he was referring to what architects and architects do on some forum or other (Biologos?) once, and some of the UDiots ended up saying on UD that, well, they had never claimed that design in life was like that of architects or artificers. Well of course not, Paley thought he was actually finding design, not trying to sneak it in without dealing with evolution and the actual undesigned-like nature of life. Paley wasn't exactly an honest scientist either, in fact, as he warns against paying too much attention to what doesn't seem so designed, but by comparison to the likes of Dembski or Behe, he's a paragon of scientific virtue, actually meaning to discover design traits, rather than dishonestly defaulting to "design" after throwing up a host of (largely bogus) objections against evolution.
It should be noted that Paley sees design in aspects of the solar system, using arguments that even the IDiots don't use today.
Anyway, if you can just recognize design immediately, like these bozos suppose, I would note that natural crystals really do look a whole lot more designed than life does. Good rational shapes, sometimes being Platonic solids, they're wonderful candidates for intelligent design found in nature. Life, by contrast, looks evolved, even did before evolutionary theory arose in science, hence the "chain of being," which, however, depended on magic. Paley seems to have forgotten that himself (or didn't he want to deal with it?), as he tried to argue about how obvious design is in a watch--in contrast to all of the life next to it.
Yes, it doesn't work at all, and Paley's probably as close as it ever came to being intellectually honest. Only he was looking for actual evidence of design, in doing so, rather than blathering all around their lack of any evidence for design in wild-type life, like the current rubes, BSers, and apologists do.
Glen Davidson
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http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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