FloydLee
Posts: 577
Joined: Sep. 2009
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Ah, here's the post I was looking for earlier.
| Quote | Let me parse this for you -
ID = Intelligent design
is = is
religious = just the Logos theology of John's Gospel
. = restated in the idiom of information theory.
Substituting yields: ID is religious.
I'm right, FL, right? |
No. Not only are you wrong, but there are very specific intractable reasons why you are wrong.
The source of your error is that you're thinking (or pretending) that the specific quotation from Dembski [u]is his definition of ID.[/i]
But to take Dembski's specific quotation in that manner, is to take it out of context....and that includes multiple sources, not just one, where Dembski is clear about what his definition is and IS NOT.
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I did mis-speak a bit in an earlier post--the specific "Logos" quotation you're using comes from a Touchstone article that Dembski wrote, not from his 1999 book Intelligent Design like I suggested.
However, the Touchstone quotation IS a correct one-line summary of the huge explanation Dembski gave in his seminal 1999 book about the theological implications of ID wrt the Logos concept in the Gospel of John. (Again, it's an implication that would rationally follow from a theological angle, if Dembski's ID hypothesis survives falsification.)
Now, here's the deal: as Casey Luskin pointed out, the Touchstone quotation was NOT a definition of ID, for Dembski offered a definition elsewhere in the Touchstone article itself.....the ID Explanatory Filter (and flowchart).
Now you may personally think the ID Explanatory Filter is pure wonderful or pure worthless, in terms of science.
That's fine, it doesn't matter either way, because for THIS discussion, the only issue is did Dembski use the EF to define his ID or did his use the "Logos/John" statement to define his ID.
(The clear answer, of course, is the EF.)
In fact, the very same EF appears in Intelligent Design (1999) in chapter five, on page 134, two chapters before Dembski starts discussing in theological terms how ID bridges science and theology.
So even in the 1999 book, Dembski makes the same point clear: the Logos/John point is NOT a definition of ID, but instead what theologically follows from the ID hypothesis, which was defined elsewhere..
(And remember, Dembski has the straight academic credentials from Princeton to offer a professional evaluation of ID's theological implications. He's qualified to make that "Logos/John" statement.)
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Again, please read the following explanation from Intelligent Design in order to see that the "Logos/John" statement is NOT a definition of ID:
| Quote | Scientific creationism holds to two presuppositions:
1. There exists a supernatural agent who creates and orders the world.
2. The biblical account of creation recorded in Genesis is scientifically accurate.
The supernatural agent presupposed by scientific creationism is usually understood as the transcendant personal God of the well known monotheistic religions, specifically Christianity.
This God is said to create the world out of nothing (i.e. without the use of pre-existing materials.) Moreover the sequence of events by which this God creates, is said to parallel the biblical record.
By contrast, intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature, nor does it prescribe in advance the sequence of events by which this intelligent cause had to act.
Intelligent design holds to three tenets:
1. Specified complexity is well-defined and empirically detectable.
2. Undirected natural causes are incapable of explaining specified complexity.
3. Intelligent causation best explains specified complexity.
----page 247. |
So, again, his Touchstone "Logos" quotation is NOT a definition of ID.
Dembski gave you his actual 3-point ID hypothesis there. Again, you're free to say that it's perfect (or conversely, that it's poison) in terms of science.
Don't matter either way, because as you can see, that actual 3-point hypothesis does NOT rely on, or require, or pre-assume, ANY texts or claims from the Gospel of John--not even the "Logos" verse. That's the point folks.
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At the risk of overkill, Casey Luskin also points out that Dembski again defines ID in The Design Revolution.
| Quote | Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. Note that a sign is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of the designer and figure out what a designer is thinking. Its focus is not a designer's mind (the thing signified) but the artifact due to a designer's mind (the sign). What a designer is thinking may be an interesting question, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is thinking from the designed objects that a designer produces (provided the designer is being honest). But the designer's thought processes lie outside the scope of intelligent design. As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such.
--page 33 |
So in fact, even in the 1999 ID book, and even in Touchstone magazine (where the original quote is located), and even in the later book Design Revolution, Dembski is totally clear that he's NOT using the Logos/John statement as a definition of ID, but instead as a theological implication that, in his view, would rationally and scripturally FOLLOW from the ID hypothesis if the hypothesis survives
(Evolution has theological implications too, as Dawkins and Gould and Rosenhouse have proven so very accurately.)
FloydLee
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