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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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ORIGINAL: gluadys

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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I think this is the first time I have seen a supporter of ID take this position. I have no problem acknowledging that intelligence acts within nature. It is the notion that it can only be seen outside the framework of nature that has always bothered me.

But that brings me back again to the question of why attack evolution? Assuming that evolution is an example of intelligence acting in nature, what is the problem?

Well, as I have said, it is the mechanisms of evolution that IDists find insufficient.

Earlier, however, you qualified that as mechanisms working by chance and natural laws alone. If there is no such thing as chance and natural law working alone, but rather intelligence working in and through them, what makes the mechanisms insufficient? How do we know they are insufficient and not just insufficiently understood?

I think a huge point was missed in that we aren't talking about things that look like they came into existence through natural laws alone. Jhud had mentioned the rocks that spelled out, "I WAS HERE". Those rocks could have been place there through a supreme intelligence making use of "natural" causes like a whirlwind during a thunderstorm or a person placing them there by hand. Yet no fool would say that they were placed there through chance and nature alone no matter how long you gave them to arrange themselves. So the point is that, while a designer could have used nature, nature could not have done it alone.

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No, that point wasn't overlooked. The problem with using that example is that it only tells us something unusual is happening if the result looks as if humans designed it. That doesn't help us identify design in nature, especially when we assume -- as I do -- that nature never acts alone.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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No, that point wasn't overlooked. The problem with using that example is that it only tells us something unusual is happening if the result looks as if humans designed it. That doesn't help us identify design in nature, especially when we assume -- as I do -- that nature never acts alone.

Well, no, if we saw a group of symbols on an alien planet and were able to translate them so that we knew they essentially said, "I WAS HERE" we would understand they were designed even if we knew no human could have designed them. The attributes of intelligent activity are universally recognizable; which is one of the reasons incidentally we understand that some animals are more intelligent than others.

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In the first place, how do you know they are symbols? If they are recognizable as symbols, how is deciphering them any different than deciphering cuneiform or Mayan script? You are still appealing to the characteristics of human design.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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In the first place, how do you know they are symbols? If they are recognizable as symbols, how is deciphering them any different than deciphering cuneiform or Mayan script? You are still appealing to the characteristics of human design.

And do you think appealing to "appealing to the characteristics of human design" would be heldpful in deciphering alien symbols? Why or why not?