Philosophy

The existence of bad design, broken design, and cruelty in the world inspires some of the strongest arguments against the Intelligent Design of life and the universe. I consider the “bad design” argument the most formidable of the anti-ID arguments put forward, but in the end it is shallow and flawed. I will attempt to turn the “bad design” argument on its head in this essay. The “bad design” arguments have at least two major themes: 1. An Intelligent Designer like God wouldn’t make designs that are capable of breaking down 2. God (as the Intelligent Designer of Life) doesn’t exist because of all the cruelty and evil in the world To address the first point, consider the synthesis of Read More ›

A piece of mine has been just published in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) excellent Religion and Ethics website. It provides a larger context for my own theologically positive approach to ID, which I realize is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, like Gregory Sandstrom, I welcome johnnyb’s intervention, which raises the issue of which companies an ID supporter would invest in (or not). I personally find the choices a bit on the Rorschach side of plausibility — i.e. it tells us more about the beliefs of the proposer. So Eric Holloway is happy to regard ‘gamers’ as ‘human’ in a way that has not been contaminated by the AI ideology of Kurzweil et al., so he doesn’t see their Read More ›

In our final video for the Engineering and Metaphysics conference, we have Dr. Walter Bradley, famous in ID circles for his book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin. Here Dr. Bradley shares with us his work on helping relieve poverty in third-world countries through engineering. He also tells us about practices that people attempt to use to relieve poverty which are unhelpful. This is a great summary of the practices that work and the practices that don’t work. If you have trouble with this, you can see it at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92BDBku6g4 I hope you enjoyed the Engineering and Metaphysics conference! It was great to get to know everyone, and to get to spend time talking about these things with Read More ›

Next up in our Engineering and Metaphysics conference lineup is Baylor’s William Jordan. Jordan compares the way that physics models relate to engineering with the way that theological models relate to religious practice. He looks at how innovation works in both theological and physical models, and how engineers and practitioners should treat them. He also looks at the way in which realism affects education in both systems. I don’t have slides for this, but you can see the slides pretty well on the video.

In Bejan’s “Design in Nature”, Bejan promotes what he calls the “constructal law,” which states, “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.” Bejan has denied that this relates at all to any ultimate form of design, but is this claim correct? In our next Engineering and Metaphysics video, Halsmer and Odom look into the constructal law and whether it indicates design, as well as other, new aspects the constructal law might be applicable to. If you are unable to see the video properly, the YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eda6Mls1RBk

According to Richard Dawkins, Intelligent Design does not explain complexity because the designer must be even more complex than the design. In my opinion, it is like to claim that the car industry doesn’t explain cars because the mechanical engineers are more complex than cars. Dawkins says that because has a priori commitment to reductionism/evolutionism, according to which the explanation/cause must always be simpler than the data/effects. What for Dawkins is a supposed “defect” of ID, for me — who haven’t such commitment — is a great merit. Specifically it is a value of coherence with self-evident principles, first of all, the intuitive principle that more cannot come from less. However Dawkins offers us the opportunity of asking some interesting Read More ›

Next up in the Engineering and Metaphysics series is a presentation by Winston Ewert. This one is on a new informatics metric, called conditional Kolmogorov complexity. Check it out!

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes.

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In the contemporary scientific world we thus have the very unusual situation that one of science’s most influential theories, biological macroevolution, stands in such a close relationship to naturalistic philosophy that it can be deduced from it directly – that is, without even needing to consider any evidence, as the ancient arguments of Lucretius plainly show. This circumstance is extraordinary since it is very difficult to think of another scientific theory that is in a similar position. (Page 98) – John Lennox, quoted in Amanda Read, “Darwinocracy: The evolution question in American politics” (Washington Times, September 3, 2011). Oxford mathematician John Lennox is the author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?. Here’s an interview with him.