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Intentional Design / Intelligent Design

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George Ellis, physicist and Templeton Prize winner, in today’s Nature has an interesting short article titled “Physics, Complexity, and Causality.” In it he remarks that the physical sciences offer no insight into “intentional design.” The article itself includes the following image and caption:

Teapot

The question you need to be asking yourself is why is Nature giving such respectful treatment to ID, in effect conceding that ID has focused on a major conceptual problem for science. For more on the significance of Ellis’s article as well as for links to it and related articles, see Paul Nelson’s remarks at IDthefuture (go here).

Comments
We probably shouldn't neglect to note that G. Ellis also openly acknowleges that: "Darwinian processes of selection guided the physical development of living systems, including the human brain." Guided, yes, this is a teleological term apparently connected with Darwinian processes of selection. Can we conclude that Dr. Ellis at least respects Darwin? AND: "[P]hysics per se cannot causally determine the outcome of human creativity" Likewise, perhaps it can soon be admitted that there is not any theory of ID that can "causally determine the outcome of human creativity." If there were to be, hypothetically, would it happen in the realm of (philosophy of) biology, information technology or engineering? Or perhaps in another discipline or disciplines of the academy or seminary...? 'Causally determining outcomes' certainly is not typical social scientific language. g. arago p.s. 'biology and the social disciplines' (???)g arago
June 12, 2005
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AA very interesting article related to EMERGENCE is at: http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/challengetophysics121001.htm The author of the article, George Johson, mentions that many complex systems — the very ones the solid-staters study — appear to be irreducibly complex, made of many interlocking parts, displaying a kind of synergy, obeying "higher organizing principles" that cannot be further simplified no matter how hard you try. He mentions the work of Nobel Laureate Robert Lauglin (the same Laughlin who likened Darwin's theory to an "anti-theory). Laughlin was quoted as saying, "The stakes here are very high...At issue is a deep epistemological matter having to do with what physics is." I found this abstract from some of recent research of Harold Morowitz: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/krasnow/abstracts_frames/abs97/moro9703.html "Within the hierarchical framework of biology and the social disciplines, the reductionist approach attempts to understand phenomena in terms of the next, lower level. The new approaches of emergence and complexity seek to show how the behavior at a given level arises from the rule-governed interaction of agents at a lower level....The Pauli Principle points the way to a kind of rule by which the whole is quite different from the sum of the parts. Such reasoning may be sought in emergence at higher levels.... Because the exclusion principle is non-dynamic and overcomes energy minimization, it has a mentalistic character that some physicists, going back to Planck, have seen as the roots of mind. We will discuss the possible relation of exclusion principles to noetic emergence." In his books, "Emergence of Everything" Harold Morowitz writes: "We study God’s immanence through science…Deep within the laws of physics and chemistry the universe is fit for life. This fitness we identify with God’s immanence...The present study of this fitness take place under the rubric of 'design'" and from "Cosmic Joy", "What emerges from all this is the return of "mind" to all areas of scientific thought. This is good news from the point of view of all varieties of natural theology. For a universe where mind is a fundamental part of reality more easily makes contact with the mind of god than does a mindless world." This is the same Morowitz who testified against the creationists in Mclean vs. Arkansas, 1982. :-)scordova
June 10, 2005
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