Emily Morales
January 17, 2020
Even with just ten steps, there are countless ways to fail in making a kirigami star. Embryogenesis – natures complex expression of kirigami, and being possessed of literally thousands of steps, yields an unlimited number of possibilities for failure!
While most concede that kirigami is carried out by intelligent agents, they would argue that the folding, creasing, snipping and tucking that occurs during embryogenesis is the consequence of undirected, materialistic processes – no intelligent agent required.
https://salvomag.com/post/folding-creasing-snipping-amp-tucking
Here’s a general question for ID proponents: suppose we found compelling evidence that an extraterrestrial intelligence had influenced the development of life on Earth, possibly even seeding the planet with it, would that be sufficient for you, even though it fell short of being evidence for the existence of your God?
That has always been sufficient for ID, seversky.
Seversky
It’s a tough question. For “Biological ID”, strictly speaking, that’s enough to validate the theory. Life would have been influenced or seeded by “intelligence” – a designer or designers. That was the proposal and the evidence would confirm it.
For “Cosmological ID” the question is still open because the alien-seeding scenario doesn’t touch on the fine tuning of the universe.
But I think there’s another problem that ID would face, even with panspermia. From my reading of early ID proponents, they were really looking to attack Materialism. I’m thinking of Philp Johnson, for example, and I think even Wm Dembski said something like that as the purpose of ID in his early writings. The hope was that the Designer had to be an immaterial agent, even at the biological level.
So, if it could be shown that life was developed by a designer that was actually part of the material universe itself (as an alien would be), then ID would not refute materialism on that point. Could ID accept a solution that is consistent with atheistic-materialism?
The simple answer, strictly speaking, is that the Biological ID project would be completed if a designing intelligence was found. The theory would be validated on that point. Darwinism would be refuted and maybe even all other sorts of evolutionary ideas.
I think the battle would then move to claims about the origin of alien life, and both ID and materialist science would have an almost impossible task. It would be a war of speculations and imaginary scenarios.
For me, philosophy would be the only answer at that point, not science. Alien life would still have to be explained as yet one more contingent being acting in the universe, and it cannot explain it’s own origin. Thus there remains the need for a first cause, thus God must necessarily exist.
But alas Seversky, it is your very own worldview, i.e. methodological naturalism, since it denies the reality of intelligent agency altogether, that precludes the possibility of us discovering Extraterrestrial Intelligence via our radio telescopes. As Paul Nelson pointed out, “some feature of “intelligence” must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for.”
Thus the question is not if ID advocates would ever accept ‘compelling evidence’ that “extraterrestrial intelligence had influenced the development of life on Earth, possibly even seeding the planet with it”, the question is would you, a Darwinist, ever accept ‘compelling evidence’ for intelligent agency and would you ever abandon methodological naturalism if you ever did accept the reality of intelligent agency?
My guess is that , NO, you would never accept it since that honest admission for the reality of intelligent agency would, in the end, undermine your Darwinian worldview from within.