intelligent design in Nature

[John Grehan]

Response to Fred Schueler

"Salamander,
> spring-tail, fungus, Alder, are all as self-directed as the
> herpetologist, because self-direction is the product of natural
> selection."

Has natural selection been empirically demonstrated to be responsible
for "self-direction" 

> * if these aren't purposes that [seem to] direct organisms, then what
> is?

Perhaps nothing

> * no scientific statement purports to be true: it's just the best
we've
> managed to come up with so far. 

I would disagree in that resorting to purpose to 'explain' evolution is
not an improvement on not imputing purpose beyond empirical evidence in
the first place.

> * no, it's just incorporating those functions in a broader explanatory
> story (sort of like Darwinian biogeography) that claims that the
ability
> to digest starch increases fitness. 

Now that is something empirical, but it has nothing to do with purpose
and does not justify the statement that salivary glands secret amylase
"to" digest starch.

You don't have to speak with the
> gland, you just tell a story about it, and then try to see how the
story
> might be falsified 

The problem I see is that any story about purpose goes beyond science.
That's the core problem. If purpose is acceptable in science as an
explanatory mechanisms that goes beyond empirical evidence then there is
little about Intelligent Design that one could object to.

John Grehan