Bill is a mad scientist who has invented a remote control device that allows him to take complete control of another person's body. All he has to do is point it at someone, and instantly he can control them with his mind. You are a philosophy student. One day, you are in class about to take a test. It is a logic test - you know, the kind with questions of the following sort:

If all wuzzles are buzzles, and some fuzzles are wuzzles, which of the following must be true?

A) All buzzles are fuzzles
B) Some fuzzles are buzzles
C) All fuzzles are buzzles
D) A and B above
E) None of the above

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There are two polar opposite pictures of Darwinism, when viewing evolution as a whole:

1. The determined view (Morris?). If you were to run evolution again on any planet like earth, things would come out the same, with flagellums, eyes, and finally rational humans with an interest in their own origin.

2. The chance view (an extreme Gould?). If you were able to run evolution again, things would come out wildly different. Only by merest happenstance would things like flagellums, eyes, and rational humans come about.
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Krauze's recent post on Skepticism And The Origin Of Life gave me a good excuse to write on a topic I'd been meaning to for a while. Namely, what is the difference between a belief and a rational belief? Put another way, what does it take for a particular belief to be held on the basis of reason, rather than assumption or desire? The obvious answer is that in order for a belief to be held on the basis of reason, you need reason(s) to believe it. And by that I mean not reasons for wanting it to be true, but reasons for thinking that it is true. That is, you need evidence for it.
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Kenneth Miller has published an open letter, which Bill Dembski has put online here. The part that caught my eye was this:

Many of you accused me of "mocking God" for pointing out that remarkable frequency of extinction would make an "intelligent designer" look ridiculous. In fact, it was exactly because I do not mock God that I pointed out how ridiculous this view of an "intelligent designer" would be.

Now, I wouldn't accuse Miller of "mocking God", and whether the frequency of extinction makes an "intelligent designer" look ridiculous is a debate for some other time. I wish simply to examine what Miller is here arguing. This goes beyond simply arguing against the idea that intelligence can be detectable. The implication of the argument (if one accepts it as valid) is that neither evolution itself nor its outcomes were intended in any sense, even indirectly by setting up physical laws to do the job (as Steve pointed out here), because the person intending it wouldn't be very intelligent for doing it that way.

That is to say, Miller is once again arguing that evolution is "without plan or purpose," something he has stated elsewhere is a philosophical claim rather than a scientific one, and one which he repudiated when responding to Cardinal Schönborn and had removed from his own textbook.

Now, of course, Miller is entitled to hold whichever opinion he wants on this, but it would be nice if he would choose one and stick to it, especially when testifying in court. Regardless of where you stand on the topic, isn't it time for a little intellectual integrity on the part of Ken Miller?

Under one of our early entries, there was some interesting discussion of eliminative methods for detecting design (a la Dembski), and their validity, or lack thereof. At the risk of becoming the Telic Thoughts lightning rod for all anti-Dembski err… lightning, I'll go on record as stating that I think eliminative methods are perfectly valid. Actually, I'll do one better and state that eliminative methods are the only way that we can decide on anything that needs explaining, not just design, and that elimination is a vital stage in all our explanatory decision-making, although it's usually implicit rather than explicit. Let me elaborate.

Whenever we observe a pattern of any sort, be it a pattern of numbers, a pattern of events, a pattern in the clouds, or a pattern of behavior, there is always a logical possibility that the pattern in question has resulted from chance. After all, anything, provided it is logically possible and finite, is statistically expected to happen given enough tries, and there's always a possibility of it happening on the first try, no matter how ludicrously remote. The likelihood of a particular pattern or sequence arising by chance goes down as the sequence becomes longer, but the logical possibility always remains nevertheless.
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If the mention of flagella makes you spin, if you're a hopeful monster for mutations, and if you think that there's nothing that Kant can't, then Telic Thoughts is the blog for you. Here, we will explore intelligent design and the issues surrounding it, hopefully in a pleasant and fruitful atmosphere.

We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.