If you like Telic Thoughts (and I know you do), please check out Bradley Monton's blog.  Monton is a philosopher at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He's written a book on ID and is trying to get it published.  Here's a brief description:

The doctrine of intelligent design has been maligned by atheists, but even though I'm an atheist, I'm of the opinion that the arguments for intelligent design are stronger than most realize. The goal of this book is to try to get people to take intelligent design seriously. I maintain that it is legitimate to view intelligent design as science, that there are somewhat plausible arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer, and that intelligent design should be taught in public school science classes.

The book is written in such a way that it will have appeal to both non-academics and fellow professors. I anticipate that both proponents and opponents of intelligent design would be interested in reading it. I will be agreeing with a lot of what intelligent design proponents say — I'm trying to be intellectually honest and give the proponents credit wherever credit is due. By rejecting the fallacious arguments against intelligent design, I am helping everyone to understand the issues and arguments more clearly. In the long run, this is what will lend the most support to the cause of reason.

As far as I know, no one has published a book like this, or is even in the process of writing one. There is a fair amount of literature nowadays on atheism vs. theism, and the merits of intelligent design, but that literature has become like a war between two camps, and the point of my book is to transcend that.

I, for one, hope that he does find a publisher.

Paul Davies authored The Cosmic Blueprint. Like most of his work this book is thoughtful and well written. I want to focus on a small part of it for the purpose of this blog entry. On page 131 Davies discusses how life has modified earth's environment over geologic timescales. He illustrates his point with the specific example of the sun's luminosity which has increased by about 30% during the earth's history. Despite this significant increase, the temperature of the earth has remained within a small range that is hospitable to life. Davies uses the phrase "equability of conditions" in alluding to this.

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You've heard of a Flea Circus… now get ready for the Germ Circus!

Thinking Ahead: Bacteria Anticipate Coming Changes In Their Environment

LOL!!! Something a bit more than Shapiro's "cellular intelligence," researchers at Princeton have demonstrated some interesting intelligence in e.coli per anticipating future conditions and turning genes on or off based on that acquired knowledge.

In addition to shedding light on deep questions in biology, the findings could have many practical implications. They could help scientists understand how bacteria mutate to develop resistance to antibiotics. They may also help in developing specialized bacteria to perform useful tasks such as cleaning up environmental contamination.

Huh. An understanding of evolution as endogenous adaptive mutagenesis looks to "have many practical implications?" Who'd a thunk?

The researchers say that their findings open up many exciting avenues of research. They are planning to use similar methods to study how bacteria exchange genes with one another (horizontal gene transfer), how tissues and organs develop (morphogenesis), how viral infections spread, and other core problems in biology.

By golly, here we have actual biological scientists at an Ivy League institution and publishing in Science reporting that life anticipates the future at the most rudimentary level and adapts itself accordingly. Who was it who predicted years ago that science would eventually come to accept an EAM-ish version of intelligent design in biological evolution because it offers better solutions to 'problems' the RM-NS paradigm simply cannot explain?

Very cool.

The following essay was written by Jim Madden and the views/arguments contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of Mike Gene. Mike Gene hosts such essays simply to provoke thought and promote discussion and communication.

Often proponents of ID will argue that a certain kind of teleology is necessary for objective morality. A good example of this can be found in Ben Wiker's book, Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists:

If we, as a part of nature, are ultimately derived from purposeless material forces, morality should be defined as moral Darwinism has defined it. If, on the other hand, we are ultimately the result of an intelligent designer, morality must follow that design. (p. 30)

In my reflections below, I raise some concerns about the claim that ID can play a role in grounding an objective morality, but considering a distinction between two types of teleology made by traditional philosophers.
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After watching as a number of threads descended into chaos from interesting starts, an underlying oddity seems to beg attention from the fisticuffs over word usage that has become so prevalent of late. In the Post-Wedge World the perennial dueling metaphysics hasn't waned one bit, but something new has come to the fore.

We've been mixing it up with a commenter who calls himself "aiguy" to identify with the field of computer science called "Artificial Intelligence." It would appear that he has a problem with ID's use of the word "Intelligent" to describe its focus. Aiguy tells us that we have no definition of intelligence for either AI or ID, but he wants ID to drop the term anyway, perhaps so he can feel better about the use of it in his own discipline of science. Who knows?

If it were just this one critic who was bent by the terminology it would just be a single critic with a single issue about terminology. Instead, aiguy is just the latest in a string of critics who have lodged complaints in recent months about ID's use of the word "Intelligent" and insisted that it be dropped from the lexicon.

It strikes me that with such universal focus on the word - whether the complaint is that it's a metaphysical concept or an ill-defined term - the 'other' word has slipped under the radar into mainstream usage. Is it now okay to speak of biological systems in terms of "Design" so long as "Intelligent" isn't attached?

One of our recent, frequent participants here at Telicthoughts — aiguy — had what I consider to be a fascinating, intriguing comment here:

http://telicthoughts.com/are-dem-bunny-prints/#comment-193453, which I quote below:

Indeed - I can learn!

And so can my computer. Using genetic and other machine learning algorithms, it has learned to design complex machines that I didn't even understand until I saw them work. Not only that, but it decides all by itself what it is that it wants to design!

It really is so counter-intuitive to see how simple laws and a deterministic machine operating according to blind, natural processes gives rise to amazingly intelligent results without any intervention from me. I suppose it could be said to demonstrate "foresight" (it produces designs all at once without visible intermediate trial-and-error), but of course everything it does really is completely determined by its innate structure and its interactions with its environment. I have no reason to think it is aware of anything, so if it has beliefs and desires it doesn't know it. I really don't think it knows what it is doing - or why.

Yup, a completely unconscious, blind, unaware, deterministic physical mechanism operating according to nothing but fixed law and chance, incapable of doing anything but what it does, and there it is grinding out artifacts of complex form and function. Intelligence is so cool!

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Darwin's Black Box made me reconsider both natural selection concepts and an intelligent design indicator. I was surprised by ensuing criticism of the book. The often repeated statement that irreducible complexity was a claim that evolution was impossible was a simplified formulation meant to polarize the debate by setting up a strawman. After all Behe stated his belief in common descent so why the impossible tag? Behe's point was that explanations for the evolution of irreducibly complex systems were scientifically inadaquate. His challenge was met with some imaginative solutions indicating some general pathways by which specific systems could have evolved. Far from harming science Behe's concept sharpened the thinking relevant to IC.

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Engineers Discover In Nature Exotic Structures Envisioned By Mathematicians is the title of a Science Daily summary. Although the article is a few years old its message is timeless. From the article:

Three years before he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, Eugene Wigner published an article entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (1960). He marveled at how often physicists develop concepts to describe the "real" world only to discover that mathematicians–heedless of that real world–have already thought up and explored the concepts. His own experience of the uncanny applicability of mathematical insights to the physical reality of quantum mechanics led Wigner to observe "that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it."

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There are a couple of things about the Monod quote* that caught me eye. First, I was struck by the similarities to ID101. I'll let readers see if they can spot any points of convergence.

Second, and more importantly, this sentence stands out:

Hence it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness."

Maybe it is simply not possible to make such judgments without accessing this subjective element. After all, recognizing design may indeed be akin to recognizing another mind. For how do we recognize other minds if not by recognizing what they design?

*BTW, the quote is from the first three paragraphs of chapter 1.

The difference between artificial and natural objects seems immediately and unambiguously apparent to all of us. A rock, a mountain, a river, or a cloud "“ these are natural objects; a knife a handkerchief, a car "“ so many artificial objects, artifacts. Analyze these judgments, however, and it will be seen that they are neither immediate nor strictly objective. We know that the knife was man-made for a use its maker visualized beforehand. The object renders in material form the preexistent intention that gave birth to it, and its form is accounted for by the performance expected of it even before it takes shape. It is another story altogether with the river or the rock which we know, or believe, to have been molded by the free play of physical forces to which we cannot attribute any design, any project, or purpose. Not, that is, if we accept the basic premise of the scientific method, to wit, that nature is objective and not projective.

Hence it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness." Might there be objective and general standards for defining the characteristics of artificial objects, products of a conscious purposive activity, as against natural objects, resulting from the gratuitous play of physical forces? To make sure of the complete objectivity of the criteria chosen, it would doubtless be best to ask oneself whether, in putting them to use, a program could be drawn up enabling a computer to distinguish an artifact from a natural object. Read the rest of this entry »