Straight from the horse’s mouth:
Townes won the Templeton Prize in 2005, and seems to have accepted conventional views on biological evolution.
Townes was not a supporter of the Intelligent Design movement, though he did use the term “intelligent design” in the generic sense to describe some of his beliefs. It is typical of the DI’s shoddy ethics to imply that a person was a supporter after he is dead.
I did not offer the passage as evidence “that ID was scientific.” I offered it as evidence that someone very familiar with the methods and contents of science found the notions of “design” and “evolution” compatible. What Townes would say about the scientific quality of particular arguments of Behe, Dembski, Meyer, etc. – I offered no opinion on that question. He seems to be saying only this much: there is nothing in the definition of “science” which makes it impossible for “design” and “evolution” to be simultaneously real. And I found that interesting.
If that is your point I might agree - depending on how ‘design’ is understood.
When is something designed, and when is it not? I’m not talking here about detecting it, but about what it is and how it came to be. Does design necessarily entail foresight? Planning? A conscious mind? Could a design be the product of a process of trial and error?
What are your views on this?
Did Discovery say that Townes supported an official Intelligent Design movement? Or only that he thought there was intelligent design in nature?
The word “design” has many uses in English. There is a loose usage in which we speak of any apparent pattern as a “design.” One might speak of a design of frost crystals on a window pane, for example, or of a “design” of wavy lines in sand on a beach. However, in the context of origins discussion, I restrict the use of “design”, and it always implies planning, foresight, intention. That doesn’t require any specific religious belief, e.g., Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or the like. The idea is of some sort of mind or intellect behind nature, which could be conceived of in various ways, theological or philosophical.
So no, I would not call a product of a process of trial and error a design. I would distinguish between real design and apparent design. What you get in Darwinian evolution, through trial and error processes, is apparent design. Natural selection, in conjunction with other things, is a “designer substitute” – it produces results which look as if they were designed.
Of course, in loose usage, one could speak of Darwinian processes as “designing” better beaks or longer necks or better camouflage, etc., and often enough in everyday conversation, I would let such usage go without making objections, because one doesn’t have to make every casual conversation into a rigorous debate over chance, selection, design, etc. But in settings like this, I think it’s clearer if I stick to one consistent meaning of the word “design”. I can’t compel anyone here to adopt my usage, but it’s best if I announce my usage, so that unnecessary quarrels over words can be avoided and the focus can remain on substance. There is a substantial difference between “design” as someone like Paley meant it and “design” as many fans of Darwin mean it, and for me, the best way of keeping that substantial difference in mind is not to use “design” for what Darwin was talking about, but to restrict “design” to the planning of some sort of mind.
As to how the design is implemented in the natural world, whether by miracles/interventions or by some sort of unfolding natural process, that is a different question. I’m here explaining what I mean by the term “design”, not making any claim about how design is implemented.
Under my definition of “design,” I think it is safe to say that the “mainstream” view of evolutionary biologists is that the process of evolution is not in any sense “designed”, even though it may often produce results which are as effective as the results of design. Regarding the origin of life, which is outside of evolutionary theory proper, I think it is safe to say that most of those involved in origins of life research are looking for ways in which life could have come about without design, i.e., without foresight or planning.
I trust that this clarifies my terminology. It does not settle whether or not anything was designed, but I took it that the purpose of your question was to find out what I mean by the word, and how I plan to use the word in these discussions.
I didn’t say they did.
Not directly, but what was the meaning of this, which you did say?:
Where “supporter” clearly looks back to the first sentence in your paragraph, i.e.:
If you didn’t mean, by this paragraph, that the DI implied that Townes was a supporter of the Intelligent Design (capital ID) movement, then you wrote in a misleading way.
You also wrote:
Which is exactly my point here. Did Discovery claim any more about him than you just did? If not, why the apparently cheap shot?
Let’s see if I’ve got it straight: Are you saying it is not proper to criticize someone for something they implied but did not explicitly write? i.e Exactly what you just did to me?
Hmm?
I’m asking you to state in plain language exactly where Discovery misrepresented the statements of Townes regarding intelligent design, or withdraw your charge (direct or implied) that they misrepresented his words.
I didn’t write that they misrepresented his words.
No, I implied that they implied that Townes was a supporter of the DI’s version of Intelligent Design, which they did, not that they misrepresented his words. I’ll say that explicitly if it makes you feel better.
You seem extremely confused. He’s saying quite explicitly that they (the DI) implied that Townes supported the Intelligent Design movement. That it is they who are guilty of implying something they did not explicitly write.
This was made clear beyond all rational doubt when @Faizal_Ali wrote:
Are you saying it is not proper to criticize someone for something they implied but did not explicitly write?
It seems to me it is the Discovery Institute who should be “manning up” and admitting to having implied something.
Does it compute?
Which of course is what I was demanding evidence for. Please provide Discovery statements that imply that Townes was a supporter of “the DI’s version of Intelligent Design” as opposed to being a supporter of a more generic “intelligent design.”
Are you incapable of fathoming that them advertising Townes as “being a supporter of a more generic intelligent design” is that very evidence?
I think it is worth noting what has happened in this discussion, as it’s typical of discussions here. The topic is the thoughts of Townes on the finely tuned cosmos, and on the possibility of combining evolution with design. Faizal Ali has drawn the discussion toward how the Discovery Institute has (allegedly) misused Townes’s remarks. How many times have we seen this, where the topic is X (nothing to do with the Wedge Document) and it ends up being about the Wedge Document, or Y (nothing to do with the Pandas book) and it ends up being about the Pandas book? And isn’t it interesting that when the topic is shifted in this way, 95% of the time it is one or more of the atheists here who make the shift?
(This, of course, is nothing new. It was a standard debating tactic of the atheists on BioLogos as well. But I had hoped that Peaceful Science would be different from BioLogos. Alas, it’s not.)
Any second now @Eddie will demand proof instead of evidence, and an explicit statement instead of an implied one.
When people make up statistics here, 95% of the time it’s one or more of the theists.
The most honest position is to admit that the design hypothesis is compatible with a large number of important facts, and that it might, in fact, be the true explanation. The least honest position is to rule out design a priori, for either metaphysical or methodological reasons.
Correction -
The most honest position is to admit that the design hypothesis is compatible with
a large numberbasically all possible facts,
For example, poor design can be attributed to a non-omniscient/non-omnipotent/malicious designer/the fall or whatever.
What separates science from non-science is predictions and hypothesis testing ; do you have any testable hypotheses or predictions??
It’s compatible with all imaginable facts. That’s because there really is no design-hypothesis. It is just an ad-hoc rationalization. Regardless of what we observe one can imagine that that is what a designer with unknown motives and infinite resources and competence wanted to create. Of course, that is literally what design proponents do.