ID blind-spots

From ResearchID.org

When brainstorming new ID research, it is important to remember that there are conceptual blind-spots based on current knowledge.

Mechanisms

MikeGene has some interesting thoughts on mechanisms, including the observation that:

"To say that ID has no proposed mechanism means only that we don't specifically know how ID was implemented. So what? Do we have any good reason to think that if ID was implemented at the origin of life (for example), then we should be able to determine how ID was implemented? Of course not. The truth of ID does not entail the ability to describe the process of design. Thus, the inability to describe the actual process that was implemented is essentially meaningless apart from its rhetorical appeal. ... And is this really that much different from the non-teleological viewpoint? When I weigh the case for ID, I do not do so against some abstract, idealized target. I weigh it relatively, that is, how does it compare to non-teleological explanations? And since the consensus explanation from the non-teleological vantage revolves around the neo-darwinian interpretation, I end up comparing design at the hands of an intelligent watchmaker to that of a blind watchmaker. At this point, the non-teleologist answers the question "how?" by appealing to random variations culled by natural selection (the blind watchmaker). But it seems to me that a raw appeal to the blind watchmaker is not all that different from that appeal to ID as a mechanism. Sure, we can say that something happened to confer a hypothetical selective advantage for a hypothetical species in the ancient past, just as we can speak of a hypothetical designer implementing a hypothetical plan in the ancient past. But just as the ID critic may demand the specifics of the implemented design, the critic of the blind watchmaker can make a very similar demand. Exactly what appeared to confer a selective advantage? What was the mutation? Why did this create a selective advantage? What species did this appear in? What selection coefficients were involved? Etc. Attempts to answer mechanism questions like these force the non-teleologist into telling a story that almost always comes off as a just-so story. But as even biologist and Behe-critic, Robert Dorit noted,

"Any one of us can come up with multiple, plausible stories concerning the evolution of a given biological feature. But plausibility is about the weakest criterion one can apply to an evolutionary hypothesis."

Thus, the mechanism complaint is not that much more of a problem for an ID proponent than it is for a Darwinist."

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Don't try to think about detecting teleological mechanisms in non-teleological terms. Non-teleological mechanisms are detected by studying and extrapolating from natural laws and chance, the one place we will not find teleological mechanisms. To detect teleological mechanisms requires a new way of thinking...