ID commentary on animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 18, 2016, 13:00 (3232 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I have criticized your opinions for their logical inconsistency, but am fully aware that there is no logical consistency in this aspect of my thinking. It's either chance or design. But the case for and against each hypothesis is so riddled with question marks that I cannot currently visualize making a decision either way. Absolute proof is indeed impossible, but for me there is not even any convincing evidence.
DAVID: Thank you for this explanation, which is what I knew about your thinking all along. If chance can't work, given the complexity of what has been created especially in life, which I consider much more complex than the cosmos, then I feel design must be accepted. You just can't bring yourself to seek a source.-The search for the source was the major impetus that gave rise to this website and drives most of our discussions. What I can't bring myself to do is accept hypotheses that are “so riddled with question marks” that ultimately they can only rely on faith (e.g. in chance, or in a sourceless mind that created and encompasses billions of solar systems).
 
DAVID: Have a look at a Christian explanation for design from a former atheist:
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/does-the-cumulative-case-for-design-point-to-a-div...
Note his two objects, a bird's nest and a bacterial flagellum. Both certainly look designed.-An excellent summary of a case which I have never disputed. As he says, even Dawkins doesn't dispute it. Living organisms “look designed”. That is why (unlike Dawkins) I do not believe in chance. As for the bird's nest, please note:
 
QUOTE: “Let's take a look, for example, at something with which we are all familiar: a bird's nest. We know intelligent agents (birds) are responsible for the design of the nest because, like the garrote, the nest displays some (but not all) of the aforementioned attributes of design.”-In contrast to yourself, he attributes the design of the nest to the intelligent bird, not to God. This is a sort of halfway point between human design (the garrotte) and the bacterial flagellum, for the design of which we do not know the intelligent agent (unlike the bird's nest). I accept, and have always accepted, his and your argument that life forms fulfil the criteria for design. That is one reason why I am not an atheist. However, that does not fill the many gaps in the hypothesis of the unknowable mind described above.