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How the hell do the guys at SA think they can argue against ID by coming up with a selection mechanism that depends on intelligence?
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And, my point it, unless you think 'intelligence' causes this mystical field to envelope all that it causes, tainting it and making it behave differently, the fact that an intelligence designed the experiment doesn't imply anything.
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Here's how an IDer could use the 13-letter word argument as a weapon:
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Yes, like I said, a dunderhead IDer could use the 13-letter arguement as a weapon against evolution. And yes, many IDers are dunderheads.
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If you Natural evolutionists cannot come up with mechanisms that aren't, at bottom, dependent on intelligence then you are just IDers in disguise.
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But, there are selection mechanisms that do not depend on intelligence. Sexual selection. Natural selection. Both are selection mechanisms. As is "stop when the letter matches the word we want". Just another selection mechanism.
Just because a particular selection mechanism we test in an experiment is intelligently designed, says absolutely nothing about other selection mechanisms.
Neither sexual nor natural selection require an overarching intelligence guilding them or saying where the destination will be in order to select.
The arguement you are claiming the IDers would use is basically:
A is "intelligently designed".
A is "a selection mechanism".
B is "a selection mechanism".
thus
B is "intelligently designed".
which is a laughable logic error.
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please note that I'm just addressing THIS argument for natural selection - the 13-letter word argument. Most of the stuff from Lebell's link was pretty convincing. I just thought they were pretty dumb to include this particular argument
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The 13-letter word arguement is not a proof that natural selection must occur. Just because it does not imply the entire result seeked, doesn't mean it undermines the case. It is an easy to grasp example of evolution whose properties you can play with inthe comfort of your own napkin.