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From: gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Evidence, gentlemen.  Not mysticism.
Message-ID: <63@uw-june>
Date: Mon, 13-May-85 01:59:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.63
Posted: Mon May 13 01:59:42 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 20:13:26 EDT
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>[Dan Boskovich]
>  You can call it gobbly-gook if you like, but it is perfectly resonable
>  to conclude that design would imply a designer. Webster's thought so!

Webster's is right, design would imply a designer (or group therof), if
there was design in the natural world.  You think there is, and I think
there isn't.  Who's right?  Who knows.

The most important reason for using not subjective measures (which this
intuitively defined "design" is) is that people have a tendency to see
what they're looking for whether it's there or not.  Case in point: The
discovery, in 1903, of N-rays.  All the experiments involving this new
form of radiation used partly subjective measurements, like noticing that
an N-ray beam makes a spark-gap give off more light.  It wasn't until
more than a year later that a it was discovered that N-rays existed only
in the minds of the exprimenters.  For more information about this, read
"The N-ray Affair", by Irving M. Klotz (Scientific American, May, 1980).

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