More on “Incompetent Design”
| January 17, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Sam Chen posted the inside story on the “Incompetent Design” video that I highlighted here at UD two days ago (go here for Sam’s post). Here’s my favorite quote from Dave Wise (not to be confused with Kurt), the designing intelligence behind this farce:
Branding ID as Incompetent Design involves both humor and grit but avoids direct insult to the opposition, a mistake to be avoided in any political campaign. All the tools of political campaigns should be used: slogans, songs, bumper stickers (“Human skeletal errors: Incompetent Design or Evolution ?”), IDers will attempt to take us off-message with debates on origins of life, thermodynamics, etc., but instead we must continue to pound simple themes of obvious design failures. Science can win this battle only if we recognize this is not a Sunday school debating match but a deadly serious political contest.
That’s right, let’s not get hung up on such trivialities as the origin of life. Wisdom teeth and back pain — that’s the slamdunk evidence for evolution! Yes, and these people get tenure at our universities, at tax-payer expense no less.
45 Responses to More on “Incompetent Design”
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In my view, we haven’t “won†until materialist ideology is no longer unquestionable orthodoxy in academia.
How about until existing academia shows itself to be such fools they can no longer be taken seriously? (see video)
“It’s funny that they never list “getting old†or “death†itself as bad design. Or how about people being jealous, greedy, lazy, haughty, violent, etc… Why aren’t they never listed?”
This wanders into religious/philosophical territory and is not something that ID addresses directly. Right?
“It’s funny that they never list “getting old†or “death†itself as bad design. Or how about people being jealous, greedy, lazy, haughty, violent, etc… Why aren’t they never listed?â€Â
They are never listed because they cannot be addressed by ET. An evolutionary psychologist might want to venture a guess, but they are part of a seperate, much more contentious, and highly speculative field.
As far as ageing and death are concerned they seem to be universals in nature. To a significant extent ageing seems to be a side effect of our defense against cancer. So it is a good design as far as keeping us alive long enough to procreate goes.
We may view this as pathetic, but I wouldn’t diminish the power of the bad design argument. I would rate it as their best strategy, and I think ID proponents would do well to give adequate answers.
There are good philosophical answers to the ultimate “bad design” argments. I tried to give the ones which I consider adequate, above.
Beyond that, on a smaller scale, one must know what the organizing principle around which a design is made to argue bad design. For example, a CD or DVD is optimized for compactness of storage. Without going into the details, the most optimal way to achieve compact storage is to allow numerous read/write errors into the physical medium and then use an error correction filter to clean them out. To learn about this technique, see: Reed–Solomon error correction. In other words, it is fair to say, the errors are by design!
Darwinist have often complained about the error correction mechanisms in the DNA processing. They claim a competent designer would not design an information processing system with so many read/write errors as found in the DNA processing of cells. I respond by saying, like CDs and DvDs using Reed-Solomon error correction, cells also have error correction mechanisms to fix the numerous read/write errors in processing of DNA.
Had they known a little more about information science, they would conclude that the cell is optimized for information compactness and robustness. Like CDs and DvDs, the “errors” are actually evidence of optimal design!
Their limited understanding of good and bad design is inappropriate for making claims of bad design. They are quick to use the “bad design” argument, but a different perspective easily shows they are mistaken.
One could argue that there could be organizing principles in the design of everything else which we may not fully comprehend. If read/write “errors” are the optimal design for the molecules of DNA, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine there might be a larger design purpose for the errors of bad teeth and back pains. We simply may not know the purpose or organizing principle for such designed “errors”.
Since they want soundbites, how about this for one:
“Bad design is still design.”
“And it ain’t all that bad.”
sal wrote:
“We simply may not know the purpose or organizing principle for such designed “errorsâ€Â.”
The “bad design” argument-pushers really annoy me. Who are we to judge “bad” design, when there’s so much we don’t know about life? You mentioned in another post there’s most likely many layers of information in DNA. I think it’s the pinnacle of ignorance to condemn a design because it’s “flawed” when you have an extremely limited understanding of it – at best. That’s usually the only response I give these days.
I would rate it as their best strategy,
But that’s the point. It’s not science. Which means it’s our best “strategy” to simply point it out. The only authority and influence they have is the claim of science.
Since they are now merely playing games we can simply say “checkmate”.
“It’s funny that they never list “getting old†or “death†itself as bad design. Or how about people being jealous, greedy, lazy, haughty, violent, etc… Why aren’t they never listed?â€Â
This actually is a very good description of the effects of sin if you want to stray into theological territory.
Dave Wise wrote:
Set. Match. “Science” can “win” if they see the debate as a “political contest”? This shows the clear bias of the evolutionists in crystal clear clarity. To them the debate is in fact a political (including social) challenge. They see the attack on Darwinism as an attempt to give scientific validation for the existence of god. In their view that validation is a political weapon that will be ultimately used in order to enforce religious laws on them. Nevermind about scientific integrity and honest scholarship, to them “science” is not about those things. To them “science” is a cult of materialism with a specific political agenda i.e. to promote their political and social values. “Science” isn’t about knowledge to them, it’s about destroying religious belief. Dawkins, Harris, et al, are their most honest strategists because they will come right out and say what many of them are too fearful to say because of the political incorrectness of stating their actual beliefs. Therefore the Darwinist collective is nothing more then a political party with the single aim of destroying faith in god.
Dave Wise also wrote:
Clearly most of the Darwinist collective cannot follow that commandment in their critique of ID. Their stock in trade is little more then ad hominem imbecilic insults. If you take away their juvenile and unending insult competitions, what will you have left? It appears that what they have left is religious arguments, political arguments, and the usual lies and decpetions and the putting the hands over the ears and saying nah nah nah nah over and over whenever confronted with science which discredits their dystopian fear mongering agenda.
Mentok, I hear you.
A wise man once said “It is important that we be able to distinguish between the scientific concept of ID, and the philosophical and theological implications we draw from it”.
Yet Materialists seem to only want to debate the metaphysical implications of ID.
That same wise man wrote
“Some ID theorists might think God is the designer, and that the design of life is the result of miraculous intervention at some point after the Big Bang, but ID does not take them there. ID proposes that certain things in the universe are the result of intelligent cause(s), or mind(s)”.
Again, the Darwinists want to talk about issues that are philosophical or religious in nature.
A.”Bad” design
B. Why do people do bad things and hurt one another?
C. Why do people get sick and die?
These questions have nothing to do with the apparent design in nature.
Isn’t it self-evident that “bad design” as “no design” is a logical absurdity in and of itself?
Otherwise the word design should not even be employed. It’s very use intrinsically annuls the logic.
bad design
It would be logical to say bad structures = no design. Bad design = no design is a misnomer of “argument”.
Like I keep saying, NDT pseudo-logic cripples the mind.
LOL !!!
“IDers will attempt to take us off-message with debates on origins of life, thermodynamics, etc., but instead we must continue to pound simple themes of obvious design failures” [my emphasis]
Hahah……. my side hurts!
This reminds me of satire by Colbert on supposed a Stephen Hawking’s remark, ie. that we should look to colonise the moon or Mars to escape pending global disaters.. LOL.. Think about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVfJvWfyqFo
I know. Colbert can be crude, but it was a funny point.
Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh too hard. I’ve made my share of poorly thought out remarks.
William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution, pp. 59-63:
Pascal, Pensées:
jmcd,
Those who die later would produce more offspring so according to natural selection this trait should be increasingly more prevalent in a species and any mutation that affected it should be selected over time.
The species does not know about cancer when it attempts to procreate unless you subscribe to a Lamarckian point of view or that the mechanism for cancer and long life are identical.
So the universal lack of death being extended through natural selection would seem to argue against a naturalistic mechanism for species determination and point to some possible design element in a species. Otherwise we would see selection happening here for some if not all species.
If there is a part of the genome that affects length of life then it is obviously being conserved over time and NDE would not predict such a mechanism but ID might. It might be an interesting area of research for ID because such a mechanism would not be inconsitent with ID. But once such a mechanism is found the Darwinists will rise to the occasion and explain why early death is better for procreating ones genes. I have faith in their ability to explain anything with this most powerful theory.