Close Calls Versus Slam Dunks

_{Gil Dodgen

August 15, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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gpuccio made the following comment on my post Almost Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Design.

I always like your posts, which get to the core of issues with admirable simplicity and efficacy.

This is my mission and message. The Darwinistic chance-and-necessity-creative-engine nonsense as an explanation for all that exists in living systems — that is currently promoted as “irrefutable science with overwhelming evidence” — is completely out of the ballpark of reality, evidence, and reason.

It’s not a close call. It’s a slam dunk that Darwinism cannot account for what we observe in living things. Figuring this out is trivially easy.

Darwinists want us to believe the following: Screw things up. Throw wrenches randomly into complex machinery. Delete, replace, copy, insert, or otherwise randomly abuse existing functional information, and (given enough time) malaria can turn into Mozart.

Please give me a break, and don’t try to convince me that this transparently ludicrous nonsense should be taken seriously.

Comments

Interestingly, Myers two latest posts read like they could have been written by ID proponents: link link The first critiques the Drake equation, the second Kurzweil's ludicrous ideas. The irony would be entirely lost on the hyenas at Pharyngula, but if the acolytes of Kurzweil were to swarm PZ's blog, proclaiming that Myers was only offering an argument from incredulity, and was employing the Courtier's Reply, and, in any case, had a worthless opinion due to not being an AI expert, the Pharyngulites would regard the Kurzweilites as contemptible, wretched fools. And, if there were a single soul among them who was not irony-challenged, they would thereby understand how IDists see Pharyngulites, and why.Matteo_{August 17, 2010
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Dr. Sewell, you may find this following paper very entertaining,,, Could thermodynamic fluctuations have led to the origins of life? http://www.physorg.com/news201171540.htmlbornagain77_{August 17, 2010
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gpuccio, As many UD readers know, my conversion from atheistic materialism and its Darwinian creation story, and my conversion to traditional Biblical Christianity, went hand-in-hand. It was a symbiotic process. Some might suggest that I have fallen into the trap I describe in my essay presented above, and that is always a possibility. I admit it. I do have doubts. The problem of natural evil (not human evil, which is another slam dunk – people are not basically good; they are basically selfish, inconsiderate, and prone to lying, stealing, and cheating if they think they can get away with it – just check out the average two-year-old) is a problem. I have doubts about miracles, although it is interesting to note that all Biblical miracles have an underlying theme of elucidating critical factors about human nature and our spiritual condition. On this subject I have one other observation: The origin of the universe – space, time, matter, and energy – is a demonstrable miracle on an extremely grand scale, because these phenomena could not possibly be the product of natural processes, since nature did not yet exist. The bottom line is that I am willing to entertain doubts about what I believe, and pursue truth wherever it leads. That is why I jumped ship from Darwinism, because it made no sense, either about biology or the human condition. The Judeo-Christian tradition makes a lot of sense to me when it comes to human nature and the human condition -- including mine of course, once I made an honest, personal inventory of my obviously fallen condition, and realized that I was powerless to change myself in my own strength. The opposite is true of Darwinian believers. They have no doubts, and cannot entertain the possibility that everything they believe, about everything that ultimately matters, might just be false. They are the ones with closed minds, and the enemies of science, if science is defined as the pursuit of the truth.GilDodgen_{August 16, 2010
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Gil: I suspect that one of the reasons why so many intelligent people have "lost their minds" is the human tendency to conformistic thinking. The sad reality is that the fact itself that most people believe one thing is often enough to make most people believe it, even in spite of evidence. I remember that, when I was studying medicine, I really did no understand how the darwinian mechanism could work in reality. But I thought that the fault was in my lack of knowledge of the details, because indeed at that time my knowledge of the theory was very superficial. But still, what I knew did not make much sense. IOW, while I suspected that something could be wrong in the theory, I sincerely believed that the theory must certainly have stronger justifications than I knew at the time. Years after, when I started to be interested in the ID debate, and consequently led to deepen my understanding of the different issues involved, I quickly discovered that I had been wrong: the theory had no real justifications at all. It was simply, obviously, hopelessly false. That was the beginning of my passion for ID: no special religious motives, no agenda, just the sincere indignation of my love for knowledge and truth. My commitment to the ID cause is not difficult: I am really, deeply sure that the ID theory is correct, at least in the measure that a scientific theory can be considered correct. And I am completely, serenely sure that the darwinian theory is false. Our darwinists friends will certainly say that your, and my, position is simply an argument from incredulity. We know they are wrong about that, because we know perfectly well how sound and serious and convincing are the positive arguments behind our conviction. But, for once, I want to take the pleasure of saying it aloud: I am incredulous. I am absolutely, unbelievably incredulous about the darwinian theory, and I am proud, very proud to be. That incredulity is a cognitive duty, the only reasonable attitude for any serious thinker with a serious scientific approach. It's the incredulity which forces us to reject the unjustified dogmatism, the intellectual compromise, and the cognitive superficiality which are implicit in darwinian thought.gpuccio_{August 16, 2010
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Granville, At one time I accepted Darwinism without question because I knew that all the smart university types accepted it as "scientific fact." Who was I to challenge the established wisdom of the intellectual elite? In addition, I had a philosophical/worldview investment in Darwinian theory. But then I read Michael Denton's Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, and it immediately became obvious that what I had been taught was irrational and indefensible, on many diverse grounds. I was thus required by reason and evidence to change my mind and adopt the only rational alternative, that life was fundamentally the product of intelligent design. Why so many intelligent people have not been able to come to the same conclusion is still a mystery to me. My best guess is that their philosophical/worldview investment in Darwinian theory is so great and so pervasive, that abandoning it would result in the complete collapse of everything that matters to them, so they must believe the unbelievable no matter what.GilDodgen_{August 16, 2010
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Gil, I began chapter 9 of my book with a quote from Jay Homnick (who is not a scientist):
It is not enough to say that design is a more likely senario to explain a world full of well-designed things. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident...you have essentially lost your mind.
Continuing: "So how did it happen that a majority of our intellectuals lost their minds? I think I can explain. When one becomes a scientist, one learns that science can now explain so many previously inexplicable phenomena that one comes to believe that nothing can escape the explanatory power of our science. When one becomes a biologist, or a paleontologist, one discovers many things about the origin of species, such as the long periods involved and the evidence for common descent, that give the impression of natural causes...But notably absent from any list of reasons why intellectuals reject intelligent design is any direct scientific evidence that natural selection of random mutations or any other unintelligent process can actually do intelligent things, like design plants or animals...No matter how many other mysteries of Nature may yield to scientific investigation, and no matter how much evidence for common descent we may find, Jay Homnick is still right. Once you allow yourself to seriously consider the possibility that the human body and the human brain could be entirely the products of unintelligent forces, you have lost your mind."Granville Sewell_{August 16, 2010
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What I and Paul Nelson have pointed out is that, for salvaging evolution (i.e. common descent), Intelligent Design is the best route. The insurmountable problems of Darwinism become less insurmountable if you replace it with ID. There are reasons other than Darwinism's failures to disagree with common descent, but they aren't so obviously false as Darwinism.johnnyb_{August 15, 2010
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