Looking back: Why I think ID is winning 1
| August 13, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Having reported news on the ID scene for about five years now, I could give a number of reasons why I think ID is slowly winning the intellectual battle, but let me focus on just one for now: The increasingly preposterous claims made by anti-ID zealots.
At the high end, we have this editorial in New Scientist, in which we are advised,
But perhaps we have the very notion of intelligence wrong. Scientists are beginning to see that the toughest problems – how to control complex traffic flows, for example – are better solved through the random evolution or self-organisation of artificial systems than by human reasoning (see “Law and disorder”). Such thinking appears to be moving towards the mainstream, as societies increasingly face complex problems that overwhelm the human mind. Engineers are finding that their task is not so much to find solutions as to design systems that can discover their own.
If the NS editors were right, we should see non-life evolving slowly into life all around us, but for some reason we don’t. The most fundamental lesson early biologists learned was that life does not self-organize – i.e., it is NOT spontaneously generated; it is passed on, life to life.
Not only should spontaneous generation be true if they are right, but so should magic, Magic, after all, is simply another name for sudden self-organization.
That’s right folks – just toss the bedclothes into the air and they’ll come down in a perfect mitred-corner bed. Just toss whatever into the stew pot, sans cookbook, and you’ll evolve a gourmet dinner. How generations could have come and gone, and no one ever noticed that before is beyond me. Cinderella’s* fairy godmothers, after all, did the housework via self-organizing sprinkles of magic dust.
My point is that if they need to descend to arguments like this in order to avoid considering design, they might as well start examining design seriously. It’s not going away; in fact, the signal is getting louder all the time.
And what’s all this stuff about “complex problems that overwhelm the human mind”? Human problems are complex because different people see solutions in different directions. Many lobby governments on behalf of their disparate views, hence the continual cacophony, to which one must learn to listen selectively for some shards of common sense. People who feel overwhelmed by it shouldn’t be offering advice to the public.
I put New Scientist at the high end. For the low end, try this stuff. These people sesem, for the most part, incapable of a civilized argument – or at least that is how they choose to represent themselves. That can’t be good news for their cause.
*Bill Dembski has written me to point out that it was Sleeping Beauty, not Cinderella, who had the fairy godmothers who magically self-organized their housework. Bill’s children are way younger than mine, and this proves it. My apologies.
Also, just up at The Mindful Hack
The neuroscientist and Shakespeare – no, actually, this is The neuroscientist and Shakespeare – no, actually, this is fun!
Philosopher: Why you cannot be both an evolutionist and a materialist
Coffee break! Why two heads are NOT better than one!
The Spiritual Brain: Vindicating Alfred Russel Wallace, the “other” discoverer of natural selection?
Neuroscience: why the carrot and the stick motivates donkeys but not people
Religion: It got started to avoid the spread of disease?
Prayer: Asking for more than healing
Prayer: Are studies of intercessory prayer an insult to God?
What we see is as much reality as we can deal with
39 Responses to Looking back: Why I think ID is winning 1
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Recently read this funny but eloquent argument for creationism:
“So we’re descendants of primates are we? Sit me down on a beach at sunset alongside every primate now living or yet to be born and, this I know with 100% certainty: I will be the only creature among the hundreds of millions who will ever possess the capacity to appreciate the simple beauty of the setting sun.”
However, I am asking for some clarification:
When I mention that my understanding of why creationist theories are scarce is because most creationists find the task of publicizing their theories near impossible because of darwinist opposition, I’m told that the ‘real’ reason why they reject creationists’ theories is because of the many lies that the theories contain.
I wasn’t given a list of these lies, but this ‘free-thinker’ did speak with conviction. Of course, they all do. But would someone, far more knowledgeable in the sciences than I, please comment on whether or not this is a common argument against the consideration of creationist theories?
Many thanks.
GCUGGreyArea:
O’Leary’s argument seems clear to me. Darwinists can’t sell their fantasies on the merits, so they silence all dissent and use the power of the state to jam it down our throats. Thus, it can’t survive without activist judges and oppressive bureaucrats.
You are correct about one thing, though. I don’t understand you counter argument.
Something along the lines of this:
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....challenged
“Judge S. James Otero, in deciding in favor of the U.C. system this week, declared that he rejected the Christian schools’ arguments because the university had, in his mind, convincingly argued that the curricula of the schools in question did not teach the required science, history, and critical thinking. The judge also said the plaintiffs failed to show anti-religious hostility on the part of the university system.”
Layla @ 33
“So we’re descendants of primates are we? Sit me down on a beach at sunset alongside every primate now living or yet to be born and, this I know with 100% certainty: I will be the only creature among the hundreds of millions who will ever possess the capacity to appreciate the simple beauty of the setting sun.”
How can you know for certain that primates weren’t designed with the capacity to appreciate beauty? Isn’t this just an example of human arrogance?
“…the auto router software that makes that possible was hand designed via a process of reasoning… Intelligence only comes from intelligence. Write that down.”
I wasn’t claiming that these human designed systems were not designed by things with intelligence.
DaveScot
“What’s science and what isn’t is decided by judicial fiat.”
“Darwinism is the only supposedly scientific theory I have ever heard of that always seems to need a legal defense fund”
I’m confused, were you disagreeing with Denyse or are you saying that the rest of science is defended pro bono.
Then again I suppose it might say something about the theory if it was the only one that the lawyers wouldn’t defend without payment.
SteveB @ 30
“Is “random evolution” involved? Sure. Traffic “mutations” are also called accidents.”
No they are just called accidents; it is you who gave them the name ‘mutations’.
“But in both cases, evolution worked to degrade/destroy”
One is a traffic accident, the other was an earthquake, neither is Evolution.
“the more we observe the complex workings of our universe, the more we must conclude that no single intelligence could have created them,”
I agree with your point on this. Some automated design techniques appear to be better at solving some classes of complex problems than us, and in some cases we may never be able to directly design certain complex systems without relying on one of the many stochastic automated design tools that have been developed. This doesn’t mean that these problems are beyond the capacity of ANY intelligence, just ours, as far as we know, for the moment…
GCU 36
Name one ‘certain’ primate who has recently commented on the beauty of sunsets?
Rejecting the possibility of a divine intelligence far superior to that of mankind has not the slightest suggestion of arrogance?
Question:
Could an IDst please clarify the main argument or arguments against intelligent design–
layla @ 40
Primates don’t speak any language we understand, we have no way of knowing if they perceive beauty in things so long they are unable to communicate this to us. Seeing as we don’t know how an ‘appreciation of beauty’ is manifest in the brain we can’t even put them in a brain scanner to check.
Perhaps you didn’t read my post properly, what I said was that it is arrogant for us to assume that we are the only divinely created creatures capable of appreciating beauty.