Five critiques of Intelligent Design

Edge.org ^ | September 3, 2005 | Marcelo Gleiser, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Scott Atran, Daniel C. Dennett

[snarks_when_bored]

Five critiques of Intelligent Design

John Brockman's Edge.org site has published the following five critiques of Intelligent Design (the bracketed comments following each link are mine):

Marcelo Gleiser, "Who Designed the Designer?"  [a brief op-ed piece]

Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name"  [a detailed critique of ID and its history, together with a summary defense of Darwinism]

Richard Dawkins & Jerry Coyne, "One Side Can Be Wrong"  [why 'teaching both sides' is not reasonable when there's really only one side]

Scott Atran, "Unintelligent Design"  [intentional causes were banished from science with good reason]

Daniel C. Dennett, "Show Me the Science"  [ID is a hoax]

As Marcelo Gleiser suggests in his op-ed piece, the minds of ID extremists will be changed neither by evidence nor by argument, but IDists (as he calls them) aren't the target audience for critiques such as his. Rather, the target audience is the millions of ordinary citizens who may not know enough about empirical science (and evolution science in particular) to understand that IDists are peddling, not science, but rather something tarted up to look like it.

Let us not be deceived.

[dynoman]

If ID has to answer "who designed the designer" why doesn't evolution have to answer the origin of life question?

Why do evolutionists act like "Who designed the designer" is a one way street?

I've heard all the pre-programmed, regurgitated, in-the-box reasons why so please don't repeat them.

The The Origin-of-Life Prize ® is interesting to me because;

1) It is evolutionists encouraging revolutionary out-of-the-box thinking as evidenced by this statement; "The winning submission will likely provide both a novel and cardinal conceptual contribution to current biological science and information theory."

2) It is an open acknowledgement by evolutionists that honest evolutionists should be answering the origin of life question.

3) It is an open acknowledgement by evolutionists that a winning origin of life theory might change current thinking and "biological science and information theory" [the theory of evolution?] as evidenced by the words "novel" and "cardinal" in the statement above. This might mean a new theory that would take in both the theory of evolution *and* origin of life.

4) It faces certain problems head on by pointing out "In all known phenomenological life, genetic code manifests -

a) "prespecification of extremely unlikely and complex future events (see Dembski in suggested readings below) suggesting "apparent intent," "apparent planning," or "apparent purpose." (as Richard Dawkins describes it, "apparent design")"[ie there is a watchmaker (evolution) but he's blind]

b) "the seemingly "irreducible complexity" argued by Michael Behe (see suggested readings below)"

c) "the initial writing of this prescriptive information by nature, not just the modification of existing genetic instruction through mutation."

More discussion of this here;

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1472221/posts?page=100#100

See this post for further comment;

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1472423/posts?page=463#463

Onward evolutionary soldiers!

[thomaswest]

"Intelligent Design" (Dei-sign?) certainly lends itself to a lot of very humorous parodies. IDists probably will not appreciate the humor, but those loving rationality and objective reality will LOL.

http://www.re-discovery.org/
see on left:
Gravity: Just a Theory
Solar System: Just a Theory
More parodies on how ID would apply to the Periodic Table of the Elements on the site.

---

http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/08/math_for_believ.html
Pythagorean Theorem. Theorems and theories--it is ridiculous to teach geometry to students unless you honestly teach "the controversy"!
Deometry is "intelligent design" applied to math and geometry.

---

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2
Intelligent Falling
fits with Gravity, Just a Theory, above.

---

Flying Spaghetti Monster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
http://www.venganza.org/
http://www.venganza.org/response.htm

Thoughtful people have noted that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism has at least the same credibility as the allahs and gods of "sacred" texts in "revealed words". The Pastafarian movement is growing at three times (!) the rate of the ID outfit, Discovery Institute. (Unfortunately, DI's budget of $2.5 million per year is hard to match. Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson gave Discovery $1.5 million to help start its Center for Science and Culture. Fieldstead & Co., which is owned by Ahmanson and his wife, Roberta, have pledged $2.8 million through 2003 to support the institute's work.)

---

One more--don't know where this was first posted.

Gerald Nachman
Sunday, August 28, 2005

Witch Haven, Tenn. — Dr. Norris Gravlox, an oral surgeon and a leading proponent of the intelligent design theory of how children evolve into grown-ups, is the author of a new paper on how homo sapiens come to be “divinely blessed” with teeth, which have played a major role in humans’ swift rise up the evolutionary ladder.

Gravlox, who teaches at the Evangelical School of Dentistry in Bald Knob, maintains that a force known as the tooth fairy is responsible for children growing new teeth, which he calls a miracle that only a larger power could have possibly conceived. The tooth fairy theory, which has come under attack by many modern dental scholars, is outlined in his article in the New England Journal of Folklore.

According to Gravlox’s theory, when a child loses a baby tooth, an invisible yet very real spirit signifies the event with a shiny coin, often a quarter, deposited under the child’s pillow the next morning — “clear evidence that something is going on. And then, six months later — bingo! — a brand new tooth appears.”

Writes Gravlox, “Traditional medical experts will laugh, of course, but no other explanation is possible other than the existence of an angel of dental design.”
----
N.D. - A new theory that may explain the sudden existence of colored eggs deposited on lawns in the spring was put forward last week by Madeline R. Filkins in a speech before the American Society of Domestic Rabbit Breeders.

Her theory — that bunnies actually deliver the mysteriously dyed eggs — goes against the usual explanation that human beings are responsible for their appearance on Easter morning each year.

“There is no other rational explanation,” Filkins said. “You can talk all you like about parents supposedly coloring all these eggs and then secretly hiding them in bushes in the backyard, but clearly a higher intelligence is at work.”
-----
VA. - Protesters carrying signs reading, “Yes, Virginians, There Is a Santa Claus!” marched on the local board of education insisting that God, in the guise of Santa Claus, is responsible for children’s gifts on Christmas morning — not, as has previously been thought to be the case, parents who leave presents under a tree.

Rachel Furbisher, the protest leader, said, “The Bible teaches that the Lord works in mysterious ways, and what could be more gloriously mysterious than St. Nicholas, the patron saint of toys? If the Almighty could create the universe in seven days, then surely he can bring gifts to deserving God-fearing boys and girls everywhere in the world in one night.

“Anybody who refutes that simply refuses to take into consideration divine intervention. Santa Claus is just a label we give to Christianity’s most heavenly works.”
-----
MA. — Addressing a convention of gynecologists, Dr. Max Zygott proposed a theory that babies are not created by a sperm and an egg uniting within a woman but may very well be brought to earth by large flying storks that descend upon homes and hospitals. Zygott calls his controversial theory “inspired creationism.”

“I realize this concept may conflict with traditional childbirth teachings, and will be sneered at by many among the so-called intellectual elite, but I only ask that this theory be taught in high school sex education classes as an alternative to the usual accepted notion of what everyone — no matter their religious belief — calls the miracle of birth. What harm can it do to expose children to other, equally valid theories of how life is created? All such beliefs should be debated in our so-called halls of learning. “

Hope you enjoy laughs.

[King Prout]

while you were shmoozing the Top Brass elsewhere, lookie what I stole!

[Ready2go]

The next debate --- WHO wrote the Bible?

---

The Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures....writing was done thru man.

[Kenny Bunk]

I am announcing the closing of the

Kenny Bunk School of Intelligent Design
and outboard motor repair.

The more I learn about Ray Nagin and Governatrix Blanco, the more I realize that there is no Intelligent Design in Louisiana, and scant intelligence. While there appears to be a need for functional outboards, the natives appear unable to master this sort of technology. I quit.

Studying the situation, viewing the videos, etc. I have become a convinced Devolutionist. It is obvious that higher life forms are devolving before our very eyes. This is good news, because on their way back to the primordial ooze, Ray Nagin and Mama Blanco are sure to discover those missing fossil dealies.

[VadeRetro]

Mental capacity is only one limitation, I'm sure. There are things we will never know because information can be destroyed and has been. There are things we will never know because their investigation takes resources of time, energy, wealth, or whatever that we will never have. There are things we will never know that I can't even guess the reason.

None of that proves any theory wrong or another one right.

[King Prout]

exactly.
try explaining that to an IDiot, though.

[dynoman]

"The order and structure of the world demand - just by plain reason - that order and structure designed order and structure.

Chance creating order and structure is anti-reason.

This is so good.

[snarks_when_bored]

there can be no reason given for them that isn't just as complex as they are.

Complexity can be irreducible. Irreducible complexity is so complex it is irreducibly complex. The Intelligent Designer produces irreducible complexity. The Intelligent Designer is irreducibly complex. What the Intelligent designer designs is an irreducibly complex design. Am I on the right track? I don't want to waste a lot of headaches on this.

(laugh) IDists see irreducible complexity as signalling the presence of rationality; mathematicians see irreducible complexity as signalling the limits of rationality.

[dynoman]

mathematicians see irreducible complexity as signalling the limits of rationality.

Please explain.

[thomaswest]

"I don't think we are a product of randomness, we aren't the mere result of a series of lucky rolls of the dice. There is, I believe, something greater than man, and that "something" isn't 'chance'."

Replying:
IDers have a particular dislike for randomness, because they wish to think that everything is directed by some supra-natural entity (they actually mean the usual God, but pretend to accept other god-like types). Exactly how stars and planets coalesce from a circulating cloud of matter is an on-going area of investigation, but it is clear that accidents resulted in some chunks becoming large enough to perturb the system and thus accumulated at the expense of smaller chunks. This is pretty close to a random series of events.

The dislike for randomness is curious. In fact, every individual is a product of at least quasi-random events. Who we meet and have children with. And from basic facts of sexual reproduction itself, every ovum has a slightly different DNA arising from meiosis, and likewise every spermatozoon. Granted that some parts of the divided-in-two chromosomes carry genetic information from the parent, but it is random which ones happen to combine. There is increasing evidence for a degree of randomness as to the chemical environment in the womb, which appears to have influence on the degrees of femaleness and maleness in the offspring. There is, thus, a large number of random events that is part of the heritage of every individual. (Unless, of course, one takes the view that each egg and spermatozoon were individually directed by God. Nobody in biology or medical science would accept this, but as a matter of faith, it is unprovable.) Over the long course of history, there has been quasi-randomness in which individuals get wiped out by natural disasters, from impacting asteroids to which succumb to disease. Chance has always played a role in life and always will.

A disapproval of randomness and chance seems a rather peculiar feeling on which to anchor a religious faith.

[PatrickHenry]

lookie what I stole!

I don't mind sharing ... every now and then.

[Vive ut Vivas]

And dare I suggest (I'm grimacing as I type this bit), that even the most 'hardened' Darwinist (and these days, I'm probably not too far off from such) can experience a sense of wonder, delight, and indeed reverence in the face of the splendid complexities of the natural world?

Yes!!! Read Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins. It addresses exactly that. :-)

[snarks_when_bored]

Mathematics began when it was noticed that by defining a few simple terms and assuming the truth of a few elementary propositions, other, often much more complicated propositions could be proved to hold (this is part of the compressive power of mathematics). What Chaitin points out (he's not the first, by the way) is that we've come to learn that there are infinitely mathematical propositions whose proofs cannot be made any simpler than the propositions themselves, and so such propositions exceed the limits of rational proof as understood in traditional mathematics.

[ml1954]

If ID has to answer "who designed the designer" why doesn't evolution have to answer the origin of life question?

Setting aside then non-sequitur, the TOE doesn't have anything to say about the idea that space aliens or a generic 'god' might have started the whole process. It makes no hypothesis about that. It puts it in the 'we don't know and there is no evidence for it one way or the other' bin.

[ml1954]

mathematicians see irreducible complexity as signalling the limits of rationality.

And, I'm guessing, the possible threshold of irrationality. It sounds good anyway. Except for those damned irrational numbers.

[Vive ut Vivas]

The use of the adjective, "materialistic," begs the question. As taught in our universities, science is the first to acknowlege that the supernatural is out of bounds for empirical investigation. Science does not purport to answer, "why?" questions.

Ex-act-ly. Apparently, this is *very* hard concept for Creationists. They want to change the definition of science so that it includes religious frou frou.

[King Prout]

why is it "so good"?
especially since it is based on an erroneous assumption?
why is it so very difficult for many to recognize that natural processes and material properties are NOT random and by their natures impose patterning and order?

[King Prout]

very kind of you.

share the noodle, spread the sauce, and spare not the grated parmesian.

ramen.

[PatrickHenry]

"I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure. Yet, I am poor, because I am a river to my people!"
-- Anthony Quinn's Audar Abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia