dahduh
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- May 23, 2006
- Messages
- 357
I've just finished listening to Point of Inquiry's intelligent design interview with Michael Behe, one of the founding father's of that ironically named movement. As usual, the phrase "Intelligent design makes no predictions" cropped up, together with the idea that god must be the designer.
Does everyone go along with these positions??
This is what bugs me. Firstly, the hypothesis that some or all aspect of our biology were designed by some intelligent agent is not, on the face of it, unreasonable. And subject to reasonable assumptions, this hypothesis certainly does make some predictions. Well designed artifacts are designed for a specific purpose: so we should expect to be able to divine purpose from design. Designs are usually 'cleaned up', so for example while an engineering drawing might need a whole lot of construction lines to aid in drawing it, those construction lines are removed in the final blueprint. If designs do evolve, designers usually re-factor, so for example if a programmer extends a piece of software and finds the original architecture was inadequate, he will (if he is a good programmer) re-design and strip out any old code that is no longer needed. Designs often require configuration management and attribution, so you might expect to find something like version numbers or signatures or copyright notices on them. Designs often evolve in quantum leaps, in which some change or improvement is accompanied by a radical departure from a previous architecture. Designs are usually modular and attempt to create minimal interfaces between components in order to manage complexity. And so on and so on.
These are all things we might reasonably expect to find in designed artifacts, and are things I would expect to follow from the intelligent design hypothesis. While not strictly speaking 'predictions' in a rigorous sense, identification of any one of these features would be taken as support for the intelligent design hypothesis. The absence of any one of these features can of course be explained away in any variety of ways, usually by special pleading, so absence does not absolutely disprove intelligent design. But absence certainly makes the ID hypothesis less tenable.
With the exception of quantum leaps in architecture for which Behe coined the term "Irreducible complexity", the ID'ers seem to have entirely ignored these other expected features of intelligently designed artifacts. Needless to say, this is because there is a total absence of such features to be found anywhere in biology, and irreducible complexity currently amounts to little more than argument from ignorance or personal incredulity. But why is the ID hypothesis simply being dismissed as 'unscientific'? It's a reasonable hypothesis, it does make predictions of a sort, so why aren't the bastards being called out and made to explain why their designer designs with all the smarts of a drunken coot?
Then the second point: the presumption that the designer must be god. No, this doesn't follow, maybe the Raelians are right and some space-alien did it. We know of at least one (semi) intelligent natural agent in this universe, and the most reasonable assumption is that if there has been intelligent designing going on, then it was done by some other intelligent natural agent; which may, for all we know, have evolved naturally. But again, god gets introduced and makes himself at home every time ID is discussed, whereas god is a complete non-sequitur. Why are the ID'ers allowed to run away over the hill with god every time?
I realise this has turned into a rant; but don't you think that ID'ers should rather be challenged on the absense of evidence for reasonably predictions made by ID, rather than just dismissing ID with the claim that it makes no predictions?
Does everyone go along with these positions??
This is what bugs me. Firstly, the hypothesis that some or all aspect of our biology were designed by some intelligent agent is not, on the face of it, unreasonable. And subject to reasonable assumptions, this hypothesis certainly does make some predictions. Well designed artifacts are designed for a specific purpose: so we should expect to be able to divine purpose from design. Designs are usually 'cleaned up', so for example while an engineering drawing might need a whole lot of construction lines to aid in drawing it, those construction lines are removed in the final blueprint. If designs do evolve, designers usually re-factor, so for example if a programmer extends a piece of software and finds the original architecture was inadequate, he will (if he is a good programmer) re-design and strip out any old code that is no longer needed. Designs often require configuration management and attribution, so you might expect to find something like version numbers or signatures or copyright notices on them. Designs often evolve in quantum leaps, in which some change or improvement is accompanied by a radical departure from a previous architecture. Designs are usually modular and attempt to create minimal interfaces between components in order to manage complexity. And so on and so on.
These are all things we might reasonably expect to find in designed artifacts, and are things I would expect to follow from the intelligent design hypothesis. While not strictly speaking 'predictions' in a rigorous sense, identification of any one of these features would be taken as support for the intelligent design hypothesis. The absence of any one of these features can of course be explained away in any variety of ways, usually by special pleading, so absence does not absolutely disprove intelligent design. But absence certainly makes the ID hypothesis less tenable.
With the exception of quantum leaps in architecture for which Behe coined the term "Irreducible complexity", the ID'ers seem to have entirely ignored these other expected features of intelligently designed artifacts. Needless to say, this is because there is a total absence of such features to be found anywhere in biology, and irreducible complexity currently amounts to little more than argument from ignorance or personal incredulity. But why is the ID hypothesis simply being dismissed as 'unscientific'? It's a reasonable hypothesis, it does make predictions of a sort, so why aren't the bastards being called out and made to explain why their designer designs with all the smarts of a drunken coot?
Then the second point: the presumption that the designer must be god. No, this doesn't follow, maybe the Raelians are right and some space-alien did it. We know of at least one (semi) intelligent natural agent in this universe, and the most reasonable assumption is that if there has been intelligent designing going on, then it was done by some other intelligent natural agent; which may, for all we know, have evolved naturally. But again, god gets introduced and makes himself at home every time ID is discussed, whereas god is a complete non-sequitur. Why are the ID'ers allowed to run away over the hill with god every time?
I realise this has turned into a rant; but don't you think that ID'ers should rather be challenged on the absense of evidence for reasonably predictions made by ID, rather than just dismissing ID with the claim that it makes no predictions?
