Bill Dembski gives us some insight into the "logic" of Intelligent Design Creationism [E. O. Wilson on ID].ID does not argue from “Shucks, I can’t imagine how material mechanisms could have brought about a biological structure” to “Gee, therefore God must have done it.” This is a strawman. Here is the argument ID proponents actually make:The are plenty of complex systems that have perfectly reasonable evolutionary explanations. There are even irreducibly complex systems that can easily be explained by evolution. Bill might think about coming to my lecture on Wednesday where I will explain how the irreducibly complex citric acid cycle evolved.
Premise 1: Certain biological systems have some diagnostic feature, be it IC (irreducible complexity) or SC (specified complexity) or OC (organized complexity) etc.
Premise 2: Materialistic explanations have been spectacularly unsuccessful in explaining such systems — we have no positive evidence for thinking that material mechanisms can generate them.
Premise 3: Intelligent agency is known to have the causal power to produce systems that display IC/SC/OC.
Conclusion: Therefore, biological systems that exhibit IC/SC/OC are likely to be designed.
Thus premise #2 is false. Dembski has been told this on numerous occasions so I have to conclude that he is lying. Premise #2 is logically equivalent to "Shucks, I can’t imagine how material mechanisms could have brought about a biological structure."
Premise #3 is not science. You can't just throw up your hands and say God did it because you lack the intelligence to come up with a naturalistic explanation. Premise #3 is indistinguishable from "Gee, therefore God must have done it."
The conclusion is invalid.
This really isn't much of a challenge. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I guess that's why we call them IDiots.
No comments:
Post a Comment