Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Let's Talk About Intelligent Design... Again

My previous LTAID post apparently didn't get a lot of attention from IDers, so here's another, and I'll try to plug it more.

One of the funny/sad pseudoarguments I recently read from a troll using fire style copy/paste jutsu is that all us eeeee-ville "Darwinists" are trying to censor all the Intelligent Design evidence. Aside from being just as silly as all the other woo conspiracy theories, it's got another fatal flaw that I've never heard an IDer address. I'm quite surprised (apologies to any sarcasmometers damaged during this sentence) that IDers haven't bothered dealing with such a fundamental question:

What kind of evidence would support Intelligent Design?

I mean, really: It'd be kind of silly to try to suppress something that hasn't even been defined, yet. The last several times I checked, ID is unfalsifiable, so here's another fundamental question:

What kind of evidence would falsify Intelligent Design?

I predict that some troll will fail to do his homework and claim that evolution is unfalsifiable, despite it being pretty simple to come up with forms of falsification. Of course, evolution is a different topic altogether. This post and comment thread are about Intelligent Design.

4 comments:

Clint Bourgeois said...

When I was in high school, I had to disect a frog. I cut open the frog and a gear came popping out! I ignored it, but when I open the stomach to see the contents, a bunch of assembly code came pouring out. I called my teacher over and he threw the frog away and told me never to speak of it again. I have been quiet, until today.

Little froggie, your death will not be in vain!

Frogs with gears and assembly code. That is the evidence ID should be looking for. I know it is out there.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I'm pulling this out in a largely unrelated thread, but this abortion of an argument has to be seen to be believed:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_thread/thread/0bcfc20b5f065e35/f763180443327f09?hl=en#f763180443327f09

Just keep reading. It stays just as bad as it is in the beginning.

I find it astounding, simply *astounding*, that I could find+replace this argument and come up with a realistic argument against evolution, virus theory, etc. They're all the exact same.

I was talking with the wife about it (she's a psychology major), and she says it's a defense mechanism. Shifting the argument, mockery, "You're right on the testable/unimportant things, but I'm right on the *real* stuff"... It's all a way of defending a point that you *know* is right, but also know that you can't reasonably defend.

That's why they all sound the same. It's a universal human reaction when you believe in bullshit.

Lifewish said...

Strictly speaking, most ID claims are closer to being mathematical than scientific. As such, they technically don't require direct supporting evidence. Instead, they require:

a) confirmation that their model of the universe is accurate and not overly simplistic

b) very careful mathematical logic

I haven't come across a single one yet that doesn't fail on at least one of these counts. IC and CSI both fail on point B; pretty much any argument involving the words "origin of the genetic code" fails on point A.

Bob said...

If anyone would like to talk about intelligent design yet again, please reset your sarcastometers and refer to my latest post. You might also want to check your irony-meters first, just in case.