Kicking the Worlds Most Idiotic Logical Fallacy to the Curb - The Argument From Incredulity is LOGIC!!! Roddy Bullock Edition...
"As anyone who has crossed paths with so-called skeptics knows, this group is made up of nothing more than un-skeptical, run-of-the-mill, dogmatic atheists and materialist dullards. They are skeptical only of God and the supernatural. But otherwise they are true blue believing mind-slaves to the atheistic party line, including the above-mentioned logical absurdities, e.g., that matter magically appeared out of nothing. One moment there was nothing, and then "poof" everything. The sad thing is that most skeptics, because they are not true thinkers but mental bond servants along with the free thinkers, do not even know their skepticism demands such absurdity." - Roddy Bullock (from post, below)
Time and time again, Darwinists respond to well-researched and documented posts explaining why design is obvious in organisms and the Universe with the completely illogical and empty response, "That is the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance" and then, without addressing any of the evidence, they just walk away from the fight...because they know they'd lose. Like a bully challenged by someone who is willing to fight him, they walk away declaring victory without having the guts to put up a fight. Well, that won't work here! Every time a commenter uses that as a response, it is a cowardly retreat because he or she doesn't have any evidence to refute the evidence for design.
Design is so obvious now that it will be the end of evolution as a hypothesis eventually. I think that Darwinists know this and it scares the heck out of them. So they have hidden behind this fallacy to avoid discussing design because they know they cannot possibly win. So it is time to really focus on this very stupid attempt to avoid facing the truth. Shall we begin? Bolding and bluing added by me, otherwise this is just as Roddy Bullock wrote it. In fact, let's give him two shots at this topic, shall we?
What do every one of the above have in common? Each is a closely held belief of zealous defenders of some theory of origins or another. And for each belief there are counter-zealots who can discern not one whit of convincing evidence. Take abiogenesis, for example. There is no evidence--just a lot of "must-have-happened-because-we're-here" certainty among the atheistic faithful in need of such belief; and believe they do. Ironically, the atheistic faithful like to think they are free of faith and suppose others to be, well, full of it. But in fact faith abounds on all sides with only two things certain: everybody believes something unbelievable and only certain unbelievable beliefs can actually be true. In fact, certain unbelievable beliefs must be true, and others must be false. But how can we know?
Darwinists often belittle the arguments of anti-evolutionists as "arguments from incredulity" as if there is something fundamentally flawed with such a position (even while they make the same arguments against intelligent design!). While the charge is almost always leveled in error (very few of the anti-evolutionary arguments are based on bare disbelief), there is some basis to draw exactly this charge: the evidence at hand makes naturalistic evolution truly unbelievable to the reasonable person. Consider: Materialists (which is what all atheists and most Darwinists are) must believe in abiogenesis, the faith belief that life arose accidentally from non-living matter. In spite of a total lack of evidentiary basis they are stuck with no choice, they must necessarily believe that a past chance agglomeration of all the right stuff, like cosmic Tinker Toys without a Tinkerer, was scattered, pressed, heated, cooled or otherwise accidentally treated just so, to make life appear out of nowhere. Excuse those of us not so thought-limited, but without any evidence to give a reason to believe or even a reason to suspend disbelief, abiogenesis is simply unbelievable.
Less well understood for all the bluffing that goes largely unchecked is the fact that Darwinists have absolutely no evidence to prove the crown jewel of Darwinism, that undirected physics and chemistry alone (so-called Natural Selection) can "select" from random mutational errors to produce a single new species. Darwin himself offered only an imaginary example of natural selection, an admitted indulgence on his part. But modern Darwinists continue the imaginations without the admission. Look it up--there is no evidence that natural selection has produced (or can produce) one new species. In fact, the evidence compels the opposite conclusion--even with extensive un-natural selection (i.e., breeding), no new species are possible. Are we really to believe on the word of men alone that purposeless, unguided chemistry and physics magically drove the origin of every species? Unbelievable.
Because most people don't have the faith of Darwinists, the evidence-induced unbelief among approximately 90% of the population drives evolutionists and other theophobic no-godders crazy. Referring to Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, president of The Darwin Loving God Haters Club (known to one another as "skeptics"), wonders how "such a powerful idea [can] go still largely unabsorbed into popular consciousness." And to show how powerfully a false idea can take even smart people captive, Dawkins fails to comprehend the irony of his own words when he blindly blathers, "it is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe." Designed? (Heh, heh), yes. Misunderstood? No. Hard to believe? Only to the reasonable mind.
What about the legions of other skeptics and self-styled free thinkers? Aren't they free of all belief in the unbelievable? They would like to think so. But consider "free thinkers", as they call themselves. As captives to a deception, none of them are permitted to think freely about God's existence; atheism is the required belief imposed on free thinkers, and they hold slavishly to its dictates. They are free thinkers like a prisoner is a free walker; they are free to think all they want within the bounds of their little cages. And very few, if any, mind-slaves to atheism have ever thought freely about the logically necessary conditions for their atheistic materialism. Free thinking atheists must believe one of two things: either matter, i.e., the cosmic Tinker Toys, has existed eternally, or matter spontaneously appeared out of nothing. Both of these are, frankly, unbelievable. No great thinker in all of history has thought seriously on this topic and found either of these two starting places to be possible, much less believable. Why should we?
And those claiming the mantle of "skeptic"? This group is sadly comical in their smug naivety. When it comes to the biggest questions of all, they are the least skeptical of all. A recent sampling of some of the skeptic faithful showed a pathetically belligerent insistence on proudly proclaiming that they know, they know, that they personally are not intelligently designed. Aside from the predictable show of shallow ignorance in the self-defeating intensity of their admission (why would an accidental, purposeless thing, like a bump on a log, care?), where is the skepticism? As anyone who has crossed paths with so-called skeptics knows, this group is made up of nothing more than un-skeptical, run-of-the-mill, dogmatic atheists and materialist dullards. They are skeptical only of God and the supernatural. But otherwise they are true blue believing mind-slaves to the atheistic party line, including the above-mentioned logical absurdities, e.g., that matter magically appeared out of nothing. One moment there was nothing, and then "poof" everything. The sad thing is that most skeptics, because they are not true thinkers but mental bond servants along with the free thinkers, do not even know their skepticism demands such absurdity.
Every serious thinker contemplating the implications of eternity past has wrestled with the fact that, as unbelievable as it might seem, because something is, something must always have been. And that something must be either material or immaterial. Necessarily, either matter somehow created mind, or mind somehow created matter. There is no other option. And know this: whether one believes the one or the other dictates every other otherwise unbelievable thing he or she believes. It's that simple.
And it is the simplicity of a necessary faith that makes everyone both believer and skeptic. God-believers rightly demand evidence for theories of matter-only self-organization of complex information, and until then will remain skeptical of materialistic Darwinism. Atheist skeptics are not merely skeptical; they are firm believers in a thought system that requires staunch unbelief regardless the lack of supporting evidence; and they cannot even see the abundance of contrary evidence. In the end, what one finds is that skepticism lies more in the who than with the what, because, as thinker Leo Rosten so ably observed, "We see things as we are, not as they are." How true.
Atheists and theists will always see reality differently, not because of what is, but because of who they are. And this explains why each will always believe things deemed unbelievable by the other. So the question of origins for a person not already committed to atheism and all its necessary supporting theories amounts to this: on balance, whose belief in the unbelievable is the more reasonable in light of the evidence made plain to all?
And beyond being simply reasonable, is there a way you can know which unbelievable beliefs are true? Yes, but the key to understanding lies not in the facts (after all, we all have the same facts), but in you and what you permit yourself to see. Think freely about it, and don't be bullied by truth suppressing atheists. Because allowing yourself to see things freely as they are will result in a freeing change of who you are.
And then you will know.
Phillip Johnson quote from the audiotape "Exposing Naturalistic Presuppositions of Evolution," at Southern Evangelical Seminary's 1998 Apologetics Conference. Tape AC9814. Posted online at http://www.impactapologetics.com/product.asp?P_ID=205&strPageHistory=search&strKeywords=johnson&numPageStartPosition=1&strSearchCriteria=any&PT_ID=all
Richard Dawkins quotes, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), pp. 39, xv.
Skeptics adamantly admitting that they are not intelligently designed, LINK HERE, and scroll down to March 05, 2009 blog entry and comments.
Leo Rosten quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Rosten
So well said, so logical and so daunting to any Darwinist is the logical argument presented above. One more Roddy Bullock presentation (I did Americanize a couple of words) second verse same as the first:
Actually, archaeologists are not the exception; they are the rule. Scientists of many stripes infer design to explain phenomena of unknown (and unknowable) origin all the time. Forensic scientists, faced with a dead body and no witnesses look for evidence to piece together a historical narrative to explain a past event: was the death accidental (unintelligent causes) or murder (intelligent causation)? Simple. And what about the good folks over at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)? Their name says it all. Although embarrassed at being rightly compared to their like-minded biologist counterparts, these scientists regularly collect evidence in the form of radio signals to determine if the signals are the result of background radiation in space (unintelligent causes), or extraterrestrial intelligence (intelligent causes). Easy. A child can do it.
And biologists? Well, there's the exception to one rule and the imposition of another. Biologists must suppress entertaining any lingering thoughts spurred by logical inferences of design because such thoughts automatically and necessarily lead to "religion" and, unless it's a God-denying religion, that's a bad thing. After all, a respectable scientist having "religious" thoughts hasn't happened since the days of Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, Herschel, Faraday, Joule and, well, you get the idea. It's been a long time since the natural wonder of the beauty of intelligent design in nature could be scientifically expressed without professional and personal recriminations.
The savvy Darwinist will quickly jump in here with a smug smile and reply that the analogy to archaeology does not hold. It happens, he says with the certainty of one-sided thinking, that in our human experience we know that humans can, and have, made pottery for generations. And because we can explain the kind of potter with some certainty, archaeology never approaches the "might mean God" line. Living systems, on the other hand, are not known to be made by human intelligence, so we have no basis to infer human design, and any suitable intelligence must mean God, and science and religion cannot mix. You see? The inherent "who" problem in origins science is not to be found in archaeology, so there is no inconsistency in letting archaeology be respectable science and letting intelligent design be respectable religion (if there is such a thing).
But this response misses the point. This response jumps the inquiry directly to the "who" question, bypassing the "what" question without a thought. Yet in archaeology, as in all disciplines, the "what" of design alone can be an end in itself, informing a fruitful line of scientific inquiry that otherwise would be missed were the fact of design not granted or the identity of the designer demanded. Even if the potter remains forever unknown, the fact of design-discovery alone gives the archaeologist the subject matter of her science. How else is an archaeologist to know if she has found a piece of clay or a pot? Without design detection alone (i.e., absent design-er detection) having scientific value, the field of archaeology would be dead.
But more importantly, the "because we know there's a human potter" response powerfully confirms exactly the intelligent design theorist's point: design can be recognized because in our human experience we can recognize things for which we know only intelligent agency can accomplish. Our experience of the world shows that what we recognize as design invariably reflects the prior activity of conscious and intelligent persons who may now be hopelessly unknowable. In the case of a clay pot, yes, it was most certainly made by a kind of potter we are familiar with: men or women, who may forever remain unknown. But why must we all pretend ignorance when we consider clay people? Does not the fact of design carry great value independently of knowledge of the designer?
Clay people, like clay pots, carry the unmistakable hallmarks of intelligent design. Conflating the "what" of design with the "who" in biological systems is the illogical and scientifically inconsistent tactic of those philosophically opposed to a divine creative intelligence, i.e., Darwinians who fear a "divine foot in the door" of science. But denying a pot for fear of a potter is not science, and is ultimately no more effective than denying a symptom for fear of a disease. Truth is not changed by the evidence-denying belief in a lie.
Presumably, our Darwinian tutors must think, were it not for "religion" no one would think to infer design in biology. And solely because of a supposed "mighty mean God" mainstream science desperately demands that a biologist must obey a rule that prohibits design detection, while his archaeologist colleague freely infers intelligent design. The disparate rules of desperate scientists create an illogical two-tiered system where a biologist is required to attempt a rigorous proof of design, while an archaeologist is merely required to say, "Hey, look what I found!" Why is this?
No, really. Why?
Information on God-believing scientists: http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs.htm
The sentence that starts: "Our experience of the world shows that what we recognize as design invariably reflects the prior activity of conscious and intelligent persons . . ." was adapted from Stephen C. Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell, DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, (Harper Collins, 2009), p. 16. In Meyer's sentence, the term "information" is used instead of "design".
Time and time again, Darwinists respond to well-researched and documented posts explaining why design is obvious in organisms and the Universe with the completely illogical and empty response, "That is the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance" and then, without addressing any of the evidence, they just walk away from the fight...because they know they'd lose. Like a bully challenged by someone who is willing to fight him, they walk away declaring victory without having the guts to put up a fight. Well, that won't work here! Every time a commenter uses that as a response, it is a cowardly retreat because he or she doesn't have any evidence to refute the evidence for design.
Design is so obvious now that it will be the end of evolution as a hypothesis eventually. I think that Darwinists know this and it scares the heck out of them. So they have hidden behind this fallacy to avoid discussing design because they know they cannot possibly win. So it is time to really focus on this very stupid attempt to avoid facing the truth. Shall we begin? Bolding and bluing added by me, otherwise this is just as Roddy Bullock wrote it. In fact, let's give him two shots at this topic, shall we?
Everybody Believes Something Unbelievable
"One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs." - Phillip E. JohnsonVirgin birth. Abiogenesis. Resurrection from the dead. Random mutations producing the raw material for new organs. Intelligent creation ex nihilo. Eternal matter. Eternal mind. Heaven. Multiverses. Speciation by unguided, natural selection. Hell. Natural DNA information generation. Adam. Panspermia. Angels. No immaterial soul. Miracles. Space aliens. God. No God.
What do every one of the above have in common? Each is a closely held belief of zealous defenders of some theory of origins or another. And for each belief there are counter-zealots who can discern not one whit of convincing evidence. Take abiogenesis, for example. There is no evidence--just a lot of "must-have-happened-because-we're-here" certainty among the atheistic faithful in need of such belief; and believe they do. Ironically, the atheistic faithful like to think they are free of faith and suppose others to be, well, full of it. But in fact faith abounds on all sides with only two things certain: everybody believes something unbelievable and only certain unbelievable beliefs can actually be true. In fact, certain unbelievable beliefs must be true, and others must be false. But how can we know?
Darwinists often belittle the arguments of anti-evolutionists as "arguments from incredulity" as if there is something fundamentally flawed with such a position (even while they make the same arguments against intelligent design!). While the charge is almost always leveled in error (very few of the anti-evolutionary arguments are based on bare disbelief), there is some basis to draw exactly this charge: the evidence at hand makes naturalistic evolution truly unbelievable to the reasonable person. Consider: Materialists (which is what all atheists and most Darwinists are) must believe in abiogenesis, the faith belief that life arose accidentally from non-living matter. In spite of a total lack of evidentiary basis they are stuck with no choice, they must necessarily believe that a past chance agglomeration of all the right stuff, like cosmic Tinker Toys without a Tinkerer, was scattered, pressed, heated, cooled or otherwise accidentally treated just so, to make life appear out of nowhere. Excuse those of us not so thought-limited, but without any evidence to give a reason to believe or even a reason to suspend disbelief, abiogenesis is simply unbelievable.
Less well understood for all the bluffing that goes largely unchecked is the fact that Darwinists have absolutely no evidence to prove the crown jewel of Darwinism, that undirected physics and chemistry alone (so-called Natural Selection) can "select" from random mutational errors to produce a single new species. Darwin himself offered only an imaginary example of natural selection, an admitted indulgence on his part. But modern Darwinists continue the imaginations without the admission. Look it up--there is no evidence that natural selection has produced (or can produce) one new species. In fact, the evidence compels the opposite conclusion--even with extensive un-natural selection (i.e., breeding), no new species are possible. Are we really to believe on the word of men alone that purposeless, unguided chemistry and physics magically drove the origin of every species? Unbelievable.
Because most people don't have the faith of Darwinists, the evidence-induced unbelief among approximately 90% of the population drives evolutionists and other theophobic no-godders crazy. Referring to Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, president of The Darwin Loving God Haters Club (known to one another as "skeptics"), wonders how "such a powerful idea [can] go still largely unabsorbed into popular consciousness." And to show how powerfully a false idea can take even smart people captive, Dawkins fails to comprehend the irony of his own words when he blindly blathers, "it is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe." Designed? (Heh, heh), yes. Misunderstood? No. Hard to believe? Only to the reasonable mind.
What about the legions of other skeptics and self-styled free thinkers? Aren't they free of all belief in the unbelievable? They would like to think so. But consider "free thinkers", as they call themselves. As captives to a deception, none of them are permitted to think freely about God's existence; atheism is the required belief imposed on free thinkers, and they hold slavishly to its dictates. They are free thinkers like a prisoner is a free walker; they are free to think all they want within the bounds of their little cages. And very few, if any, mind-slaves to atheism have ever thought freely about the logically necessary conditions for their atheistic materialism. Free thinking atheists must believe one of two things: either matter, i.e., the cosmic Tinker Toys, has existed eternally, or matter spontaneously appeared out of nothing. Both of these are, frankly, unbelievable. No great thinker in all of history has thought seriously on this topic and found either of these two starting places to be possible, much less believable. Why should we?
And those claiming the mantle of "skeptic"? This group is sadly comical in their smug naivety. When it comes to the biggest questions of all, they are the least skeptical of all. A recent sampling of some of the skeptic faithful showed a pathetically belligerent insistence on proudly proclaiming that they know, they know, that they personally are not intelligently designed. Aside from the predictable show of shallow ignorance in the self-defeating intensity of their admission (why would an accidental, purposeless thing, like a bump on a log, care?), where is the skepticism? As anyone who has crossed paths with so-called skeptics knows, this group is made up of nothing more than un-skeptical, run-of-the-mill, dogmatic atheists and materialist dullards. They are skeptical only of God and the supernatural. But otherwise they are true blue believing mind-slaves to the atheistic party line, including the above-mentioned logical absurdities, e.g., that matter magically appeared out of nothing. One moment there was nothing, and then "poof" everything. The sad thing is that most skeptics, because they are not true thinkers but mental bond servants along with the free thinkers, do not even know their skepticism demands such absurdity.
Every serious thinker contemplating the implications of eternity past has wrestled with the fact that, as unbelievable as it might seem, because something is, something must always have been. And that something must be either material or immaterial. Necessarily, either matter somehow created mind, or mind somehow created matter. There is no other option. And know this: whether one believes the one or the other dictates every other otherwise unbelievable thing he or she believes. It's that simple.
And it is the simplicity of a necessary faith that makes everyone both believer and skeptic. God-believers rightly demand evidence for theories of matter-only self-organization of complex information, and until then will remain skeptical of materialistic Darwinism. Atheist skeptics are not merely skeptical; they are firm believers in a thought system that requires staunch unbelief regardless the lack of supporting evidence; and they cannot even see the abundance of contrary evidence. In the end, what one finds is that skepticism lies more in the who than with the what, because, as thinker Leo Rosten so ably observed, "We see things as we are, not as they are." How true.
Atheists and theists will always see reality differently, not because of what is, but because of who they are. And this explains why each will always believe things deemed unbelievable by the other. So the question of origins for a person not already committed to atheism and all its necessary supporting theories amounts to this: on balance, whose belief in the unbelievable is the more reasonable in light of the evidence made plain to all?
And beyond being simply reasonable, is there a way you can know which unbelievable beliefs are true? Yes, but the key to understanding lies not in the facts (after all, we all have the same facts), but in you and what you permit yourself to see. Think freely about it, and don't be bullied by truth suppressing atheists. Because allowing yourself to see things freely as they are will result in a freeing change of who you are.
And then you will know.
Roddy Bullock, a skeptic of Darwinism, is a freelance writer, engineer, lawyer, the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by and available from Access Research Network.References:
Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.
If you like this essay, go here for many more.
Copyright (c) 2009 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.
Publisher and agent inquiries welcome.
Phillip Johnson quote from the audiotape "Exposing Naturalistic Presuppositions of Evolution," at Southern Evangelical Seminary's 1998 Apologetics Conference. Tape AC9814. Posted online at http://www.impactapologetics.com/product.asp?P_ID=205&strPageHistory=search&strKeywords=johnson&numPageStartPosition=1&strSearchCriteria=any&PT_ID=all
Richard Dawkins quotes, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), pp. 39, xv.
Skeptics adamantly admitting that they are not intelligently designed, LINK HERE, and scroll down to March 05, 2009 blog entry and comments.
Leo Rosten quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Rosten
So well said, so logical and so daunting to any Darwinist is the logical argument presented above. One more Roddy Bullock presentation (I did Americanize a couple of words) second verse same as the first:
Of Pots and People
Archaeologist with simple piece of pottery: Look what I discovered; I wonder who created it.
Scientist: Wow! What a cool pot; who do you think made it?
Biologist with complex piece of DNA code: Look what I discovered; I wonder who created it.
Scientist: Wow! What a crackpot; why does he think someone made it?It's a good thing the Bible doesn't say God made clay pots. If it did, design-minded archaeologists would be out of a job. With little to say about each new find that cannot be turned into a "religious" question, design-inferring archaeologists would be relegated to the fate of their like-minded brethren in biology--the realm of "science cannot infer design because design might mean God and science and religion cannot mix." Archaeologists be glad; you get to freely infer intelligent design for objects of obvious design but unknown origin without facing the "might mean God" barrier to truth-seeking. In other words, you get to be scientists and logically infer intelligent design--a luxury not to be taken for granted.
Actually, archaeologists are not the exception; they are the rule. Scientists of many stripes infer design to explain phenomena of unknown (and unknowable) origin all the time. Forensic scientists, faced with a dead body and no witnesses look for evidence to piece together a historical narrative to explain a past event: was the death accidental (unintelligent causes) or murder (intelligent causation)? Simple. And what about the good folks over at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)? Their name says it all. Although embarrassed at being rightly compared to their like-minded biologist counterparts, these scientists regularly collect evidence in the form of radio signals to determine if the signals are the result of background radiation in space (unintelligent causes), or extraterrestrial intelligence (intelligent causes). Easy. A child can do it.
And biologists? Well, there's the exception to one rule and the imposition of another. Biologists must suppress entertaining any lingering thoughts spurred by logical inferences of design because such thoughts automatically and necessarily lead to "religion" and, unless it's a God-denying religion, that's a bad thing. After all, a respectable scientist having "religious" thoughts hasn't happened since the days of Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, Herschel, Faraday, Joule and, well, you get the idea. It's been a long time since the natural wonder of the beauty of intelligent design in nature could be scientifically expressed without professional and personal recriminations.
The savvy Darwinist will quickly jump in here with a smug smile and reply that the analogy to archaeology does not hold. It happens, he says with the certainty of one-sided thinking, that in our human experience we know that humans can, and have, made pottery for generations. And because we can explain the kind of potter with some certainty, archaeology never approaches the "might mean God" line. Living systems, on the other hand, are not known to be made by human intelligence, so we have no basis to infer human design, and any suitable intelligence must mean God, and science and religion cannot mix. You see? The inherent "who" problem in origins science is not to be found in archaeology, so there is no inconsistency in letting archaeology be respectable science and letting intelligent design be respectable religion (if there is such a thing).
But this response misses the point. This response jumps the inquiry directly to the "who" question, bypassing the "what" question without a thought. Yet in archaeology, as in all disciplines, the "what" of design alone can be an end in itself, informing a fruitful line of scientific inquiry that otherwise would be missed were the fact of design not granted or the identity of the designer demanded. Even if the potter remains forever unknown, the fact of design-discovery alone gives the archaeologist the subject matter of her science. How else is an archaeologist to know if she has found a piece of clay or a pot? Without design detection alone (i.e., absent design-er detection) having scientific value, the field of archaeology would be dead.
But more importantly, the "because we know there's a human potter" response powerfully confirms exactly the intelligent design theorist's point: design can be recognized because in our human experience we can recognize things for which we know only intelligent agency can accomplish. Our experience of the world shows that what we recognize as design invariably reflects the prior activity of conscious and intelligent persons who may now be hopelessly unknowable. In the case of a clay pot, yes, it was most certainly made by a kind of potter we are familiar with: men or women, who may forever remain unknown. But why must we all pretend ignorance when we consider clay people? Does not the fact of design carry great value independently of knowledge of the designer?
Clay people, like clay pots, carry the unmistakable hallmarks of intelligent design. Conflating the "what" of design with the "who" in biological systems is the illogical and scientifically inconsistent tactic of those philosophically opposed to a divine creative intelligence, i.e., Darwinians who fear a "divine foot in the door" of science. But denying a pot for fear of a potter is not science, and is ultimately no more effective than denying a symptom for fear of a disease. Truth is not changed by the evidence-denying belief in a lie.
Presumably, our Darwinian tutors must think, were it not for "religion" no one would think to infer design in biology. And solely because of a supposed "mighty mean God" mainstream science desperately demands that a biologist must obey a rule that prohibits design detection, while his archaeologist colleague freely infers intelligent design. The disparate rules of desperate scientists create an illogical two-tiered system where a biologist is required to attempt a rigorous proof of design, while an archaeologist is merely required to say, "Hey, look what I found!" Why is this?
No, really. Why?
Roddy Bullock, a skeptic of Darwinism, is a freelance writer, engineer, lawyer, the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by and available from Access Research Network.References:
Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.
If you like this essay, go here for many more.
Copyright (c) 2009 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.
Information on God-believing scientists: http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs.htm
The sentence that starts: "Our experience of the world shows that what we recognize as design invariably reflects the prior activity of conscious and intelligent persons . . ." was adapted from Stephen C. Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell, DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, (Harper Collins, 2009), p. 16. In Meyer's sentence, the term "information" is used instead of "design".