Disproving Intelligent Design
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| + | On the other hand, as an engineer, God may have selected design features of the world which would result in the greatest good for the greatest number. For instance, you oughtn't lay the fault of your water pipes freezing and bursting at God's feet for His "faulty" design of water molecules that occupy more space when they are solid than when they are liquid, because that very property allows ice to float on the oceans and insulate the lower depths, thus preventing the whole sea from freezing solid. It's not a "flawed creation" that has freezing pipes, it's a "flawed homeowner" who is too cheap to insulate them. | ||
==Predictions which hold water== | ==Predictions which hold water== | ||
Revision as of 02:55, 9 April 2009
Scientists claim that Intelligent Design cannot be falsified and consequently is not science. This article includes all the arguments put forward by creationists showing how Intelligent Design could theoretically be disproved.
Contents |
Evolution is wrong, therefore ID is right
No seriously, that's what they say. Of course, any reasonable scientist with half an education could tell you that disproving one thing does not prove another. Even if the two items are opposite, this idea doesn't float (ever heard of a false dichotomy?)!
But, since we're feeling good - maybe we had a few too many after the research conference with the real scientists - let's give ID the benefit of the doubt and assume that evolution and ID are the only possible theories. So, where does that leave us? Does evolution fail to explain anything? How does this claim stand up to scrutiny?
Result: EPIC FAIL
Try as they may, IDers have utterly failed to disprove evolution. Oh, they've come up with some fancy ideas, written some nice books, and used semantics like no other. But they have yet to present any real scientific evidence against evolution by natural selection. Now, an ID proponent would leave their argument there, but we claim the scientific high ground, and here's why: we're going to explain everything, point by point.
(WARNING: the following should not be read by anyone who values their sanity)
Irreducible Complexity
Let's face it, 100 years ago, the cell was held up to supporters on the theory of evolution as an example of "irreducible complexity" (sorry Dr. Behe, you're not the first). The new found and stunning detail of the cellular construction could never be explained by natural selection, held evolution opponents. Yet lo and behold, evolution more than stepped up to the plate, and we can trace the origin of life back a good four and a half billion years, to the very first replicators and their first "cells"[1]. We've explained the cell, we explained the flagellum, we'll explain the next big challenge. That's what you call a robust theory.
But irreducible complexity isn't the only thing evolution has "going against it".
Law of the conservation of information
Mr. Dembski likes to tout the law of the conservation of information as proof against evolution. As the law goes (no mutation may occur which creates more than 500 somethings of information), evolution cannot give rise to complex structures. Problem is, no one accepts the law of the conservation of information, probably because Dembski came up with it on his own. No new fourth law of thermodynamics here...
Evolution cannot give rise to new structures
Yes and no. Yes it can and does give rise to new structures, and yes it is easier to destory a structure than to create a new one. The same goes for design:) "No" in that evolution cannot come up with a structure unless it fits within the framework of pre-existing structures. Any structures are a hold-over of evolutionary events which occured billions of years ago; if the vertebrate eye were suddenly to change into the invertebrate one, then evolution would be in trouble.
The problem here isn't one of the theory, it's understanding the theory. But, as this article is about ID, readers should probably just save time and start reading about the way things actually work.
Here's the standing challenge to ID: disprove evolution.
(150 years and counting)
Diseases should not counter certain new antibiotics
If you've actually read ID literature (our sympathies, but do try to fight the resultant violent episodes of intellectual rage), you may come across some rare predictions. Here's one: if ID is the answer to how things came to be, then no disease should be able to counter an antibiotic that requires more than two mutations[2].
So how does this stand up?
Result: FAIL
Diseases continually counter new antibiotics, regardless of their complexity and novelty, and they do so even faster as we produce more antibiotics. ID says that this can't happen by natural selection, only by design. So either:
- The designer is a sadist
- or ID fails again
Moving on...
Evidence of design implies a designer
No, "evidence" of design implies that we have evolved with an innate ability to recognize patterns. To hold water, ID would not only have to produce evidence of design, but also explain any (and there are many) examples of bad design.
Because if you look at it, there may be some examples of good design, but there are many more of terrible, contingent, barely-working design. Examples of design you might expect from *gasp* AN UNINTELLIGENT DESIGNER!!!!!!
Result: FAIL
On the other hand, as an engineer, God may have selected design features of the world which would result in the greatest good for the greatest number. For instance, you oughtn't lay the fault of your water pipes freezing and bursting at God's feet for His "faulty" design of water molecules that occupy more space when they are solid than when they are liquid, because that very property allows ice to float on the oceans and insulate the lower depths, thus preventing the whole sea from freezing solid. It's not a "flawed creation" that has freezing pipes, it's a "flawed homeowner" who is too cheap to insulate them.
Predictions which hold water
Whoops...
References
- ↑ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene...read it
- ↑ Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution...don't read it unless you have to.
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| - Acceptance - Behe interview - Cladistics - Common descent: the incontrovertible evidence - Darwinism - De-evolution - Dinosaur - Disproving Evolution - Eugenics - EvoWiki - Evobabble - Evolution - Evolutionist - Fossil record - Human - Macroevolution - Microevolution - Natural selection - Niche - Phylogenetics - Phylogeny - Signal detection theory - Social Darwinism - Stephen Jay Gould - Theory of Evolution - Wedge Document - | ||
