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Essay:The flip side of William Dembski's "immodest proposal"
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William Dembski, a leading IDer, has latched on to the "strengths and weaknesses" [1][2] and "teach the controversy" movements and cleverly come up with an "immodest proposal" to "teach the non-controversy."[3] He even repeated the challenge when some fringe media outlet repeated his challenge.[4] It's so "obvious" to him that ID is true that he challenges evolution and biology classes to give "impossible" essay topics as to the following:[3][4]
- Students can explain in detail how evolutionary theory explains the Cambrian Explosion.
- Students can describe the changes in genes and embryological development by which complex biological structures such as the human eye evolved.
- Students can delineate the lines of evidence by which evolutionary theory has decisively refuted intelligent design.
- Explain how evolutionary theory solves the problem that DNA cannot exist without protein and protein cannot exist without DNA.
Sure, let's take that challenge. While we're at it, let's do the same for intelligent design:
- An ID expert can explain in detail how ID explains the Cambrian Explosion. Why did the designer create (or whatever word you'd like, sir) more species during this period, and how did he/she/it do it?
- An ID expert can describe the mechanism by which the designer developed complex biological structures such as the human eye.
- An ID expert can delineate the lines of evidence by which intelligent design can explain any biological, cosmological, paleontological or astronomical phenomenon, without any comparison to evolution.
- Explain how ID solves the problem that DNA cannot exist without protein and protein cannot exist without DNA. How did the designer do it?
Let's see who gets farther.