h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have just now read this article as i prepare my own essay for an argument on the subject.
Here is where the authors flaw lies

"If you believe complexity of humans or animals proves Intelligent Design, then it follows that there must have been Infinite Intelligent Designers."

This argument does not relate to Christians or anything for that matter. AS far as i know, most who believe in an intelligent designer believe that he is the Alpha and Omega, omnipresent etc. Therefore He did not have to be created. What the author is arguing here is just one aspect of the ID argument, and not the one that the Chriistians he is openly defacing adhere to.

Ignisprime

I don't think most Christians need Intelligent Design, since they rely on faith. To accept faith is to reject logic. I don't mean that as an insult to them, but I think it's clear from face-value of those terms. Faith means that you believe in something without requiring or demanding logic or evidence to support it. You believe it no matter what.

Intelligent Design, from what I've read about it, is when some Christians or other believers in deities want to apply a patina of logic to convince people that they're using faith and logic. But when you follow the logic of their arguments in Intelligent Design, it falls apart.

Given the premise that humans are too complex to have evolved without a designer, it follows that a designer would have to be at least as complex as his creation, therefore the designer would have been too complex to have evolved without another designer, et cetera ad infinitum.

I know I got a little snarky about Christians in this guide entry, but I don't think the reasoning is flawed. Christians can go ahead with their conflicting beliefs about one true god, claiming that Intelligent Design logically explains their god, yet faithfully believing that god did not have to be created. It wouldn't be the first or last contradiction in most Christian doctrine I've heard. But that's just faith, not logic.

I mean, I can't argue if you want to say that an invisible pink unicorn just sprang out of my wall and it's scolding me for writing this... but if you tell me that science can prove the unicorn is here with me because he makes the light on my smoke detector blink, then it's not science, it's just faith in unicorns and smoke detectors.

...Okay, my wife just asked a good question which clarifies things a little bit.

"Why do you think the designer would need to have a designer?"

I think I'm seeing why people always go back and forth on this.

Skeptics begin this argument with a hidden premise in the back of their mind. "Given that no one springs into being from nowhere, if we're not relying on supernatural explanations, then how did humans get to be here?"

Christians use the idea to support what they already believe, and they're willing to accept supernatural explanations.

Even if skeptics get to the point of imagining some powerful designer, they keep trying to apply logic to the designer. How did the designer come to be?

People of faith don't have to worry about that next step when it's so much easier to fall back on the stories they've been taught.

It still comes down to faith and logic. If faith is so important to people and to god (for example the way he messed with Abraham's head and told him to get ready to sacrifice his own son, I can never figure why a benevolent god would test someone's faith like that), if faith is such a good thing, then why do people of faith bother to play with logic in these tiny, ineffectual ways?

So I can see where people willing to believe in supernatural events would disagree with the infinite intelligent designers theory. I don't see how people concerned with science, treating Intelligent Design as a logical explanation, could fail to apply that same logic to the designer and ask who designed him.

As proof of intelligent design, do you know the argument for irreducible complexity? The Flageller motor and how the simple study of that cellular machine proves evolution, Darwinism, etc, is bunk? If you do i would love to discuss it with you. If not, I suggest reading a book by the scientist David Bowie (i think thats his name) about the subject. You can probably find it in any library. It is a very factual, in depth look at how ID applies to modern science.

Secondly, would you mind if i asked you to outline the contradictions within Christian dctrine that you mentioned?

All right, granted faith is irrational at root. (if you look at the conversation on my essay "God-what is religion anyway?", you will see that i made this point early in the discussion. But what my point is is that it takes more of that irrational faith in order for a human to believe that we evolved, or to believe natural selection processes actually effect organisms on the -macro- level. If you take a good look at evolution and actually put every one of their explanational theories on how everything sprang into existence by chance, you will find such flaws and presumptions there! what a mess scientist made of evolution. In all truth there is a major portion of secular scientists in this day and age turning to the ID theory then there are still clinging to exclusive evolutionary theories.

Yes, I've read the arguments. Here's a link where they lay out some criticism to the idea of irreducible complexity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

I have to leave work in about 15 minutes, but I'll come back to this discussion so we can talk about contradictions in Christianity. Maybe I should say contradictions in the bible instead of contradictions in doctrine.

I'll check out your essay too. Thanks for the conversation. Sorry if I sounded snarky in my earlier response. I'll try to tone it down.

Later,
Deidzoeb

I have just searched and have found several web pages that try to refute the IC arguments, but none of those ever try to look at the possibilities behind it. They also have no support for their conclusions and do not prove to the world that Behe is wrong. They say he is wrong because his theories are untestable, but their problem is that the theories of evolution are also untestable, so if Behe's arguments are bunk, then the arguments of evolutionists are bunk also. That is a word trap i would hesitate to get invovlved in.
I beleive credit ought to be given to Behe because his arguments are still capable of proving valid, after all, no one has disproved them as of yet.

thats all for tonight,
Ignis