Ray and Kirk like to say that because cars, paintings, McDonalds, and gym shorts are made, we must be made too. They think that a painting or a car is 100% proof that there must be a creator who made them. Therefore, humans are 100% proof that we are created by something, i.e god. Basically if something is complicated or looks designed it MUST be designed. Well, not quite.First of all this is a false analogy because paintings, cars, ect. are not naturally occurring, like humans and other life on earth. Secondly, there are examples of natural things here on earth that we know are not designed even though they may look designed. Take caves for example, intricate caves formed with complex stalagmites and stalactites occur through natural forces such as the dissolving of rock. Or take snowflakes for another example. They tend to look highly complex and are
naturally occurring as they are formed by the aggregation of ice crystals under the right environmental conditions.Therefore, for something to look designed god does not have to directly design it. For those who believe in god, If god makes intricate caves and snowflakes through natural forces would it not be plausible then for god to create humans and other creatures using natural forces? Like evolution, if this is where the scientific evidence takes us?
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What I always find hilarious is even if we were to grant that life needed a designer, which the evidence does not support, who is to say it would be the biblical god? However, we need not even make this argument when the "painting-painter" analogy is brought up because you are correct in saying that they are not naturally occurring...and more to the point, they don't reproduce, they are manufactured. Life today reproduces....we are not molded in a factory. This then forces them back to make the common "abiogenesis" arguments to which we are forced to concede that we don't know how life began. Our admittance of ignorance causes illogical gloating on their side. "Ah, ha! So you admit that life could have been created?"
ReplyDeleteI do like your use of naturally occurring "specific complexity". Dembski is light-years more sophisticated than Ray and Kirk, but the argument is the same, and in both cases there are false-positives...Dembski just works harder at lying than Cameron.
Agreed and the fact that paintings and the like do not reproduce is another good rebuttal to Ray's analogy. In my post I was trying to make the point that one does not have to deny science in order to believe in a god (however I agree that there is no evidence for any god(s)). It doesn't matter what people believe, things get scary when some people use there beliefs to attack science and brainwash others. Or when morals are attacked, like the gay rights issue. You are also right in that the argument usually comes back to abiogenesis and fundamentalists love to equate what is currently unknown with the unknowable. What did Dembski say similar to Ray? I'm not familiar with him and his stuff.
ReplyDeleteI'd just like to point out that none of you has ever found a crockaduck.
ReplyDeleteMight want to think about that...
Lance,
ReplyDeleteI found a crocaduck, it has been revealed to me in a way that I cold understand it. It is in the bible.
G.E.
Can I pet it?
ReplyDeleteOh, here we go with the Crocoduck again.
ReplyDeleteLance, Lance, Lance....
SS,
ReplyDeleteWilliam Dembski, someone who has had enough college for ten people and who should have known better, came up with what he claimed was a design theory which was fool-proof and would be able to distinguish "design" in nature from contingency. However, using his mathematics, others showed that false-positives were the norm. In the end, any reasonable person will recognize that you can't distinguish human design from supernatural design. His filter is ok for human design, but even then natural occurances would still come out as "human design" so essentially his work is useless. Also, science is about mechanism...so what good does it do to say, "God did it"?? It does explain anything. Ah! I have debated several of the ID advocates, including Behe and Luskin via email. They are idiots. Their arguments are more sophistocated than Ray Comfort's, but in the face of skeptical scrutiny they hold no water.
Clos,
ReplyDeleteThanks, I guess it's like Micheal Shermer says "smart people will find smart ways to justify things they believe in for not so smart reasons" or something like that.
I love the notion that god creating everything EXPLAINS the world around us.
ReplyDeleteHow can an omnipotent being that exists outside of space and time creating anything be 'more simple' than evolution via natural selection?
God isn't an explanation - he requires one.