| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Budikka666" |
| Date: |
08 Sep 2005 02:24:13 PM |
| Object: |
Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge |
"Nature adapts the organ to the function, and not the function to the
organ"
- Aristotle
In April 2004, William A. Dembski published "Five Questions a Darwinist
Would Rather Dodge" at:
http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/webonly/a0031659.cfm
(It also appears as "Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge"
at his own web site:
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2004.04.Five_Questions_Ev.pdf)
Dembski rather dishonestly claims these are "five key questions you can
use to lay bare evolutionists' inflated claims:" I've never see all
five questions responded to in toto, so it's high time. Let's take him
at his word and look at them, shall we?
Dembski used to be an associate research professor in conceptual
foundations of science at Baylor University where he created somewhat
of a scandal in 2000 for posting "intolerant remarks" in an email:
http://www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=15691
These remarks apparently were in connection with what seems to be the
rather underhand creation of the Polyani Center which appeared to be
giving prominence to a creationist agenda. You can read Dembski's
version of events here:
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.05.ID_at_Baylor.htm
Intelligent design advocates like to pretend they're not creationists,
and Dembski is not a young-Earth creationist
http://www.baylor.edu/Lariat/news.php?action=story&story=16851
but he most certainly is a creationist if we're to judge him by his
writings:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-1532868-1079905
Currently, Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Science and
Theology at Southern Seminary in Louisville, which would seem to be
rather a negative move compared with a post at Baylor. He's one of
four prominent legs of the Intelligent Design Creationism (hereinafter
"IDC") stool (employ that description as you will). The other three
are Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, and Walter Remine.
Dembski has a math PhD from the University of Chicago, a philosophy PhD
from the University of Illinois and a masters in divinity from
Princeton Theological Seminary. You will note than not one of these
makes him an expert in biochemistry, biology, evolution, genetics,
geology, paleontology, physics, or any of the other scientific
disciplines that provide a solid foundation upon which the Theory of
Evolution was built.
Two of the other three names noted above possess no such qualifications
either! Remine is apparently nothing more than an electric engineer
whose entire contribution is a book based on a misunderstanding of work
by J. B. S. Haldane, and Johnson is a lawyer!
Behe is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University with
well over 30 published papers to his name. Unfortunately, only one of
these actually addresses IDC and it has been heavily criticised.
Lehigh, Behe's own university, has effectively disowned Behe with
regard to his views on IDC:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm
Just in passing, Dr. Ken Miller, a leader in the fight against IDC is
going directly to Lehigh to tackle this very topic on October 12, 2005:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/Miller.htm
That will be well-worth sitting through if you're in the area.
Dembski's 'five questions' essay starts out with this: "Evolutionists
are masters at covering the flaws and weaknesses of their theory.
Here's how you can clean house."
Covering weaknesses and flaws? If evolutionists are so masterful, how
is it that creationists are able to make a full-time occupation out of
what they claim are these weaknesses and flaws?
Contrary to Dembski's blatant lie, auto-exposure of perceived problems
with a theory is part and parcel of the scientific method. Honest
scientists welcome discussion of potential problems because it will
either strengthen their theory, in which case they get kudos (and maybe
grant money) for it, or it will expose the theory as a dead-end and
free them from it to pursue other ideas. Either way, they win.
We cannot, unfortunately, say the same thing for William Dembski, who
appears dedicatedly unwilling to even discuss his claims in a suitable
academic forum, let alone try to publish in a refereed science journal.
This is nothing more than cowardice and strongly bespeaks his lack of
faith in his own work.
His first question concerns "The Fossil Record". This weak excuse for
a question is handsomely *not* dodged by evolutionists at:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000251.html
where Dembski's deceitfully selective quoting of Peter Ward is also
dealt with.
Dembski: "According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms
- popularly known as 'missing links' - 'is the most obvious and gravest
objection which can be urged against my theory.'"
In what is a common creationist ploy (reference remarks about Peter
Ward, above), Dembski fails to quote the full comment from Darwin, who
goes on to discuss the objection he himself raised (so much for
covering up flaws and weaknesses!) and ends that chapter with : "On
this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or
even disappear." Why is Dembski afraid to quote *that*?
The quote is from Chapter 9 of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life" (hereinafter, "Origin"), titled, "On the
Imperfection of the Geological Record". So we can see here that the
co-founder of the Theory of Evolution admits to what was then seen as a
potential weakness right up front. So much for Dembski's claim.
And what was Darwin's actual quote to the end of the paragraph in
question? "... is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be
urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the
extreme imperfection of the geological record."
Typically for a creationist, Dembski cuts the quote short when it
becomes inconvenient for him. He wants you to think that Darwin was
throwing his hands up in the air helplessly. The truth (a dose of
which Dembski seems in dire need) is that Darwin is honestly expressing
possible objections and offering explanations - which have proven
insightful as more fossils are found. These intermediate forms are
precisely what Darwin's theory predicts, but they shouldn't be there at
all according to creationists. Even *one* transitional fossil in the
record utterly refutes special creation of immutable "kinds."
But listen to the assinine way Dembski phrases his first question:
"What new fossil finds, *if any*, have occurred since Darwin wrote
these words nearly 150 years ago?" (emphasis mine)
Clearly Dembski has no shame. Here he's suggesting that maybe no new
fossil finds have occurred since Darwin's time. This is, of course, a
blatant lie and Dembski himself admits it, as we shall see.
There are "...hundreds of specimens of the primitive bird
Confuciusornis."
http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/HistoryofLife/Sinosauropteryx.html
and
" More than 1,000 specimens have been discovered here and in the
surrounding region"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1081677.stm
There are DNA samples studied from "hundreds of fossils"
http://eculturalresources.com/news_detail.php?Id=331
The Karoo geological supergroup contains countless thousands of
fossils. While there are likely not 800 billion as some have quoted,
perhaps 40,000 have actually been collected:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/oldearth2.htm
Dembski: "If the absence of intermediate fossil forms holds true as
much today as it did back then (and after all this time spent searching
the fossil record, it really should mean a lot more), why should anyone
accept evolution?"
Because the fossil record is only one part of the mass of evidence
which demands evolution! Duhh! Even if geology didn't point directly
to evolution, there would still be overwhelming evidence from other
sources: genetics, molecular biology, zoology and anatomy, to name a
few. Dembski is an idiot if he doesn't understand this and certainly
is not qualified to discuss evolution when he evidently isn't in
command of the facts.
Dembski then claims: "Evolutionists have gotten quite good at
sidestepping this question with what looks like an answer, but really
isn't. Typically, they'll lay out a bunch of organisms or biological
structures and say, 'Look at how similar these are. They've obviously
descended from a common evolutionary ancestor.' They will then ply you
with a mass of details about supposedly well-confirmed evolutionary
transitions (like those involving horses, whales, or reptiles into
mammals)."
But we're forced to ask what is Dembski's dodge? Here it is: "Don't
get lost in the details."!!!!
Can you believe this guy? Ask the evolutionists for detailed proof and
when they patiently and scientifically lay it all out before you, stomp
your little feet like a baby and go off in a huff. That's the
so-called scientific so-called method of so-called intelligent
so-called design.
Dembski: "Yes, the fossil record contains organisms that can be placed
in a progression suggesting gradual change. But most of these
progressions result from arbitrary picking and choosing among all
available fossils. With millions of fossils to choose from, it is
likely that some gradual progressions will be found."
So Dembski's opening remark ""What new fossil finds, if any..." has now
become "With millions of fossils to choose from..."? We can see
clearly here that yet another of his statements is disingenuous at best
and downright deceitful at worst.
Once again, if immutable "kinds" were created "in the beginning", there
should be no way to assemble a progression even *with* arbitrarily
picking through the fossil record. Even *one* transition completely
overthrows special creation.
We can readily see that Dembski's petulant claim of "arbitrary picking"
is nothing but a cheap lie and if he doesn't know it, he's an idiot.
There is no "arbitrary picking"! This is not what scientists do.
Dembski conveniently ignores the fact that the overwhelming mass of
scientists *throughout the entire world* accept evolution regardless of
their religious affiliation or lack thereof. All those who are
directly involved in evolution sciences can lay out solid scientific
evidence, including fossil transitions, to support the theory. This is
how evolution theory got to be in the position it occupies today!
Dembski is doing nothing more than admitting to intellectual
shortcomings on his own part if he simultaneously fails to grasp the
basis of the scientific method and pretends he can pontificate on the
matter, especially when he posses not one academic qualification in any
field directly concerned with evolution!
Here are the transitionals - lots of them, and no secret or
sleight-of-hand about it:
"Understanding Evolution" by E. Peter Volpe (Wm. C. Brown, 1984).
Chapter 17, details snail evolution, supporting both Darwinian descent
with modification and Eldredge and Gould's punctuated equilibrium
within the same fossil bed!
"Evolution and escalation" by G. J. Vermeij (Princeton University
Press, 1987) addresses invertebrate transitions
Stephen Gould, in "Eight Little Piggies" (WW Norton, 1993), in an
article called "Wheels and Wedges" recounts direct evidence of snail
evolution in response to more predatory crabs in the fossil record, to
which Darwin himself drew our attention.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/creation.htm
reports:
"In 1964, Dr. D.J. Reish removed 5 or 6 polychaetes (Nereis acuminata)
from Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor, and grew his sample to a size of
thousands. In 1986, four pairs from this group were brought to Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution; the population at Woods Hole thus had
gone through two bottlenecks, which are supposed to help drive ToE
through genetic drift. In 1977-1978, two new cultures of N. acuminata
were gathered from nearby Long Beach and Newport Beach, and grown under
the same conditions as the Woods Hole sample. The three populations
were later crossed, and it was found that the only crosses that would
not produce viable offspring were the crosses involving Woods Hole and
the two new cultures. This signifies nothing less than speciation, and
all in the laboratory - all observed directly."
In Nature, Vol. 293, 8 October 1981, pp. 437-43, P.G. Williamson of
Harvard wrote an article called "Palaeontological Documentation of
Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin" which shows
transitions between fossil clams and between snails from about 400
yards of Plio-Pleistocene strata at Lake Turkana in Kenya.
Archaeopteryx was discovered only two years after Darwin published
'Origin'. Although this particular species did not give rise to modern
birds, it is a perfect example of an intermediate from, having pretty
much a fifty-fifty mix of reptile and avian features. For example,
although it was classed as a bird (based on the fact that it has
feathers and at the time the only known organisms with feathers were
birds) the thoracic vertebrae are not fused as they are in birds,
archaeopteryx doesn't have a beak as birds do, and its cerebellum is
situated behind the mid-brain just as it is in reptiles.
Other transitionals:
http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/protocaud.html
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=23650
http://tinyurl.com/ayugy
http://www.antnest.co.uk/Origin.html
http://www.vuletic.com/hume/cefec/5.html
http://www.holysmoke.org/tran-icr.htm
http://www.tim-thompson.com/trans-fossils.html
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.html
http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_04.htm
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/dinobirds.htm
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/talk_origins.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossils
http://tinyurl.com/9ktck
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Transitional_fossils
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/l/li/list_of_transitional_fossils.htm
Transitional jawbone from fish to land dweller:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/701008.stm
Here's a fossil that lay in a drawer for years labeled as a fish until
further work was done on it and it was discovered to have legs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2089873.stm
And transitional molecules:
Science vol. 285, pp.654-655 (1999) ["Gaining New Insight into the
Molecular Basis of Evolution] reported:
"After comparing the rhodopsin genes in coelacanths and other fish with
the same genes in birds and reptiles, [they] think that that one of the
changes in one gene occurred after coelacanths and other fish went
their separate evolutionary ways but before coelacanths and legged
animals split up." That same change - replacement of a glutamic acid by
a glutamine - occurred independently in the second gene after the
coelacanth diverged from this [common] ancestor. Each coelacanth
rhodopsin then underwent a second change; in one case an alanine became
a serine and in the other, a methionine became a leucine.
"This is reported to be among the first practical studies studying
evolution's course from a molecular prospective."
Fossil snake with legs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/680116.stm
And here, a theist discusses hominid transitions:
http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html
Test your knowledge of transitionals here:
http://www.funtrivia.com/quizdetails.cfm?quiz=208956
Dembski just doesn't get it: "Also, such progressions invariably
involve organisms with the same basic body plan. In the 'evolution' of
the horse, we are always dealing with horse-like organisms."
Another lie. Read this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
Hyracotherium was most definitely not a modern horse by any stretch.
If it were alive today it would not be classed as one and creationists
would doubtlessly agree that it is a separate kind.
Hyracotherium had 4 toes on its forelegs and 3 on the back, and even
*it* was a transitional, showing vestigial evidence of other toes fore
and aft. Its feet were padded like a dog's but it had "embryonic"
hooves on its toes instead of claws. It had canine teeth and other
anatomical features that label it as an embryonic horse. Why would a
higher intelligence create any organism with vestigial features - or
with features destined to become vestigial? That doesn't sound very
intelligent, now does it?
Dembski: "And even with the 'evolution' of reptiles into mammals, we
are dealing with land-dwelling vertebrates sharing many common
structures.
Here Dembski cannot avoid the inescapable fact that there is a
wonderful transitional series from reptiles to mammals
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htm
so what does he do? He does what any desperate creationist would do.
He moves the goalposts!
Clearly he's never looked at the skeletons of fish and compared them
with terrestrial vertebrates - because he's not qualified or trained to
do so. He appears to be of the same ilk as that blithering idiot Fred
Williams who is convinced that an electrical engineer can determine if
fossils are from related organisms by looking a photographs of them!
Dembski obviously doesn't want to "get lost" in those nasty little
"details" that will prove what a liar he is.
Dembski becomes dumbski: "What we don't see in the fossil record are
animals with fundamentally different body plans evolving from a common
ancestor and that's the notion at the heart of evolution. For
instance, there is no fossil evidence whatsoever that insects and
vertebrates share a common evolutionary ancestor."
What would he consider evidence? An insect with a backbone? The man's
an idiot. Modern insects did not magically develop backbones scores of
millennia ago and then become vertebrates and no evolutionist ever said
they did. What evolutionists have consistently demonstrated from a
variety of evidential sources is that modern organisms have common
ancestors.
As you go further back (and the fossil record shows this definitively)
organisms become increasingly different from what we see today. There
is no reason this should be if organisms are specially created, and
there is no way to explain this feature from a one-time special
creation without employing evolution. Throughout the fossil record are
organisms with such ambiguous anatomy that they could have varied into
one or other of lineages that are, in their modern forms, distinctly
divergent.
Lineages such as the one for the horse show how organisms change over
time and even Dembski admits those are horse-like. What he's
apparently too blind to see is that the kinship of fossils is far more
readily visible to the amateur the closer they are chronologically.
Conversely the further apart the fossils are in the strata, the more
disparate they become, which is precisely what evolution (but not
creation) predicts!
Creationists demonstrate what accomplished contortionists they are
here. They hypocritically claim while a given set of transitional
fossils which are chronologically contiguous in the record have
"varied' within their kind, a similar set, where only the founder
fossil and the most recent fossil exist are too disparate for one to
have changed into the other! They have nothing but whimsy to "support"
this contention!
This is yet another example of the creationists demanding that
evolutionists show every single step in transition from the first
recognizable cell to every modern living organism. I invite any and
every creationist to put themselves, for the sake of argument, into the
position of temporarily accepting that evolution is a fact, and from
that premise to come up with a credible scenario as to how the pure
luck and happenstance of the fossilization process could reasonably
capture the entire evolutionary sequence, from first cell to human,
preserve it until today, and then conveniently reveal it for scientists
to find. Any takers?
Dembski wants it both ways, every way! He wants to be able to see
evolution laid out in the fossil record in every detail, then he wants
to ignore the details because they're inconvenient for his position.
He wants to see transitional fossils showing a smooth change, yet when
he's shown that, he's forced to insist that the starting and ending
organism are really the same kind! (it shows variation only within in
the horse "kind" for example).
He wants to see change between "kinds" yet when he's shown the smooth
transition from reptile to mammal, he claims, "But this only shows
transition in the "vertebrate kind".
So he's shown fossils throughout the geologic record that show stepping
stones between major groups and he then claims the details are missing
- the links are missing - or he claims the fossils are arbitrarily put
into a lineage! So then it's pointed out to him that these fossils
show inexplicable (from the creationist point of view) links, and when
the details are demonstrated and supported with genetic evidence from
modern organisms, he petulantly cries, "You're not going to bamboozle
me with details!".
In other words, no matter *what* the evidence is, people of Dembski's
ilk will always find an excuse not to accept it. The truth is that
they're ultimately not interested in the evidence, and they're
ultimately not interested in science. The truth is that they have a
religious agenda, not a scientific one, and they're going to stick to
that no matter how stupid it makes them look.
Dembski hits his head against Cambrian rocks: "The challenge that
confronts evolution here comes up most flagrantly in what's called the
Cambrian Explosion. In a very brief window of time during the
geological period known as the Cambrian, virtually all the basic animal
types appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no trace of
evolutionary ancestors."
There are three huge lies from Dembski in that last sentence alone:
1. "In a very brief window of time during the geological period known
as the Cambrian..."
This "very brief" time period was actually was anywhere between *TEN*
and *ONE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS* depending on what you want to
include/exclude! It was a relatively brief period in terms of geologic
time, but even half of that difference pretty much encompasses the
successful rise of the entire mammalian class. The last sixty million
years started with only the most primitive organisms that might be
termed primates, and ended with us, for better or for worse. Ten,
forty-five, sixty, or one hundred million years is not an
inconsequential period of time from an evolution point of view,
especially when you're dealing with relatively simple and/or
essentially ambiguous and/or very plastic organisms in an environment
rich with possibility.
2. "...virtually all the basic animal types appeared suddenly in the
fossil record..."
So much for IDC being a science! What, exactly, does Dembski mean when
he uses loose and abstract terms like "basic animal types" instead of
the requisite precise scientific language?
Let's ask him: Were there elephants in the Cambrian? No! Was there a
dinosaur in the Cambrian? No! Any reptile? No! Amphibians? No! A
fish? No! Okay, then, an insect - was there an insect in the
Cambrian? No! C'mon, there must have been some plants? No! - I
don't mean a flowering plant, I mean one of those primitive plants like
a cycad. No!
To say that a lot of the basic body plans for modern organisms were in
place by the *end* of the Cambrian is not the same as saying modern
organisms are found in the Cambrian, which is what Dembski seems to be
either cluelessly or deliberately confuting here. The fact is that
while recognizable ancestors were around, absolutely none of the
modern classes of organisms we're most familiar with today were extant
at all.
So is Dembski admitting that while (so he might claim) a god created
the basic organisms back in the Cambrian, everything we know today
*evolved* from those? Isn't his position that he insists that the
Theory of Evolution is false and he has the math to "prove" it?!
3. "...with no trace of evolutionary ancestors."
Another lie. Fifty years ago, these organisms *appeared* to have
appeared suddenly, but since then quite abundant, earlier and *more
primitive* forms have been discovered, just as Darwin's theory
predicts. This is why Dembski is an idiot to pontificate upon what he
claims is lacking in the fossil record. Fifty years from now, his
comment will be just as inapplicable as it would be had he made it
fifty years ago.
Which brings us directly to his deceit about what Peter Ward said: "The
Cambrian Explosion so flies in the face of evolution that
paleontologist Peter Ward wrote, 'If ever there was evidence suggesting
Divine Creation, surely the Precambrian and Cambrian transition, known
from numerous localities across the face of the earth, is it.' Note
that Ward is not a creationist, but he can't bring himself to deny that
there are reasons to believe in creation that you don't have to be
'ignorant, stupid or insane' to find compelling."
This is a blatant, shameful and disgusting *LIE* on Dembski's part. In
the same way that he lied about what Darwin wrote, he is lying here
about what Peter Ward believes and he's lying that Ward here throws up
his hands and admits that evolution has no fossil evidence and that
organisms must have been created.
Dembski's lie is soundly refuted here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000251.html
Dembski: "Evolutionists sometimes argue that the necessary transitional
fossils are there but haven't been found or that they've all been
destroyed. But this is wishful thinking. The challenge of the fossil
record that Darwin identified 150 years ago has not gone away."
Only in his wildest dreams! Yes, the fossil record is incomplete! It
always will be, but that's almost a definition of "fossil record"! For
Dembski to pretend that *none* have been found in the ~150 years since
Darwin is quite simply a lie.
And Dembski compounds his lying by immediately following it with
another: "To his credit, the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould
conceded this point: 'The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the
fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The
evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the *tips
and nodes* of their branches; the rest is inference, however
reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.' So the point you need to
press is whether this inference is reasonable at all." (emphasis mine)
Dembski is bereft of a valid intellect if he thinks you won't notice
Gould's use of the word "rarity" - not *absence*, but *rarity*. And
note the phrase "tips and nodes" - not "tips and starting point", but
tips and nodes. In other words, the modern forms (the tips) are there,
and also the modes - the "missing" links are there! So Gould is not
saying there are no transitionals, but that they are rare. And even
one transitional series utterly destroys the fallacy of a one-time
special creation by some big bearded magic giant in the sky.
Gould first made this comment in one of his prolific essays for
"Nature" magazine in 1977, but as with many of those essays, it found
its way into one of his books: Gould, S. J. 1980. "The Episodic Nature
of Evolutionary Change" in "The Panda's Thumb" (New York: W. W. Norton
& Company).
I have a signed copy of this book and in it, Gould clarifies what he
means on pages 182-185: "In the peripheral region itself, we might find
direct evidence of speciation, but such good fortune would be rare
indeed because the event occurs so rapidly in such a small population."
But Dembski is even more stupid than even he demonstrates himself to be
here. What he's paradoxically stating is that when you can show in the
fossil record a series of organisms that are largely anatomically
similar to one another, this proves nothing, and what you can't show in
the fossil record is a gradual line of change.
Well given that Dembski agrees that there are in the fossil record
anatomically similar organisms that can be arranged in a chronological
and ordered progression, and given that actual speciation has been
observed by scientists in and out of the lab, the creationists have
just conceded!
And Dembski's careful culling of his quotations from Gould left out
this little nugget: "In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes
should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record" In other words,
Gould is stating the exact and precise *opposite* of what Dembski
deceitfully has him say.
In another of his books, 'Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further
Reflections in Natural History' New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Gould has
this to say: "Since we [Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge] proposed
punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted
again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity,
I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no
transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the
species level, but they are abundant between larger groups."
In short, Gould states unconditionally that there are transitionals to
be found in precisely the places Dembski tries to pretend there are
none, and that there are also transitionals, though rare, at species
level. In addition to this, speciation has been observed in the wild
and in the lab. In other words, everything that's needed to
demonstrate evolution to reasonable, unbiased, intelligent and *honest*
people is in place.
Dembski's second question concerns natural selection. "According to
evolutionist Richard Dawkins," he says, "the 'evidence of evolution
reveals a universe without design.' Yet he also states, 'Biology is
the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been
designed for a purpose.' How does Dawkins know that living things only
appear to be designed but actually are not?"
The simple answer to this is that if there is a plausible pathway by
which nature could have "constructed" these things, then they're not
designed, they're natural. If you want to then start arguing that what
we call natural is actually design, you're going to have to come up
with a different argument.
Dembski's mindless blundering into the dangerous (for him!) turf of the
so-called "Law of Teleology" - which pretends to certify that where
there is design, there is a designer - isn't going to help him.
You know, creationists are frequently guilty of the assinine mistake of
claiming that evolutionists use a circular argument: the fossils date
the rocks and the rocks date the fossils, for example. Their claim is
untrue of course, but Dembski here is falling precisely into that kind
of circuitous trap: we know living organisms were designed because they
look like they were designed!
The look like they were designed, therefore this proves there was a
designer! The Law of Teleogy. No! This is actually the Law of
Tautology. Dembski asks how Dawkins knows that living things only
appear to be designed, but courage fails him when it comes to asking
himself how he knows that *anything* is designed.
This is the fallacy of *all* of the design arguments. Every one of
them starts out from the gullibly presumptuous stance that the one
making the claim has perfect knowledge. For a believer, this is a
shockingly blasphemous position to assume.
An automobile doesn't grow out of the dirt. It is designed and built
by humans. We know this. There's no question about it. So when
someone asks this about an automobile, we already know the answer. In
fact, this is the *distinction* between "man"-made and natural - the
one has a human designer, the other doesn't. The one originates from
human minds and hands, the other is part of the natural universe. So
their straw balloon not only fails to fly, it cannot accomodate their
hot air to begin with.
This distinction between human artifice and what nature grows is
blurring now that humans are venturing deeper into organic
construction, but it is not yet so blurred that we cannot see the
distinction outlined above. However, one day it will be, and then what
will happen to Dembski's argument? It will dissipate like the hot air
that it is.
When we are in the position of being able to design and create new
organisms from chemical precursors, what will happen if, say, someone
creates a cat from scratch (so to speak) and sets it next to a cat that
arrived though natural processes alone? Two black cats, sitting
side-by-side differing from each other by a whisker. Let's sit them in
front of Dembski and challenge him to distinguish which one was made by
humans and which one was made by nature.
Let's invite Dembski to examine the cats. He's not a doctor or a
zoologist or even an anatomist (which begs the question as to why he
thinks he can pontificate with such assumed authority on evolution in
the first place), but let's overlook that and invite him to distinguish
between these two cats. He can xray them, he can run an MRI, he can
take blood and tissue samples, he can examine their genes. What,
exactly, would it be that would tell him that the one was directly
"manufactured" by human intelligence whereas the other is a product of
nature? What? If he can specify that, then he might be able to turn
it into an argument for design.
But you know what? There is not a thing he can specify that would show
you that nature made the one whereas humans made the other. In other
words, his argument from design doesn't have enough room to swing a cat
But there's more than one way to skin a cat. The only area where he
might come close to distinguishing one from the other (depending on
exactly how the "artificial" cat's genome was pieced together) would be
that the one genome was organized and orderly, containing only the
material needed for the cat to function at optimal efficiency, even
perhaps containing unique genes found nowhere else in nature, whereas
the other was strewn with missteps, mistakes, junk, pseudogenes,
retroviral insertions, introns (excluding intronic splicing enhancers),
LINEs and SINEs (which make up about a third of our human genome), was
poorly organized and did not contain efficient error-correction.
In other words, what Dembski would be forced to conclude from this
comparison - *if he were honest* - is that the human-engineered cat was
designed, whereas the cat from nature was not. This is, of course,
precisely the opposite of what he and his ilk like to pretend they can
claim.
The argument from design neglects the requisite and common sense point
of origin: we only *know* that a given object has a designer when we
start out from the a priori position of knowing that the object in
question was designed!
If we (unlike the out-dated William Paley) were to go out for a walk
and come upon a totally alien object with which we have no familiarity
whatsoever, we would have no way to be certain that it was or was not
designed. The only way we could tell would be to compare it with what
we do know. This brings us back inevitably to the same issue with
which we began. The comparison necessarily would be either A or B
(assuming no trickery is involved and leaving gods aside for the
moment):
A. Does it look like something in nature (a meteorite looks similar to
rocks on Earth):
Yes! then it's a natural thing, no one created it.
B. Does it look like nothing natural (an alien spaceship might look
similar to a human-engineered spaceship)
Yes! then it's a contrived thing, someone created it.
But if an alien spaceship landed undetected and it looked just like a
big rock, no one would think it was an alien-built ship!
Dembski claims: "Evolutionists tell us that before Darwin, many
scientists mistakenly viewed the living world as the product of design,
but that afterward they came to their senses."
Dembski's wording here needs some serious bias correction, but let's
take him at his word, since this is usually the simplest way to utterly
defeat creationists who are typically gullible, blind and stupid. The
reason "scientists" back then believed in design had nothing to do with
science, but everything to do with faith. In other words, it was the
same, blind, unthinking "reason" that modern creationists employ!
Once the facts became clear, those scientists who were intellectually
honest, were forced to change their position. This is the scientific
method - you do not start out with blind faith and bend the truth to
fit it, you start out with a hypothesis and search for evidence that
either refutes it or supports it. You let the evidence dictate the
position, not the other way around. If Dembski cannot grasp this, then
he is a scientific fraud, pure and simple.
Dembski: "For Dawkins and most evolutionists, Darwin's theory of
natural selection - the idea that nature weeds out the less fit and
allows the more fit to survive and reproduce - is supposed to be all
that's needed to explain the appearance of design in biology."
Yep. If Dembski has a scientific argument to refute that position, why
hasn't he published it in one of the recognized science journals? Of
course, the Theory of Evolution is more complex in its details than any
creationist has the integrity to address, but that's their "science"
for you.
Dembski claims: "The great fallacy of evolution is that it claims all
the benefits of design without the need for actual design."
This is a lie. Creationists claim that everything is specifically,
intelligently and perfectly designed for a purpose. Evolutionists do
not make any such claim.
The adherents of design demand that features of the universe are of
such complexity that the best explanation is that they are the result
of intelligent and purposeful action. Evolution speaks only to genetic
change in organisms over time, governed by undirected chemical
processes as part and parcel of the natural laws of physics. There is
no "design" to it, and Dembski's desperate semantics cannot change
that.
Dembski claims that "Evolution embraces a fundamentally irrational
process - natural selection, which acts on the spur of the moment and
has no power to choose. It is incapable of deferring success or
gratification. And yet, so limited a process is supposed to produce
marvels of biological complexity and diversity that far exceed the
capacities of the best human designers.
Not only is his last claim a lie, but his wording can hardly be
considered unbiased. "Irrational process"? Rationality doesn't enter
into it. Chemicals don't choose to combine or refuse to combine based
on whim or fashion. They are forced to do so according to the laws of
physics. Within that context, their "behavior" is perfectly rational
even though no thought or conscious preference is involved.
Even when Dembski pretends to describe evolution he cannot get his
one-track mind away from so-called intelligent so-called design, can
he?
The fact is that we see evolution doing precisely what Dembski derides.
And nature can indeed "store up" success or gratification. Mutations
in the genome can "prepare" an organism for success, depending on what
occurs in the environment in which they live. If they have genes that
(as a result of mutation) perform better in a new or a changed
environment than do their competitors, they will indeed reap success.
This has been proven over and again. Conversely, if they are
"ill-prepared" then they can rapidly become extinct.
Dembski: "There's no evidence that natural selection is up to the task.
Natural selection is fine for explaining certain small-scale changes
in organisms, like the beaks of birds adapting to environmental
changes. It can take existing structures and hone them. But it can't
explain how you get complex structures in the first place."
Now it's time to hold Dembski's feet to the fire. Ask him why he's
focusing on gross anatomy instead of on the genome. Ask him why he
doesn't grasp that organisms don't evolve at the level of gross
anatomy, they evolve at the level of mutations in the genome, which is
really very simple - five bases, and that's it.
Ask him how an embryo can grow complex structures when all it has to
direct it is the unintelligent workings of the genome.
So it's right back atcha Dembski: There's no evidence that *your*
explanation is up to the task.
Dembski admits that natural selection explains evolution, but only a
bit! Yet he fails to articulate any reason whatsoever why this small
scale change cannot accumulate into large scale change, especially when
the genome demonstrates categorically, in case after case, that this is
precisely what has happened. No creationist has *ever* so much as
postulated, let alone published a peer-reviewed science paper in a
standard journal on any sort of scientific mechanism which would
prevent one "kind" from 'varying" into another "kind".
Let's face it, creationists cannot agree on how old the universe and
the Earth are and they cannot even offer a scientific definition upon
which they can all agree, as to what a "kind" is!
Dembski's obsessive addiction to the term "natural selection" like it
is the only thing in evolution, speaks volumes about his inadequacy in
preparing for success or gratification in pursuing his claims.
And now it's time for another Dembski truncation: "That's why cell
biologist Franklin Harold writes, 'there are presently no detailed
Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular
system, only a variety of wishful speculations.'"
Note how Dembski offers not a single reference in his article. He's
not going to help you at all to check up on his sleight of hand and
dishonesty. Harold's quote is from "The Way of the Cell" which is
reviewed (not altogether favorably) here:
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v30/n3/full/ng0302-251.html
Dembski and his ilk have rather an advantage in that there is such an
overwhelming mass of material supporting evolution (which Harold's book
does unequivocally) that creationists find it very easy to carefully
cull a handful of quotes which they can then use to lie that
evolutionists admit that there's no evolution. The scientific term for
this is 'patent *****'. This compulsive behavior of the creation
camp serves no purpose other than to starkly highlight the poverty of
their position in contrast to the richness of the Theory of Evolution.
Until and unless I get a look at what Harold actually said, I have no
further comment here except to say that I've personally seen
articulations of plausible biochemical pathways to complexity,
including many which directly address Michael Behe's supposed
irreducibly complex examples:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
Why hasn't Dembski addressed those instead of giving us out-of-context
quotes from unreferenced books?
Dembski's closing comment on question 2 ("Remember the phrase 'wishful
speculations' whenever anyone starts touting the wonder-working power
of natural selection.") needs to be reflected back upon himself:
Remember the phrase 'wishful speculations' whenever anyone starts
touting the wonder-working power of a god.
Dembski's third question concerns detecting design, which we've already
covered, but since the whole purpose of his five questions is to attack
evolutionists whom, he likes to fantasize, are dodging these questions,
I'm going to dam his torpid doze and full steam ahead with question 3:
"The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific
research program that looks for signs of intelligence from distant
space. Should biologists likewise be looking for signs of intelligence
in biological systems? Why or why not?"
The simple answer is that as long as natural explanations suffice,
Okham's razor dictates that gods ought not to be introduced, and
**simple explanations do suffice**. If Dembski disagrees, then where
is his scientific material published in peer-reviewed journals
demonstrating in scientific detail the hand of a creator in nature?
The answer is: nowhere! That's right - Dembski has **NOTHING**. When
it comes to putting up or shutting up, he's thoroughly impotent.
He claims the dodge here is: "Evolutionists admit that intelligent
design is scientifically detectable in many areas of science, such as
archeology, forensics and cryptography."
Note Dembski's sleight-of-hand here: every single one of the topics he
lists has to do with human artifact! *That's* why intelligent design
is detectable, because it brings us back precisely to where we started.
Of course we can detect intelligent design in things we already know
to be intelligently designed! The prime purpose of the three sciences
Dembski names is *looking* for intelligent design by definition.
Evolution is not such a science. There is no reason to imagine
intelligent design was involved since we can see quite clearly from the
evidence that nature's "designs" can be arrived at with no intelligence
whatsoever.
Dembski: "They even admit that nonhuman intelligence could be
scientifically detectable, as with SETI. But they reject out of hand
the possibility of detecting design in biological systems.
SETI is the "Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence" - in other
words, looking for aliens, but this is another of Dembski's
sleight-of-hand exercises. And what's with "they"? Exactly who are
"they"? Does he mean evolutionists? What do "they" have to do with
cosmology?
And from whence is his mandate to speak for evolutionists? Have you
noticed how readily the creationist camp assumes authority to speak for
evolutionists and other scientists? It's a curious position given that
so few of them are academically qualified in the sciences related to
evolution and ironic in that they all of them oppose evolution.
Dembski conveniently overlooks the fact that SETI is looking for
intelligence as defined by what we consider to be intelligent. If
there's an intelligence out there that is utterly alien to us, then
there's every possibility that we wouldn't be able to distinguish it,
which brings us soundly back to intelligent design. Unless these
believers blasphemously claim to know the mind of god, what makes
*them* think that they have any hope of detecting the work of such a
god? Their position is fundamentally tautologous.
Dembski's weakness is broadcast loudly in his next claim: "Any
intelligence responsible for biological complexity would have to be an
unevolved intelligence, and for evolutionists there is no such thing."
The fallacy of the creationist position can be found in their pretence
that this intelligent designer could be something other than a god. If
it is, for example, an alien life form, then what designed the alien
life form? Did *that* life form evolve by itself, or did some
intelligence design it? If you take this illogical position back to
its logical point of origin, you *inevitably* end up with the
requirement that "godidit"! It's unavoidable. In short, any
creationist or intelligent design advocate who claims that a god does
not underlie their position is a liar. It's that simple.
Dembski: "Usually evolutionists attempt to get around this obvious
double standard by saying that we have experience with human
intelligence but none with the sort of intelligence that would form
life. That's why SETI is such a powerful response to the evolutionists'
double standard. If an extraterrestrial intelligence communicated with
Earth via radio signals, we would know nothing about its actual
workings, motivations, and purposes. But we would still recognize the
intelligence from its effects."
Dembski is totally clueless. In his example, we would recognize the
effect because it would be a radio signal - a technology we know is
designed, *because we also design such technology*!
If this alien intelligence contacted us through some alien method, such
as alien telepathy or some technology we have no clue about, there is
no way we would be able to recognize it. We're looking for alien
intelligence by and using systems that we known, a priori, to be
designed! Which brings us, *again*, slam-bang back to the problem with
intelligent design: since we have no confirmed experience of the
hallmarks of *a god's design*, how can we possibly comment on whether
or not what we see around us is designed by a god?!
Yes, we can make the same dumb claims at which creationists are so
expert with regard to design, but even if such claims were valid, all
they would "logically prove" is that human-like intelligence designed
nature, not that a god did it. So the end result of a successful
prosecution of intelligence design would be to prove there are humans
out there somewhere, who created us! It would not explain how those
humans evolved (or were created!).
Dembski continues his flawed example: "Recall the movie Contact, based
on a novel by Carl Sagan, in which SETI astronomers discover a radio
signal consisting of a long sequence of prime numbers (these are
numbers divisible only by themselves and one). Because the sequence was
long and complex, it was deemed too hard to reproduce by chance. Also,
the prime numbers are mathematically significant and thus represent an
objective, independently given pattern, or what is called a
specification.
"There is now a growing body of scientific literature that points to
the appearance of both complexity and specification as a reliable
marker for design."
Maybe - in systems where we *have a priori knowledge were designed by
humans*. Is the claim of the creationists that the universe was
designed by humans?
Dembski's fourth question is about molecular machines. He's actually
cribbed this without acknowledgement from Michael Behe's "Darwin's
Black Box" which has been thoroughly refuted. It's a sorry sign of how
unread Dembski is that he even has the cluelessness to quote this. He
asks, "Do any structures in cells resemble highly intricate machines
designed by humans?"
The quick answer is: No! There may be things designed by humans which
are modeled after natural structures, but the inverse of this does not
follow.
Dembski: "Evolutionists claim that these structures evolved. But if
so, how? Could such machines have features that place them beyond the
reach of evolution?"
The quick answer is: No! and not a single creationist has ever
published a paper in a standard refereed science journal which proves
this wrong.
http://tinyurl.com/8o2m2
Dembski claims the dodge here is: "Evolutionists use a
divide-and-conquer strategy."
Here Dembski describes the creationist methodology to a 'T'. That's
precisely how they work. They do no science of their own. They
publish nothing in peer-reviewed science journals on the topic of
creation. Creation "science" consists **solely and entirely* of
dividing the Theory of Evolution into meaningless arbitrary sub-units
sized so that even creationists can grasp them, and having rendered
them at these absurd proportions, they point out how absurd they are.
Well duhh!
Dembski: "They try to explain the complex in terms of the simple."
Just the opposite of the creationists who try to explain the simple in
terms of the impossibly complex!
Dembski: "Thus, when confronted with a molecular machine or any other
complex structure in biology, evolutionists merely point out that the
structure has components that are simpler and could be worked on by
natural selection. Hard to believe, but from this unremarkable
observation, evolutionists blithely conclude that natural selection is
able to build all complex biological structures."
Another lie! It isn't a "blithe conclusion" but an acknowledgement of
what the facts demonstrate.
Until creationists themselves can demonstrate **a single natural
structure that is impossible to arrive at by means of evolution** then
that is the default position! Since every example the creationists
have come up with has been shot down easily by evolutionists,
creationists do not have a complex leg to stand on.
And Dembski's comeback is: "You really need to hold the evolutionists'
feet to the fire here. The important thing is not to let them retreat
into generalities."
Excuse me, but didn't Dembski just get through instructing his blind
sheep in question 1 above, "Don't get lost in the details."? So what
does he want - details or generalities? If he wants the one then he
needs to quit whining like a baby about the other. The man is a moron
to equivocate like this. It's tempting to insist that he needs to
either fish or cut bait here, but since his entire armory consists
either of baiting the evolutionists or of fishing for inane and amateur
ways to try and trip up the Theory of Evolution without having to
actually do or publish any science, that would really leave him in a
quandary, wouldn't it?
Dembski: "There are structures in the cell that don't just resemble
humanly built machines - they actually are machines in every sense of
the word."
Note his not-so-subtle moving of the goalposts here. He begins with
"resemble *humanly built* machines" (emphasis mine) and then shifts it
to "actually are machines". "Humanly built" conveniently disappears
because if we held Dembski's clay feet to the fire, he'd have to own up
to a lack of intellectual honesty: that if the criterion for
recognizing design is what humans can make, and these natural chemical
systems "resemble humanly built machines" then the only conclusion to
draw is that they were indeed created by humans.
Dembski: "Don't focus on how such machines might have originated in the
abstract. Focus on a specific structure and force the evolutionist to
try to explain in detail how it might have evolved."
Been there, done that. Examples are all over the Internet and all over
the literature:
http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/Behe1.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish.html
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb97.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/peter_atkins/behe.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/
http://www.etsu.edu/philos/faculty/NIALL/Mousetraps.and.Men.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/icsic.html
http://www.etsu.edu/philos/faculty/niall/complexi.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/Evolving_Immunity.html
Michael Behe's empty box:
http://tinyurl.com/45qjg
http://tinyurl.com/8gatr
http://bostonreview.net/BR21.6/orr.html
and finally, John McDonald takes down Behe's example of a mousetrap
being irreducibly complex:
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html
Dembski blunders on: "Take, for instance, the bacterial flagellum,
which is now referred to as the 'Icon of Intelligent Design' by some
evolutionists because it has been so effectively used to criticize
evolution. The bacterial flagellum is a marvel of engineering.
Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard refers to it as 'the most efficient
machine in the universe.' The flagellum is a little motor-driven
propeller that sits on the backs of certain bacteria and drives them
through their watery environment. It spins at 20,000 rpm and can change
direction in a quarter turn. It requires approximately 40 protein parts
for its construction. If any of the parts are missing or not available
in the right proportions, no functional flagellum will form. So, how
did it evolve?"
Dembski talks like there is only one "kind" of flagellum, but this is a
lie. There are three major kinds, and a host of sub-varieties, so even
in existing examples there is a variety. This variety ought not to
exist according to the rules of intelligent design, if there is no
evolution.
With regard to a stepping stone to a flagellum, Dembski is clearly
behind in his reading:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html
And thus we can dismiss his lie that follows: "Despite thousands of
research articles about the structure and function of the flagellum,
biologists don't have a clue how it could have evolved. Evolutionists
have only one straw at which they continually grasp - namely, that it
contains a structure similar to a microsyringe found in some bacteria.
Having found this sub-structure, evolutionists merrily conclude that
the microsyringe must have evolved into the flagellum."
Dembski continues with his inane fantasizing: "Such lapses in logic
crop up throughout evolutionary literature. The challenge for
evolutionary theory is not to find components of such systems that
could be grist of natural selection's mill. Rather, it is to provide
detailed, testable, step-by-step scenarios whereby such components
could reasonably have come together to bring about the marvels of
engineering that we find in systems like the flagellum."
Don't get lost in the details, Billy. Or better yet, do get lost - in
the details of how your intelligent design is supposed to work.
There is not one single proponent of so-called intelligent so-called
design so-called theory who has articulated even **ONE** detail of how
it is supposed to work in a science paper, because there isn't a theory
to promote. This is precisely *why* the creationists are so desperate
to deflect your attention with their incessant demands to fit yet
another gap they have perceived: it covers the fact that the would-be
emperor isn't wearing any clothes.
Can you see the smoke screen here? Just like the wizard of Oz, hiding
behind his curtain, the entirety of intelligent design creationism is a
facade. It's pretty transparent when you get right down to it. In
fact, it's so flimsy that it can be pulled aside with a simple
question: where are the details of intelligent design creationism? I'm
not talking about the sour-grapes whining over what the opponents of
evolution see as its flaws, I'm talking about published positive
scientific evidence which supports no conclusion other than that
everything was designed by a god.
Such evidence is nowhere to be found because there is none. The
curtain is not just pulled aside, it's non-existent, which ironically
means it is curtains for intelligent design.
Dembski's final question concerns testability: "What evidence would
convince you that evolution is false? If no such evidence exists, or
indeed could exist, how can evolution be a testable scientific theory?"
He claims the dodge is: "In the theory of evolution, organisms
gradually transform as the result of purely material factors such as
natural selection and random genetic changes. What would it take,
therefore, to refute such a theory? Darwin sidestepped the question by
saying, 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed,
which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can
find out no such case.' Although Darwin here seems to be opening
evolution up to criticism, in fact he is doing the opposite. Indeed, he
is protecting evolution from all effective challenges and rendering it
untestable."
This lie is exposed hilariously by the famous quote attributed to J. B.
S. Haldane - that finding a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian would
overturn the Theory of Evolution. Any such out-of-place fossil would
do it, **BUT NOT ONE "OUT-OF-PLACE" FOSSIL HAS EVER BEEN FOUND**.
Dembski's comeback is: "Intelligent design does not stack the deck this
way. Unlike evolution, intelligent design is refutable. All it takes
is to offer a specific Darwinian explanation for complex systems, like
the bacterial flagellum."
Well evolutionists have done that! Where's Dembski's concession?
Dembski asks: Why is it important to ask these questions? As Richard
Halvorson, writing for the Harvard Crimson, noted, 'We must refuse to
bow to our culture's false idols. Science will not benefit from
canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith."
Evolutionists haven't done that and it's a sign of Dembski's flaws and
weaknesses that he contorts himself into pretending they have. The
Theory of Evolution is held to the same rigorous scientific standards
to which all other sciences are held. It's a pity we cannot say that
about Dembski's so-called intelligent so-called design.
Dembski concludes with yet another lie: "Evolutionists don't want their
theory questioned. But the questions need to be asked. Too much is
riding on evolution for it to escape proper scrutiny."
Well given that the Theory of Evolution has been under close scrutiny
from both scientists and creationists for close to 150 years and still
stands strong, it has passed this test. But what of Intelligent
Design? What tests has it offered itself up for? Has there been
published in refereed science journals, papers supporting the "theory"
and offering abundant evidence for it? No! Is there even a testable
theory of intelligent design? No!
Finally, the truth comes out. Here we have Dembski immodestly and
righteously puffing himself up and the only apparent reason for it is
the dirty little secret about his own blind faith that he keeps in his
tightly-locked closet. I wonder if anyone has ever mentioned to him
the old adage about taking the plank out of his own eye before he
pretends he can whine about the mote he perceives in the eyes of
others?
Look for the companion piece: Ten Questions Creationists Would Rather
Dodge
Budikka
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