Design is detectable

From EvoWiki

Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 Further Reading 7 Related claims 8 Acknowledgments

Claim

Life looks intelligently designed because of its complexity and arrangement. As a watch implies a watchmaker, so life requires a designer.

Source

• Paley, William, Natural Theology, 1802.
• Kenyon, Dean H. and P. William Davis, 1990, Of Pandas and People. Haughton Pub. Co.

Responses

1. Evolution by natural selection over long periods of time is able to imitate what most laypeople would judge as being design: intuition, particularly on a human scale, is not reliable.
2. Unlike watches, biological organisms have had nearly four billion years to accumulate their complexity.
3. While it is true that Design is detectable, the so-called "Explanatory Filter" (the Design-detecting methodology of Intelligent Design "theory") is not the way to do it. According to the EF, the way to recognize Design is to rule out everything that isn't Design, and whatever is left over must be Design; in other words, the EF says that we recognize Design because of what it is unlike. But you don't recognize Design because it's unlike anything that isn't Design; rather, you recognize Design because it's like things that are Design. If we actually did detect Design the way the EF says we do, recognizing a Rembrandt painting would go something like this: "Hmmm... it's not a Picasso, not a Rubens, not a Mondrian, not a van Gogh... [lengthy list of "not a [insert name]"s deleted to save space] ...wait, I've got it! It's a Rembrandt!" Instead, it's "Yep, that's a Rembrandt alright."
4. Given as how there is no actual, finite definition of either "detectable design," nor irreducibly complex systems, it is extremely difficult to see how one can actually detect design in living organisms, aside from interviewing the breeders, laboratory workers or cultivators of a particular lineage (be it show-poodle, bacteria or orchid).
5. No proponent of this argument has ever offered to identify an unambiguous, let alone irrefutable, "stamp of design" for the benefit of creationism. They all suffice with analogies which presume to have real-world counterparts, with no evidence that this is so.
6. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Argument from Ignorance (it's so complex, I can't imagine it happening except by design)
• False Analogy (life isn't like a watch in many respects)
• Argument from Design

External Links

• Mark Isaak's page for this claim [1]
• CreationWiki's comments [2]

Further Reading

• Pennock, Robert T., 2000. Tower of Babel. MIT Press.
• Miller, Kenneth R., n.d. Of Pandas and People: A Brief Critique. [3]
• Aulie, Richard P., 1998. A Reader's Guide to Of Pandas and People [4]
• Larson, Gary, 1998. There's a Hair in My Dirt!: A Worm's Story, HarperCollins. (An amusing look at the ecological functions of death and decay)

Related claims

• Complexity indicates design
• Irreducible complexity indicates design
• Complex specified information indicates design
• Genetic algorithms require a designer to specify desired outcome
• Purpose indicates design
• Functional integration indicates design
• Similarities in DNA and anatomy are due to common design
• SETI researchers expect they can detect design

Acknowledgments