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Author | Topic: The ID Fallacy | |||||||||||||||||||||
wnope Inactive Member |
I have tried researching Dembski, Behe, and Johnson, yet can only find a single type of argument, the same fallacy.
It is generally referred to as "Argument from Ignorance", but I would like to expand on that phrase. Every ID argument to date relies on the same seemingly innocent premise: the choices for origin are naturalism, chance, or design. This is the basis of Dembski's explanatory filter. Granted, this premise is true. The fallacy occurs because in every argument, regardless of how many numbers or words are used to mask the fact, Intelligent Design assumes that "Evolution" is synonymous for "Naturalism". If you could show that there is no natural way or way by chance for Irreducibly Complex organisms can occur, then yes, the organism/organelle was designed. However, Evolution is not Naturalism. Evolution is simply one theory. If disproven, then all that has been shown is that Evolution, not naturalism, is not an option. So the filter fails along with all other "one or the other" claims. An example of this fallacy is applying it to before the discovery of genetics. How could Evolutionary Theory describe heredity? It couldn't be chance, and Evolution couldn't explain it. Therefore, because Evolution and chance are not options, heredity is passed down by a designer. We now know that is nonsense, but how is this different from the current claim on Irreducible Complexity?
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AdminNosy Administrator Posts: 4754 From: Vancouver, BC, Canada Joined: |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i think the other problem is that it's two stacked fallacies that operate like logic.
the first is basically an argument from icredulity:"i don't believe evolution could do this! it's impossible!" the second is an argument from ignorance:"i don't know what could have made this, therefor god did it." fact is that neither holds up. there are other methods besides the strictest form of darwinian evolution. if you show for instance that simple successive modification doesn't work, then there are other options that happen on their own within multiple steps of simple successive modification: co-option, scaffolding, etc. just because behe doesn't realize that these things happen in any evolutionary system doesn't mean the biologists (and computer scientists) don't. behe's ignorance of the field is not an argument. it's ignorance.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Welcome to the fray.
There are several logical fallacies involved: (1) False DilemmaForbidden (2) Argument from ignoranceForbidden (3) Appeal to popularityForbidden (4) Appeal to authorityForbidden (5) Hasty generalizationForbidden (6) Unrepresentative sampleForbidden (7) False analogyForbidden (8) Begging the questionForbidden (9) StrawmanForbidden (10) Affirming the consequentForbidden (11) UntestabilityForbidden (12) Failure to elucidateForbidden ... and others. These are just the easy ones, where examples come to mind as you read them. Welcome to the fray. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
(12) Failure to elucidate Forbidden behe's guilty of something similar. he claims that darwin's theory is a magical "black box" -- something that you put something into, and get something else out of without knowing how it works. but we know how darwinian evolution works. behe presents a "black box" explanation. he doesn't propose how something is intelligently designed -- he provides no mechanism. the explanation is doesn't explain anything.
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wnope Inactive Member |
RAZD- you are right on every account, but you're doing what almost every other anti-ID person does. Give an excellent rebuttal, but not one that can understood by the general public. We say "argument from ignorance", and among ourselves know exactly how. But I think of the reasons ID is at large is because no one takes the time to simply state how it is an argument from Ignorance.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 4.5 |
it would be developing and testing a reliable way of determining the degree of specified complexity in an object. I should be able to take anything I like, whether it be a snowflake, a geode, a rock, a mouse, and apply a standardised procedure. That procedure should give me the degree of specificed complexity (or whatever it is that the ID proponents call their imagined property).
Science goes after data. A scientific concept is one you should be able to measure. Why aren't the ID people coming up with the needed measuring procedure?
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ramoss Member (Idle past 641 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
It is very simple , actually,
What Behe does is say 'We can not understand how this happened, so therefore it was done by an intelligent designer (wink wink, god). However, in his original book, every problem he came up with that he proclaimed to be 'Irreducable complex' has been shown to have a well defined path. They were problems that were currently were being worked on when he was writing his book. They have been solved.. indeed, at least one of them was solved even before his book went to publication. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean that 'GOD DID IT'.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
that's why I linked each fallacy to a site that describes them.
... now if we have to spoon-feed from there .... :rollyeyes: we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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Annafan Member (Idle past 4608 days) Posts: 418 From: Belgium Joined: |
I agree with wnope though...
The message itself is important, but it is only efficient if it is understandable and well-worded from the point of view of the general public. Look at people like Duane Gish: it doesn't matter that he's (was?) constantly recycling rebutted arguments, simply because he has the charisma and knows how to draw the audience in. That is an important challenge: how to defend evolution, which is hampered by its complexity, to an audience that typically lacks necessary background.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5062 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
I called up Ken Ham on live radio from a street in New Orleans over a decade ago and suggested that Phil Johson got lost in Cornell's new entomology library which with the push of a button a whole shelf would move electronically.
I dont think that Phil has a "type of argument" although one can see his legal training in the new outlines he provided to the debate. Instead, Phil Johnson seems to be stuck on discerning where in academia the accounting for the "origins of genetic information is." The difference between Phil and me is that while we both have never carried out personal study of radioactive dating (unless my info on Phil is somewhat dated) I will and will constrain my thinking by what "times" might be involved. The reason Phil does not think future study times might be needed is because he thinks that the scientists themselves will change the science rather than the science "discovering" something it currently doesnt posses. In that I categorically differ from him, which is why I was willing to tell Ham that Phil was "lost" in his own outline and didnt read the details for the deconstruction it was not. There are other creationists with this ability. Please dont get me wrong. Phil didn't think that the origins of the genetic information is in the biochemistry or physiology. I do. Yes, I think there are big changes coming in biology but I think that information measures might be projected (even if not original) onto biochemical data not that there will be some newly informed population of scientists. The change will be gradual not saltic on my view. This does not make Phil J, formulaic by any means. At least that is how I see it. I have just recently realized that the scope of Phil's "alteration" within creationism might be supported by rejecting Weyl's support contra Kant of by a German author ( I have not read(more later if I can get a translation) writing around the time of the first world war as to how "people" are (in my own interpretation) a consistent class of the 2nd class of Cantorian ordinals. I think that will be in biochemistry not simple boolean overlays on data that informs genetics.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
it doesn't matter that he's (was?) constantly recycling rebutted arguments, simply because he has the charisma and knows how to draw the audience in. hmmm like the last election.
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