The design argument relies on ignorance to work. This was just as true for Paley’s watch as it is for current Intelligent Design theory. The basic thought process is this (for the design argument known as the Watchmaker Analogy):

1. The complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer.
2. As with a watch, the complexity of X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) necessitates a designer.

Step 1 relies on our knowledge of the watch and how it was designed and created. Step 2 relies on our ignorance of X and how (or even if) it was designed and created. The idea is that we should explain what we don’t know in terms of what we do know, and since we know that the watch was designed, we should be able to explain what we don’t know about X as the product of design as well.

I’m not here today to argue the merits of this. Rather I wanted to point out the simple fact that such arguments will never go away.

“But Venture,” I hear you say, “as we learn more we’ll be better able to explain X as a result of natural processes, thereby chipping away at this argument!” There is one glaring problem with that view. History has shown us that the more we come to know, the more we also come to know how much we don’t know. It’s not that ignorance increases along with knowledge but that our awareness of our ignorance increases. The sophistication of the Intelligent Design arguments are a testament to that. Scientists such as Michael Behe use our ignorance to great effect by providing very detailed explanations of exactly what it is that we don’t yet understand and making a design inference from that.

The fact is that the design inference will never go away because it relies on our knowledge of one thing to explain our ignorance of another thing, and as science progresses we will always become more and more aware of both.

Here’s the latest from Ms. O’Leary:

But I have never heard anyone famously say, as Dawkins said about Darwinism, that [endosymbiosis, gene transfer or neoteny] make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Why not? Because it’s not clear that these processes could not be guided. The mechanisms are proposed simply as mechanisms by which significant changes might take place, not as mechanisms that rule out guidance.

“Darwinists” aren’t pointing to these specifically as making it possible to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist” because these are details in the larger picture of evolution that allow such a thing. Claiming it for these specifics would be akin to claiming that genetic mutations make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Absolutely genetic mutations are a necessary component of evolution, but they on their own are not enough to make such a broad statement sensible. It’s the totality of evolution, both what is known and what is as yet unknown, that makes such intellectual fulfillment possible.

Here is the truly mind boggling hypothesis thrown out by GilDodgen over at UD:

I would like to offer the following hypothesis: The universe was rigged. It was designed for discovery (a thesis put forward in The Privileged Planet), but also designed in such a way that there would always be an escape clause in the contract for those who are committed, for whatever reason, to reject the obvious.

This is such an amazing hypothesis because it is necessarily and provably true. Any evidence that the universe is designed obviously supports it since “It was designed for discovery…”. On the other hand, lacking that evidence, or any evidence that it was not designed also supports it since such evidence (or lack thereof) is the “escape clause” that is hypothesized. So you see all evidence either for or against the hypothesis as well as a complete lack of evidence all end up proving the same thing: that this hypothesis is true.

Don’t think about it too much. Your head might explode.

Take a look at this new article over at Science Daily about morality and religion.

Here’s a link to the original article which appeared in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Citing several studies in moral psychology, the authors highlight the finding that despite differences in, or even an absence of, religious backgrounds, individuals show no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.

This is obviously false. The fact that you can’t have morality without Jesus proves the morality doesn’t exist without Jesus which proves that this entire study is false.

Maybe you atheists should try using logic for once instead of blindly accepting whatever some scientist says just because he has “evidence”.

I really enjoy the show Mythbusters. The science isn’t always as rigorous as I’d like, but the engineering can be really fun to watch.

One show in particular stands out to me because of the audience response. If you go the Mythbusters forums on this topic you’ll see a thread with posts into the thousands. I am, of course, talking about the (in)famous Plane on a Conveyor Belt episode. Here’s Adam Savage describing the problem on the show:

Let me spell it out for you, normally a plane sits on the runway, spins up its engines, moves forwards gets enough air over its wings and takes off. But in this case, the plane is sitting not on the runway, but a huge conveyor belt that is matching the planes forward speed in reverse, and the grand question is can the plane take off? The myth is that it can’t

Just in case you haven’t seen the show I’ll continue below the fold so that I don’t spoil it for you. Read more »

If you understand something better than everyone else, than chances are pretty good that you don’t understand it at all.

Physicists are often approached by amateurs that claim to have proven that Newtons Laws of Motion are wrong, or that in fact E ≠ mc². Heck, I’m no physicist and I’ve been approached by other amateur “scientists” who know me as a science buff with similar claims. In the vast majority of cases the person is simply misunderstanding some key point in the science, and in a large portion of those cases any attempt to correct that misunderstanding simply results in the claim that I and the entire scientific community are the ones misunderstanding it.

Yes, it’s theoretically possible that every other human being on the planet somehow missed this idea of yours that completely changes our understanding of the universe. It’s theoretically possible that no one ever considered the physical results of a person throwing a baseball far from any other gravitational body. It’s theoretically possible that every calculation ever done based on the known scientific laws were only right because every scientist before now was willing to “fudge” the result to make it fit with what they already knew to be true anyway. And yes, it’s theoretically possible that you understand something better after a few hours of study than other people do after a lifetime.

It’s just not very likely.

It’s really quite simple to prove this. Millions of Catholics have already figured it out. If they couldn’t on their own, then certainly their local Catholic Priest helped them, and of course they can be trusted completely as we prove below.

1. Only a Christian can become a Catholic priest
2. Any Christian, being morally superior, would not and could not molest a child
3. Anybody that molests a child obviously is not a Christian
4. Since
   1. A child molester is not a Christian and…
   2. Only a Christian can become a Catholic priest
   3. Any person that molests a child cannot possibly be a Catholic Priest
5. Therefore all Catholic priests can be absolutely trusted with children

A while back I happened upon a collection of really great videos on YouTube known as the Foundational Falsehoods Of Creationism made by a guy names Aron Ra. Unfortunately after loving them dearly for awhile, I got side tracked by such stupid things as work and marriage and a blog and I kind of forgot about them, and him.

Then recently I found this video floating around the blogofractal and it reminded me of why I loved those original videos.

Aron has the rare ability to explain things with such clarity that thereafter you can’t help but think that it’s just obvious. For example, Nick Matzke over at Panda’s Thumb said this about this particular video:

Everyone liked the immune system cross of Behe during the Kitzmiller case, but Aron-Ra has got the point so well he gets all the way down to the 3^rd- and 4^th-level emergency backup-backup excuse arguments Behe brings out to attempt to explain why his statements about the failure of the peer-reviewed literature were not refuted. And all in just a few minutes.

In case you’re not sure.

I really love seeing sound logic presented clearly. I wish I was capable of such simple clarity.