For the first time in some months, I’ve managed to find a little time to check out some of the current topics that go towards making this forum so fascinating. One thing doesn’t seem to have changed much though - evolutionists are still asking IDers to produce evidence to substantiate their claims, and still no evidence appears.
Indeed, on a couple of occasions I have asked IDers to personally ask their ”prime suspect’ for ”IDer in chief’ how it formulated its grand design. Not surprisingly, I have had no positive responses. As somebody who sees no evidence for the existence of supernatural entities, I predict no such positive response will ever be forthcoming.
However, it does not follow that non-IDers should give up on the quest to try to illicit some kind of response from the ID lobby, beyond the perfunctory, “we don’t think natural processes can explain this, therefore it must have been designed”.
I want to return to the blind watchmaker analogy employed by William Paley, which contended that if he should happen upon a watch he would have no problem concluding that the watch could not have come into existence without the design input of an intelligent designer . and that apparent complexity observed within nature must similarly point to the work of an intelligent designer.
At this point the ID lobby tends to go on the offensive by attacking evolutionary theory without a backward glance to the analogy that underpins the intelligent design argument.
So I’d like to ask a couple of questions of IDers regarding the above analogy.
They have chosen to draw one inference from the analogy, but surely there are other questions raised by it that require addressing. For example, by analysing the watch in much greater detail, much can be learned about the design (and production) processes, as well as the materials that were used, etc, not to mention the amount of design knowledge that existed at the time the design was formulated. These might all be seen as design constraints placed upon designers whenever they look to design and produce anything.
So the first question might be, based on what IDers have observed of the designs they perceive in nature, what design constraints did the intelligent designer have to work with in formulating its ”grand design’? Specifically, what design knowledge was available to it? What materials were available to it? Where did these materials come from?
If, at this point, the IDers are tempted to play the ”supernatural’ trump card, I think it’s worth reminding them that this option was not available to Paley’s watchmaker, so for the analogy to have any merit, we need to be comparing like for like.
Indeed, the very reason that things need to be designed and then produced is because they cannot be ”magiced’ into existence - evidence of design is in itself evidence of the designer having to work within the constraints of the reality they inhabit and is a clear pointer to the designer having no ”supernatural’ or ”magical’ powers.
So the second question would be, do IDers accept the proposition that evidence of design within natural processes would point to a designer working within the constraints imposed upon them by their environment and the lack of any ”supernatural’ or ”magical’ powers on the part of said designer?
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