Sunday, February 06, 2005

More vacuity of design

Michael Behe writes in a New York Times OpEd

"The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious," Behe writes.


But that is not how design is inferred. Design is not based on 'it looks like a duck', it is based on an eliminative argument namely that evolution cannot explain X, thus it is designed. This is also known as an argument from ignorance or God of the Gaps.
ID proponents often try to argue that ID presents the best explanation or hypothesis but it is clear, by the absence of any such hypothesis beyond it looks like a duck, that ID is scientifically meaningless.

Michael Behe's concept of IC, which was once touted as evidence for ID, has not fared much better than other ID arguments.
Read more!