Deniers of intelligent design, think again

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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If you want to turn someone into a figure of fun, get them to insist, ABSOLUTELY INSIST, that something that obviously is true, “ain’t so.” That’s what some genius did to the neo-Darwinists, getting them to insist, ABSOLUTELY INSIST, that living creatures aren’t intelligently designed.

Of course, what they mean is that, although living creatures are in fact intelligently designed, there’s not really any designer. The intelligent design of living creatures is the result of a stochastic process, in which randomly generated items are brought into order by being operated on by some logical sorting and selecting process.

“Oh yes,” we say, “Quite so,” while smirking behind our hands. Meanwhile people who take what other people say at face value go over to the creationists because they at least say what they mean.

I know enough not to take what evolutionists say at face value. I know that to them denial of intelligent design is just a flag they muster behind. But I do think it makes them look silly.

It’s silly, of course, because it’s obviously not true. But it’s also silly because they’re saying that they, and you and I, are also not intelligently designed, though we, as human beings, can design intelligently. In fact, that’s almost the definition of “sapiens” in “Homo sapiens.” Tool making is definitely an example of intelligent design.

Does it mean anything to claim that an intelligent designer was not itself, or himself or herself, intelligently designed? I don’t think it does. One could as logically say “yes,” as “no.” If neo-Darwinists accept that saying “yes” is within reason, then they must plump for or against human exceptionalism. If they plump for it, saying human beings are the only evolved creatures that can design intelligently, then they skate close to the creationist position that humans are fundamentally different from the rest of nature. If they plump against it, saying human beings may not be the only ones that can design intelligently, then any living creature could be said, reasonably, to have been intelligently designed, too.

Once evolutionists do that they won’t look so silly. And a lot of people who went over to the creationist side will come on back.