Well, that's not the author's argument, really, but this New York Times Magizine article does one of the best jobs I've seen of succinctly explaining why Intelligent Design fails as a scientific explanation and offers nothing substantive to a theist either.From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims -- that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious.Stephen J. Gould did a pretty good job of explaining how many "mistakes" and other design oddities fit well into evolutionary theory, provide evidence for it rather than undermining it (see The Panda's Thumb, for instance). A bit of humor is found in the current article from the notion that an intelligent agent would sow similar chaos...
. . .
But if we can't infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. ... If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.
(apologies to my referer; flu grogginess caught up with me just in time to erase all traces of who you were...)
2 comments:
The clearest evidence that the Intelligent Design Theory is flawed:
Flu-induced blogging.
:-)
Sid
busters --
no, the peacock's tail is the result of what is called "sexual selection" -- that is, it has evolved purely because it impresses the peahens. the same is true to a lesser degree of the wild turkey, and to a much greater degree of the lyrebird -- the latter's tail is so completely maladaptive in all other ways (makes it difficult for them to fly, hugely increases the chances of getting caught by a predator, etc.) that it has to be under constant positive selection pressure (i.e., an impressive tail hugely increases the chances of mating and thus having lots of heavy-tailed sons) to a unbelievable degree in order to be maintained.
a peacock in full display may be intimidating, but as far as I know they only spread their tails to "strut their stuff" and not to try to chase anybody (other than competing suitors) away...
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