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September 29, 2005

Intelligent Design (again) and mice

Cox and Forkum recently posted a great cartoon on the matter (reproduced here with permission)

As I understand it, the premise is that everything is so unbelievably complex, it must have been designed to fit together so very well. And that so long as the creator isn't named (just think of him as "Big G", or hyper-intelligent aliens), then somehow the theory is not inherently religious.

Now, if you believe we were so complex that we had to be designed, then whatever designed us must have been vastly more complicated (one doesn't wish to say infallible) in order to get all the details just right. So, just for arguments sake, and to avoid the overtly religious "Big G", we'll run with the aliens.

Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on. In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth.

Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Which explains everything but who designed the mice and their pan-dimensional world(s). And who designed the designers of the mice.

Roving about the web, I found something that hits just this troublesome little nail on the head, so I'll just reprint the far more eloquent Dr. Keith Lockitch's summation.

By the very nature of its approach, "intelligent design" cannot be satisfied with a "designer" who is part of the natural world. Such a "designer" would not answer the basic question its advocates raise: it would not explain biological complexity as such. The only "designer" that would stop their quest for a "design" explanation of complexity is a "designer" about whom one cannot ask any questions or who cannot be subjected to any kind of scientific study--a "designer" that "transcends" nature and its laws--a "designer" not susceptible of rational explanation--in short: a supernatural "designer."

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at September 29, 2005 12:03 PM

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