[extropy-chat] Re: Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[David]

Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> Kurt Schoedel <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>The creationists argue that biological systems so complex, irriducibly 
>>complex that they simply cannot have evolved through natural processes. 
>>So they say, biology had to have been designed. The problem, of course, 
>>is that the designer itself is an example of an irriducibly complex 
>>system that the designer itself had to have been designed by another 
>>designer, and so on. this is an example of an infinite recursion. When 
>>you point this out to creationists, they tend to go bananas on you. 
> 
> 
> In your dreams.  When I have pointed this out to Christians, they
> have just stared at me incomprehendingly as if I had just said
> something entirely nonsensical.  God is the Creator, the Source of
> all, who just IS.  A question about the origin of God is MEANINGLESS.
> This is entirely OBVIOUS.
> 
> Considering that even (by US standards) enlightened Christians fail
> to grasp the problem there, I don't think this will make the least
> impression on whacko creationists.
> 


I think a useful strategy against ID would be to emphasize the
"alien creator" aspects of their argument. If they are trying
to remove God from their arguments, then portray them as arguing
that mankind was created by little green men.
This is very easy to make fun of, and the only way they can
counter it is to bring God back, which makes their argument
religious, not scientific.