The notion that life came from non-life is one of the most absurd aspects of evolutionary biology, and yet it is believed without evidence by many seemingly intelligent people. To see the absurdity of such a notion check out this short video. It makes mockery of a naturalistic view of life’s origin by rewriting the Darwinian story a little. Check it out!
HT: William Dembski
Thinking to Believe 
October 9, 2006 at 8:07 pm
If watches reproduced on their own, then yes, they could develop into more and more complex watches. But they don’t do that. The “watchmaker” argument is an obvious straw man.
This muddled metaphor is trotted out at every opportunity, yet doesn’t hold to even the slightest scrutiny.
Biological processes are chemical feedback loops that reproduce due to natural chemical reactions with the elements around them.
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October 12, 2006 at 5:59 pm
KL,
The fact that one is living and one is not misses the point. The analogy is meant to highlight the design inferences each one of us makes when we see objects that exhibit specified complexity. None of us looks at a watch and thinks it could have been assembled by random chance processes. Even if all of the perfectly formed parts existed in the same location at the same time in history, not a single one of us would ever think they could assemble themselves so that it becomes a functional watch. The crafting of the pieces, and the assembling of those pieces requires amazing delicacy; the kind only intelligent designers are capable of. That’s why we look at something like a watch and automatically infer that someone designed it.
Scientists admit the world looks designed, but insist that natural selection can account for apparent design; a designer is not necessary. At the very least they are identifying both views as empirically equivalent; i.e. both natural selection and an intelligent being could equally account for the universe. If it looks designed, why deny that it was designed (it would be the simpler explanation)? What compelling evidence is there that would cause us to opt for a naturalistic explanation over some kind of theistic explanation? None! Only a predisposition to look for a naturalistic explanation that leaves God out.
Where does the idea that the world was not designed come from? Is it a common-sense intuition that is merely denied by certain religious teachings? No. Even Richard Dawkins admits that the world looks designed, but says the appearance of design is an illusion that can be explained by material processes. The recognition that the universe had a designer is so intuitive that Francis Crick had to say, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”
So why should we doubt that the appearance of design in the world is due to the fact that the world actually was designed? Why should we abandon our common sense intuition that since the world looks designed, it must have been designed? Is it because there is overwhelming evidence that the world was produced by randomness (evidence that does not comport with design), or is it because of an a priori philosophical commitment to materialism/atheism? Does the conclusion of “no-design” come from the evidence, or from a particular philosophical viewpoint that is accepted prior to an evaluation of the evidence, to which the evidence is forced to conform? Anyone who has looked at the evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution will quickly see that the theory is propped up by philosophy, not science. In the words of Jonathan Wells, Darwinism is “just old-fashioned materialistic philosophy masquerading as modern empirical science.”
Darwinism has dominated science for the last 150 years, not because there is a plethora of evidence for the theory, but because the modern definition of science presupposes methodological materialism (you act as if the only thing that exists and is causally active in the world is matter), if not philosophical materialism itself (you actually believe nothing exists except the material world). If you arbitrarily define science as the pursuit of material causes, it should be no surprise that evolution will be the undisputed king of the scientific hill. By fiat definition it is the only game in town.
That’s why the main thrust of the Intelligent Design movement has been to challenge the very definition of modern science itself, exposing the fact that it is presupposes philosophical materialism. If we have good reason to believe philosophical materialism is false (and we do), then much of the evolutionary theory comes crashing down with it like a house of cards in the wind.
The evolution vs. intelligent design debate is not a debate between science and religion or science and faith, but a debate over the very definition of science itself. It is a debate of science vs. science. Each side offers a competing scientific account of the physical world, but each driven by different philosophical presuppositions. May the best philosophy win!
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October 12, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Harvard genetics professor, Richard Lewontin, is very candid about the philosophical restraints placed on modern science. In The New York Review of Books he makes this remarkable admission:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
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