This is an interesting article written in the opinion section of the Register-Guard Newspaper in Eugene, OR. The author, Norm Fox, presents a solid argument against some claims that Richard Dawkins has made.
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Case against intelligent design fails
Published: May 4, 2008 12:00AM
The universe either made itself or it was made. Any argument supporting either alternative automatically opposes the other. This is why neither of these competing cosmogonies can be honestly advanced without at least contemplating its opposite, either philosophically or scientifically.
The alleged third alternative, that all physical reality oscillates eternally through cycles of disintegration and reorganization, is purely metaphysical and not subject to scientific examination since we are, as far as we can tell, in the relentless grip of a universe-wide atrophy arc.
Richard Dawkins’ essay “Creationists haven’t got a chance against aliens” (Commentary, April 27) claims to offer arguments against the universe having been made by a creative intelligence outside itself. Thus by default (since he makes no mention of the oscillating universe hypothesis) he is arguing for a self-created universe without quite confessing so. As a dogmatically atheistic evolutionist and author of the book “The God Delusion,” he is defending the only position his worldview will allow.
Dawkins’ principal strategy, consuming roughly half of his essay, is to focus on “directed panspermia,” (aka “exogenesis”), the irrelevant notion that life on Earth was “seeded” by life forms residing elsewhere in the universe. It’s irrelevant as a theory of the origin of life, of course, because it does not account for life’s origin at all but merely pushes the problem further out in the universe, and I have never heard a creationist advocate it. I’ve heard it proposed by evolutionists, most of whom discuss it seriously but admit its inadequacy to account for ultimate origins. Dawkins tries to turn this tangent into evidence that creationist arguments are dishonest.
His own argument, meanwhile, climaxes in the assertion that a complex, eternal creator is no more conceivable than complex, eternal flagellar motors. Proponents of intelligent design would retort that they can rationally distinguish the likelihood of an eternal creator from the improbability of an eternal product. Still, Dawkins insists, “A creator god who has always existed would be far more improbable” than “visitations from distant star systems.”
Dawkins’ determination to render a creator “improbable” does not provide a compelling basis for treating an intellectually respectable issue — whether God exists — as if it were a question firmly settled in the negative. Observations that call into question the self-creative adequacy of the universe abound all across the natural sciences from astronomy to biochemistry to genetics to paleontology to zoology and back, but since arguments against atheistic evolution are automatically arguments for an intelligent designer, they are being censored with increasing fervor as a matter of public policy. Scholars who admit to the slightest suspicion that the universe did not generate and organize itself are often professionally intimidated (sometimes even “expelled”), casting a chill over scientific inquiry as it relates to origins.
Most scientists or laymen who conclude that intelligent design best explains the complexity of the universe do so not because they are, in Dawkins’ language, “lying for Jesus,” but because they have been impressed with the scientific evidences for design and/or have thought through a sequence of reasoning similar to the following:
1) Something is eternal. If there had ever been absolutely nothing, that condition would have persisted.
2) Biological life is evidently not eternal, being represented by organisms that without exception come from similar temporarily living organisms and then die.
3) Matter-energy is evidently not eternal, as it inescapably spends itself with every energy transaction at a net cost to the whole system. This process cannot have gone on eternally, because it would culminate in the eventual “heat death” of the universe in some finite amount of time (barring the oscillating universe mythology that belongs somewhere beyond science fiction).
4) Our consistent experience is that mind manipulates matter, not vice-versa, suggesting that an eternal mind having formed matter is more plausible than matter having created information-rich structures such as the human mind. Here, and with the next point, the “design demands a designer” argument fits.
5) Our consistent experience is that every effect must have an adequate cause. Thus, the universe viewed as a sequence of causes and effects points back to a first cause which is itself uncaused (see point No. 1 above). Just as logically, the universe viewed as a single huge effect also requires a sufficient cause outside itself.
The fact that these arguments are centuries old and have a venerable philosophical pedigree does not diminish their cogency or their relevance to a 21st century debate. Similarly, the existence of vigorous but time-worn rebuttals against these arguments cannot legitimately turn a two-sided issue into a closed question. The doctrinaire teaching of spontaneous macroevolution and the authoritarian stonewalling of intelligent design seeks to do exactly that by penalizing skepticism about the materialist world view and its central article of faith.
Posted in Darwin, Ethics, Evolution, Expelled the movie, Intelligent Design, Science, Uncategorized
