Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Rational Consensus

Gil Dodgen at Uncommon Descent offers a nice summary of the debate between Intelligent Design advocates and naturalistic evolutionists:

Some people have concluded that the hideously complex, functionally integrated information-processing machinery of the cell - with its error-detection-and-repair algorithms and much more - is best explained by an intelligent cause. But this idea is only held by superstitious religious fanatics who want to destroy science and establish a theocracy.

That's the consensus of "scientists" in the academy.

The other consensus of "scientists" in the academy is that random errors screwing up computer code can account for everything in biology.

Who is thinking logically here?

Naturalists would reply to Dodgen's question, though, that science doesn't admit of non-material, non-physical causes therefore the first alternative is unscientific and ergo irrational. The second alternative, on the other hand, is materialistic and therefore scientific and therefore rational. Thus, it's more "rational" to believe the equivalent of random errors and blind physical forces over time being capable of generating Windows XP than to think that the genetic hardware and software in living things was designed by an intelligent agent.

A big "atta boy" to whomever can point out the logical blunder(s) in this chain of reasoning.

RLC