lpetrich

That's a logical inference from the "intelligent design" hypothesis for biological features, but the ID guys avoid such questions, even though asking such questions is completely logical.

I think that this is only further evidence that the ID movement does bad science, because "real" scientists have a tendency to probe further and further if they can.

Duvenoy

Sometimes, when my arthritis is at full throttle, I feel like I was designed by a committe.



doov

Oolon Colluphid

Yep, that's the point. IDiots already have their end-point in sight, they know what the outcomes of investigations must be.

Mind you, I'm not sure how you could frame the 'Mulitple Fallible Designers' hypothesis in a testable way...

I suppose the genetic unity of life points to a single fundamental designer: a brickmaker, and a bunch of other designers who are architects of the bodily buildings.

But then there's the building designs that straddle the styles of more than one architect (Ichthyostega, the Therapsida), and things like Hox bricks, where changing one brick for another can radically alter an architect's design; and worse, can turn it into a design rather like a completely different architect's...

How to decide which architects did which designs? The MFD hypothesis is I think unworkable, because there are too many consistencies in life's designs, as well as so many differences.

Either the designers worked as a committee, with different ones holding sway on different projects (bird, bat, pterosaur and insect wings, for instance), or there's just the one designer, who was fickle and arbitrary on what got used on each project ("I shortened bird's hands and added feathers last time; maybe for a change, for bats I'll lengthen the fingers")... yet remarkably consistent with haemoglobin, the Krebs cycle, vertebrate and arthropod Blauplane (sp?) and so on.

Neither version of the MFDH looks testable... and moreover, the nested homologies still make evolution the most likely explanation.

Oolon

GeoTheo

I think my theory was pretty good. I could make the same predictions for it that can be made for descent with modification. Every single one.
Descent with modification in six days I'll call it. I also can make predictions that fit the fosil record more closely. You guys ain't never gonna give me my props because you have to much philosophical baggage. I might write it out in an article like some other non-scientists had in your Talk Origins section and present it to the other 90% of the population that isn't presuppositionally tied down to rejecting a creator from the get-go.

MrDarwin

Creationists and IDists make much of all the phyla, with completely different body organizations with no intermediates, appearing abruptly in the fossil record all at the same time. To which I reply, this must surely indicate that there were several designers, each with his/her/its own unique design for multicellular life. For some reason, they don't like this...

GeoTheo

Why do you say MUST instead of could? I can see why you would object to it being said it Must be One designer. By why is either choice more likely?

lpetrich

The multiple-designer inference is an extrapolation from human experience; different designers have different styles of design, which can often be recognized. Think of your favorite creative or artistic endeavors, and you should have no trouble finding numerous examples.

So if one constructs an argument from design from experience with human designers, one ought to consider whether the inferred designers are multiple and/or fallible, since these are typical features of human designers.

DireStraits

I think my theory was pretty good.

DS: What theory?

I could make the same predictions for it that can be made for descent with modification. Every single one.
Descent with modification in six days I'll call it.

DS: So you accept Darwinism?

I also can make predictions that fit the fosil record more closely. You guys ain't never gonna give me my props because you have to much philosophical baggage.

DS: Either a very defeatist attitude, or a convenient cop-out. And of course you have no baggage at all, right? The only baggage I have is methodological naturalism.

I might write it out in an article like some other non-scientists had in your Talk Origins section and present it to the other 90% of the population that isn't presuppositionally tied down to rejecting a creator from the get-go.

DS: What about your insistence on a creator from the get-go? Why is it that virtually all ID supporters and creationists insist on it being Yahweh? Why is it also true that so many evolutionists accept Yahweh?