Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Evolution Guarantees the Success of the ID Meme!!

William Dembski
June 19, 2005
Evolution, Intelligent Design
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Wrap your mind around the following convoluted logic:

The overwhelming popularity of essentially creationist notions about human provenance among the world’s non-Europeans raises a suspicion in me that would depress me more were it not so exquisitely ironic: Maybe, just maybe, ID is a meme that is far better adapted than evolution for the irrational, haphazardly evolved non-specified complex environment that constitutes the human mind. Precisely because our brains were not intentionally designed for rational thought — were not designed, period — ID today flourishes. Or should I call it Id? [for the source, go here]

Comments
Well, you gotta hand it to them--they're committed to their position! So committed that they can stuff like this with a straight face and not notice it's more than irony, it's just (one of Baskin-Robbins' former flavors) plum nuts! TomG
Too bad the correct spelling of propagate isn't simple for me to remember... LOL DaveScot
I never had and still don't have any basic disagreement with memes defined as concepts, truisms, ideas, etc. that strike a chord (or not), and propogate (or not) based upon their perceived merit (or lack thereof). Ease of remembrance and simplicity are survival attributes. For instance "a stitch in time saves nine" is a simple meme, easy to remember, has considerable merit, and has survived and propogated without evolutionary change. Another meme "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" describes the reasons why some memes propogate but don't evolve. ;-) DaveScot
I posted the following comment to that article:
ID is evidently widely misunderstood. It uses the same empirical evidence that the neo-Darwinian narrative is based upon. It interprets the evidence differently. ID looks at probabilities and concludes that in some cases they are too remote for chance to have overcome. An analogous situation: If a person wins a lottery one time it's luck. If the same person wins a lottery 5 times in a row it's rigged. Life appears to have won a lot of lotteries against astronomical odds. It's hardly unreasonable to conclude the game was rigged for it to win. Perhaps the analysis of the odds is wrong. Perhaps there's an as yet undiscovered mechanism or natural law that will rationally and reasonably explain how the odds were beaten. Or perhaps the game is indeed rigged.
DaveScot
I can't decide whether that is the most hilarious or the most terribly depressing thing I have ever read. I have always found it staggering to believe that so many people take Dawkin's meme idea seriously... mechanicalbirds

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