Our Danish correspondent Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution, offers a design argument from the perspective of someone who works with design all the time:
What constitutes a good ID argument
Inspiring conversations with fellow ID folks has made me think about what constitutes a good argument for ID, and more importantly to whom. It has come to my attention that arguments I find so compelling, that I actually need no further evidence to make a design inference, is far from convincing to others Having renovated, modified and maintained engines for historic car racing, seeing the drawing or an animation of a flagellum motor is sufficient for me to infer design. I don’t find it slightly convincing, I find the flagellum motor so convincing that no doubt is left in my mind, that nature is intelligently designed.
It has dawned on me that this is far from the experience others are having. I recently was met with the argument, that if the flagellum motor or equal machine like objects from nature were that convincing as I claim, the discussion would be over and ID declared winner. “The facts do not speak for themselves” was repeated several times in one particular conversation I had, – the “facts” being that the flagellum motor has design like features.
The disagreement circled around my claim that the flagellum motor is absolute proof of ID. My interlocutor justifiably claimed that if it were absolute proof everybody would be convinced, and since everybody is not convinced the flagellum motor as evidence for ID is simply not good enough. Now then my reply was and is, that it’s not the argument lacking quality, it’s people’s ability to appreciate the argument’s weight that constitutes the problem. The argument for design alone from the flagellum motor is so overwhelming that in fact everybody ought to be convinced.
So why aren’t they? The problem here is, I’ll argue, that it requires real world experience with machinery to acquire the ability to appreciate the huge weight of the argument from the flagellum motor including Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity. A friend of mine who happens to be both a theologian and an electronics engineer recently had this amusing comment when we were talking about why the evolutionists don’t get it, he said:
We can’t talk with these people until they have spent time in the shed disassembling and assembling a moped! He was referring to what we did as teenagers. And yes, this is the problem in a nut shell. If you haven’t had hands-on experience with assembling complex functional systems like a moped, you cannot, and I’m sorry to offend all you great thinkers out there, evaluate the argument around the flagellum and irreducible complexity. Why? Because machinery, functional systems and their inherent irreducible complexity are real world phenomena!
The word “empirical” refers to having had experience (in German “Erfahrung”). The only true way to acquire experience is through physical interaction. Experience does not come through theoretical knowledge. In the world of abstraction all sorts of scenarios could be true, you can simply yourself decide what is true and what is not. Actual physical experience is the only thing that keeps thought constructions in check and can weed out wrong theories.
If you understand through bodily experience how reality works, you will come to the conclusion that evolution is an unrealistic idea. In the realm of thought though, evolution works brilliantly because in the abstract you can choose the bits and pieces which make your theory work and ignore anything that contradicts. This is actually how Darwin’s theory is kept alive.
Evaluating Behes IC concept is simply not possible on a theoretical level. You need hands-on experience with complex functional systems to fully understand that evolution is a thought experiment which could never work in reality.
When Ken Miller purportedly debunked Behe’s mousetrap analogy he did so in the world of abstraction with no reference to how real stuff in the real world works. Evolutionist disciples bought it hook line and sinker because in the realm of thought everything you want to work works. Behe’s IC proves (yes proves!) that evolution is false, but the chance is that you aren’t able to realize it because you operate solely on a theoretical level and have no real world experience working on complex machinery.
—
While we are here: Didn’t Ken Miller attempt a ridiculous explanation of human consciousness?