Long time followers of this site will remember that my grandfather used to collect small stones he called “arrowheads.â€Â He had the misguided notion that these small pieces of flint had complex and specific chip patterns that he attributed to intelligent agency, i.e., Indians making tips for their arrows. Later in life I learned that my grandfather was deluded. Scientists assure us that unguided natural processes are perfectly competent to produce even the most extraordinarily complex phenomena, and the “design†some people insist on inferring from complexity is merely an illusion. And my grandfather’s misguided resort to agency to explain these chip patterns is an example of the dreaded “Indian-of-the-Gaps†mode of thinking in action. See my post here
The other day I got into an argument with one of my friends who insisted that the literally hundreds of pieces of flint in my grandfather’s collection, each showing an almost identical chip pattern, could not possibly be accounted for by blind unguided natural forces like erosion. I have to admit he made a fairly impressive mathematical case and I was beginning to waver. But then my friends at Panda’s Thumb came to my rescue. They argue that a design inference is illegitimate unless the person asserting the inference can also identify the designer. I pointed to one of the stones in the frame my grandfather gave me (It continues to hang on my wall for sentimental reasons, not because there is anything special about the stones themselves). I said, “OK, Mr. Smarty Pants. If the pattern on that stone is designed, tell me who the designer was.â€Â He was, of course, stumped, so I declared myself the victor in the argument. Yet another triumph for materialist reasoning!