Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006
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[Apologies to RB, but it seems too good a chance at an allegory not to do something on the same lines]
Papa: Grandson, look at how complex this arrowhead is. That's how I know that it was designed.
Barry: But Papa, it's really very simple, just a couple of sharp edges coming to a point, a notch at the back, and a couple "flanges" flanking the notch.
P: No, no, Barry, it's really a complex artifact. See all of those little markings, the exquisite patterns of each little fracture. And it takes a lot of work to make these things, you know.
B: Yes, I know that, I saw an Indian make one on TV. But the thing is that an arrowhead's design is really simple, which is what makes it cut into the skin of the animal easily. See, the point is the main thing that starts the hole, while the two sharp edges cut the hole wider as it penetrates further into the animal, or man. Then the notch and flanges are there just in order to fit and tie the arrowhead onto the shaft.
P: Who are you calling stupid, Barry? I've read Dembski's book, and he's an expert. This arrowhead can be identified only by specified complexity. What are the chances that a notched arrowhead could form by itself? Next thing you'll tell me that you weren't designed like an arrowhead.
B: But Papa, I didn't say that the arrowhead could form by itself. I watched the Indian making the arrowhead, though, and when he hit the bigger flint it broke off with two sharp edges and a point. He said that sometimes people find these "flakes" and think that they were deliberately made by people, when in fact they were only broken bits that could have been made by anything hitting the flint. All the little marks that you see on that arrowhead show how it was worked by Indians, but we only know that the marks come from people because we've seen people do it. The notch, too, doesn't form naturally and we know why people make notches.
P: You know, son, I don't much like your tone of voice now. There's nothing natural about that rock, it didn't make itself, so it's complex. I don't need your godless prattle about what's complex and what isn't. If it didn't form itself, it's not natural, it's not complex, and it was designed by intelligent beings.
B: Didn't you tell me to always tell the truth, Grandpapa? We learned in school what was complex and what wasn't, and a trap-door spider's burrow is complex, natural, and wasn't designed by an intelligent being.
P: That's not true, Barry. Quit listening to the atheists who don't believe in the Designer. There's nothing really natural about spiders, since they're complex and designed, and they don't need intelligence to make their webs and trapdoors that you go on about because God was so intelligent that he made spiders do those things.
B: Papa, you said that arrowheads have to be designed by intelligent beings, not that they were made because God designed humans to make them. How would I even know how God designs intelligently if animals and humans don't have to make their own designs by themselves? If I'm trying to figure out that God is intelligent by comparing what he does with what animals and humans do, it has to be intelligence itself making the complex objects that I see, doesn't it?
P: That's enough out of you, insolent brat. Arrowheads are complex because they're designed by intelligent beings, and those supposed complex trapdoors are complex because intelligent God made the spiders. How is that so hard to understand?
B: Well since you're going to be like that, I'm going to tell you that many organisms weren't designed very well, not like a rational intelligent being would make them. Just the other day it was found that archaeopteryx, which wasn't thought to be well-designed anyhow, lacks a well-developed ligament to stabilize its flight. Either this "complexity" as design is a crock, or you just don't care about how a truly intelligent person would design arrows, birds, or other things.
P: That does it, you little jerk. You're getting a thrashing, you will never speak about design and complexity like that again, and all of your schooling from now on will be at Dembski's "School of the science of necessity, chance, and design," or none of your family will get the inheritance of my prime 1000-acre farm like I said you would. You will learn that arrowheads are complex and designed, and that humans are complex and designed, and that nothing ever evolved.
Epilogue:
Thanks to good god-inspired physical and mental abuse, Barry learned what was true and right, as well as what was complex. He learned that false positives in archaeology are not a problem, that archaeopteryx is as designed as the Pinto, and that inheritance patterns are very excellent evidence of descent, but only in humans, in Darwin's finches (the more liberal branch of ID was taught at Dembski's institute), and in other "small-scale" evolution. Barry learned that predictivity is extremely important when it comes to predictions that life will be complex if it is designed, and completely unimportant when evolution makes its predictions, including complexity (which it predicts at least once the ecology becomes complex--crucially, life needn't always be incredibly complex according to evo). And now he knows that his grandpa did indeed identify arrowheads through their complexity, and he even says so on UD. His earlier belief that the "design" of arrowheads is in fact simple is now known to be nothing but the insolence and heretical tendencies of an evil little boy who listened too much to reports of science, and read too little of the Bible.
We should all be so fortunate as Barry, either the fictional one or the equally well-taught real one writing at UD.
Glen D
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http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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