Robin Wilton's esoterica

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26 Sep · Mon 2005

Complexity and Intelligent Design

Well, following on from the last blog entry, and mindful of the families who have just gone to court against the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, no prizes at all for guessing which side of the Intelligent Design argument I come down on. I'm aware that a post like this risks crossing some boundaries --- so if you find 'anti-creationist' arguments offensive, please don't read on. I don't wish to offend, but neither am I comfortable with the thought that children are being told, by their teachers, to suspend their critical faculties. Arthur C Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". That doesn't mean it is magic, though. But that's pretty much the level of the ID argument, it seems to me. "Any sufficiently advanced function is indistinguishable from magic and therefore that's just what it is". The human eye is so fantastic it must literally have been created by magic. Or a divine creator. There's no other way. I guess I don't win the unpredictability prize for citing Richard Dawkins, either, but he wrote a book called "Climbing Mount Improbable", in which he gives examples of complex end results which are produced by very simple incremental steps. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who had a Spirograph as a kid. Or, come to that, anyone who has studied fractals. They are produced by very simple mathematical functions, yet the results are unimaginably complex. The argument from complexity is not compelling. Not only is it undermined by examples of 'simple steps, complex outcomes', but it is also too dependent on the idea of our inability, at a given moment in our evolution, to understand the complexity in question. That's only a couple of rungs down the ladder from saying "the indisputable proof of God's existence is that I am stupid." Which is strange, given that I would bet you the majority of ID-ers believe that humans are created in the image of said creator. Better people than me have advanced the argument that the ID people and the geneticists are just not answering the same question. To say "these are the things which happen observably in the natural world, and here's my hypothesis as to how it works" is a testable proposition susceptible to rational proof over time. To say "these are the observed natural processes and here's my view as to why this all happens" is another matter. Ultimately that's a question of asserted belief. Of faith. If the existence of God could be scientifically proved, religion would necessarily be something other than what it is. Are there any atheist proponents of the Intelligent Design argument?

Posted by racingsnake @ 10:05 PM GMT+00:00 [ Comments [6] ]

The Political Spectrum

Superpat and Rohan have already been brave enough to post their results from the OKCupid Politics test, so here goes. It should not come as a surprise to those who regularly frequent this blog, but apparently I am quite squarely in the 'Mahatma' quadrant, somewhere (graphically, at least) between Billary Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. I think the Libertarian tendencies of my youth are gradually being tempered by some kind of empathy. Ah well.

You are a
Social Liberal
(66% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(21% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Posted by racingsnake @ 09:57 PM GMT+00:00

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Such views as I express in this blog are based on my own opinions, experience and judgements. They do not necessarily represent the policy or views of my employer. It is not my intention to offend readers in any way. If you find anything on this blog offensive, please contact me in the first instance.
Robin Wilton

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