I’ve been thinking about these comments attributed to Dembski over the last few weeks. I’ve been specifically pondering how to respond to the following challenge by Dembski.
The challenge for evolutionary theory is not to find components of such systems that are grist of natural selection’s mill, but to provide detailed, testable, step-by-step scenarios whereby such components could have coherently aggregated and eventually formed the marvels of nano-engineering that we find in systems like the flagellum.
Essentially what Dembski is saying is that unless evolutionary biology can produce exact pathways for the evolution of complex biological systems than intelligent design is a better explanation. As long as there is a system for which we do not know the evolutionary history exactly, then Intelligent Design is a better explanation than naturalism.
It might shock my reader(s) to learn that I find merit in this argument. In fact with it I can explain Dembski’s behavior quite well. See Dembski is not a natural being at all, but rather he was designed by some intelligent creator. Yeap, that is right, Dembski is an android, one programmed to not understand its own scholastic limitations. Unless Dembski can produce a detailed, testable, step-by-step scenario by which he came into being, the theory that he is an android is unchallenged. More specifically, sequence of cell divisions, gene segregations, mutations, recombinations, environmental stimuli, etc. that worked to produce Dembski would need to be shown. This is a daunting task since the probably that Dembski emerged from the combination of his parents is astronomical.
Further complicating anti-roboists is the fact that no one was there to see his parents have sex, or see the one in a million sperm fuse with the ova, or even see said sperm and egg arise from their stem cells, or any of the other millions events that naturalists say occured to produce Dembski. This, therefore, makes any naturalist argument for Dembski’s existence completely and utterly untestable and thus not scientific.
Thus, clearly, the only viable scientific explanation for Dr. William A. Dembski is that he is a robot.
I dub thee, “Robski!”
I have to disagree.
While you do a good job of demolishing the theory that Dembski is a product of normal mammalian reproduction, you offer no evidence of his robotic origin. In fact, owing the high improbability of of Dembski’s origin, I’d have to say that Dembski is a product of someone’s imagination.
Dembski’s argument could also be turned around like this:
He needs to provide detailed, testable, step-by-step scenarios and evidence whereby the appearance of marvels like the flagellum can be explained, using the Intelligent Design paradigm.
Evidence of intelligent design? Ha! Testable hypotheses from intelligent design? Ha!
I believe that has been tried and Dembski responded along the lines that his argument doesn’t need evidence since it exists as well supported as long as the evolutionists can’t explain theirs.
But did you know that Jesus was also a robot? (http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog[…]_killer.html)
And as you have pointed out, we have no evidence that Dembski was born out of sexual congress between two human beings.
The logic is plain and irrefutable: Dembski = Robot Jesus.
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