Is Intelligent Design a Rational or Irrational belief (Part 4)

"In the west, the biggest advocates of Intelligent Design are people who believe that intelligent designer is God, a God that designed the world about 6000 years ago, with just two humans (read literal interpretation of genesis)" This is the genetic fallacy where an assertion is rejected (or supported) based on its origin. The fact that ID may have its roots in those who argue for theism is not relevant to the fact that it is a rational belief.[1] "But never the less, bad arguments used to support ID like the argument from ignorance are commonly used so are not strawman arguments in the context of the larger debate of ID." This is a fallacy of composition. The fact that there are irrational people (as a part) who assert ID does not mean that ID (as a whole) is irrational. If this were actually a valid argument then everything would be irrational as there are irrational people who hold any belief. Charles Mason for example is by any definition irrational, however if this argument against ID holds, then anything he would assert would therefore be irrational. Thus if he noted that the earth was round, that is an irrational position. It is trivially obvious this argument is fallacious. "Pro had no refutation ..." One does not refute a strawman argument by definition as it is an argument of an irrelevant construct. It was clearly noted in each case that the ID momement does not hold to such positions in the advocation of ID.[2] "... even if we rule out all known undirected causes, it still leaves the option open that their are UNKNOWN undirected causes." When conclusions are reached in science, as noted clearly in the above in great detail they are not done so on the basic of absolutes, they are done so on the basis of probability. If the assertion that Con is advocating were actually held to be true then it would be impossible for anyone to conclude design as is part of science, in fact it would be impossible to actually conclude anything at all. To understand this consider the recent finding of Tiktaalik [3] which is argued to be the link between amphibians and tetrapods. Can science prove absolutely that there is no random natural process which could have produced this fossil - of course not. Thus by Con's argument it can not be concluded to be a fossil as it could very well be just a random assortment of elements which just look like one. "Well I could publish my hypothesis that invisible pink unicorns are the cause of the space time continuum, according to Pros argument, if I can get that hypothesis published and peer reviewed, it is part of science and thus rational." Yes once published it is part of the body of knowledge that is science, it stays there until it is refuted. There are three common ways to do so (1) letter to the author, (2) letter to the editor (3) publish a contradictory study. Normally the third method is used as it is less directionally confrontational. In the case of competing views the position is that both are part of science and it is just uncertain which one is more likely to be true. Thus if ID and evolution are both published the position would be that both of them are part of science and it is simply uncertain which is more likely to be true. Now if Con wishes to reject that peer reviewed publications should be considered part of the body of knowledge of science then they should at a minimum define some metric by which they advocate one should instead judge which peer reviewed articles are to be included in the body of knowledge which is science. "So how is an intelligent designer hypothesis falsifiable ?" Design would be rejected, this is a well known practice in all of science. Specifically the events would better fit a model of undirected causes, really specifically, the forcing function for an undirected cause simply has a fit criteria which is based on the outcome of the system (usually its function), whereas the forcing function for a directed cause has an explicit goal which modifes the characteristics of the system. "An intelligent designer requires an explanation" If ID is rejected as unscientific because the ID'er can not be explained then Con has to reject gravity as being unscientific unless they can explain why gravity is not repulsive. Science is concerned with the how of things are, not the why of things at a fundamental level. Newton quantified gravity in a physical law, Einstein extended this as being a property of inherent mass[4]. Neither of the theories actually dealt at all with the why as to gravity is attractive or why mass causes gravity, they just noted that it does. [1] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [2] http://www.nizkor.org... [3] http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu... [4] http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu...