Irreducible Complexity

Evolution & Intelligent Design

Ken Miller chews up the Discovery Institute dope, David K. DeWolf.

Intelligent Design - Adam & Eve

Intelligent Design - NOT

A Fine Tuned Universe

Argument From Design

Creationism - Still Crazy After All These Years

Eugenie Scott, AAI 2009

Welfare For Creationists

P.Z. Myers - Intelligent Design

The great P.Z. Myers talk at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 conference on Design versus Chance. It is worth a viewing.

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. His very educational and entertaining website is Pharyngula

Kenneth Miller on Intelligent Design

This is a two hour video on ID by Kenneth Miller who is a biologist and he was a part of the Dover trial to stop ID from being taught in school. He speaks for under an hour and than takes questions. Lots of great information and he shows clearly how underhanded the Intelligent Design people are. They want to destroy science using politics. If successful we will go back to the Dark Ages and other countries will take the lead away from the U.S.

Ken Miller's talk on Intelligent Design at Case Western University around 2006.

Ken Miller states "I am a Roman Catholic, a theist, but do not believe in a deceptive God." He is a strong evolutionist, and argues strongly against Intelligent Design. But I haven't heard him say what part he thinks God plays, perhaps in the vein of Spinoza.

At 1:25 he is asked how he can be religious and be a scientist. He responds but doesn't resolve it to my satisfaction. He believes and other scientist also do about 40%. However, he honors skepticism.

He identifies himself as a Republican and especially liked Goldwater. He believes the Republican party is the better party to save science and thinks the Democrats are wishy-washy on it.

Discovery Institute a religious or secular organization?

The Discovery Institute is a money laundering business for creationism. They promote "Intelligent Design" as if, but it is simply a marketing effort to snake oil creationism as a science, which it is not. The best and only thing Intelligent Design offers is life is complex and I cannot figure out how it came about so God did it. That is not science. That is supposed to be logic but it is flawed which I wrote about yesterday.

Straight from their lying web page.

Is intelligent design based on the Bible?

No.

Is Discovery Institute a religious organization?

Discovery Institute is a secular think tank, and its Board members and Fellows represent a variety of religious traditions, including mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, and agnostic.

Let's see ... a Christian ... a Christian ... a Christian ... a Jew ... and a inbreed cousin who sits around repeating I don't know I don't know.

I see it is not based on religion, because I don't see a Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, Islamic among them. Must be Judeo-Christian organization with a token guy who does not know and apparently can add anything. Last time I checked that is not secular.

Perhaps this group should familiarize themselves with Exodus 20

You shall not bear false witness

Center for Science & Culture

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

-- Charles Darwin

Intelligent design argument - Fallacy of the undistributed middle

The argument for Intelligent Design is logically flawed.

First, let's start with defining syllogism.

Syllogism is a form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. A successful syllogism is like this.

• Major premise: All humans are mortal
• Minor premise: I am a human
• Conclusion : I am mortal

The fallacy of the undistributed middle is a logical fallacy that is committed when the minor premise in a categorical syllogism is not distributed. It is thus a syllogistic fallacy. More specifically it is also a form of non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow").

The fallacy of the undistributed middle takes the following form:

• All Zs are Bs.
• Y is a B.
• Therefore, Y is a Z.

It may or may not be the case that "all Zs are Bs," but in either case it is irrelevant to the conclusion. What is relevant to the conclusion is whether it is true that "all Bs are Zs," which is ignored in the argument.

Note that if the premises were swapped around in either the conclusion or the first co-premise or if the first premise was rewritten to "All Zs can only be Bs" then it would no longer be a fallacy, although it could still be unsound. This also holds for the following two logical fallacies which are similar in nature to the fallacy of the undistributed middle and also non sequiturs.

An example can be given as follows:

• All men are human.
• Women are human.
• Therefore, women are men.

The general argument for Intelligent Design is logically flawed

• All life is complex
• A human designer is required for a mechanical watch, which is complex
• A supernatural designer is required for life

This argument holds no weight. It is a non sequitur fallacy of the undistributed middle.