Friday, December 28, 2012

An ant's view of intelligent design theory



 


Drone1: Who do you think designed this bicycle?

Drone2: No one!

Drone1: No one?

Drone2: Bicycology is the study of complicated vehicles that give the appearance of having been designed for transportation. Yet all appearances to the contrary, the only bicycle maker in nature are the blind forces of physics.

Drone1: I find that hard to believe.

Drone2: It is almost as if the ant brain were specifically designed to misunderstand bicycology, and to find it hard to believe.

Drone1: I still think a human must have made this bicycle.

Drone2: That’s a science-stopper. That’s the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.

If you don’t understand how a bicycle came into being, never mind: just give up and say human did it. Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to man. Man-did-it teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against anthood.

Drone1: What’s your alternative?

Drone2: The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and bicycles) and things that don’t (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (anthills) and those that aren’t (bicycles).

Drone1: But isn’t a bicycle maker a simpler explanation than a fortuitous, self-organizing bicycle?

Drone2: The notion of a human bicycle maker belittles the elegant reality of the anthill.

4 comments:

  1. Well done! This brief analogy may serve well as I teach through the next quarter of Sunday School at my church on Creation.

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  2. The main problem with this analogy is that humans demonstrably exist, gods do not.

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    Replies
    1. The main problem with your objection is that it begs the question.

      Anyway, I don't believe in "gods." I'm not a polytheist.

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    2. "humans demonstrably exist"

      Do you know that this is true from an ant's frame of reference? Perhaps some ants know that humans exist and have lived to tell about it in so many pheromones. I'm sure there are plenty of ants who are familiar with human devices without actually having experienced a human before. I wonder what an ant who has never experienced a human would think about another ant testifying to a personal experience with a human.

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