Over at Uncommon Descent, DaveScot has given what must be an overwhelmingly satisfactory reply to the point I made about “Intelligent Design Criminology“, since all of the comments have been favorable and none critical.
Oh that’s right, they just ban their critics. That must be the sort of stifling of opposing viewpoints this new movie Expelled will be about…
[If your sarcasm detector was not activated while reading this post, please activate it now and begin again at the top. Thank you.]
More seriously, DaveScot’s response is so utterly off target as to raise the question whether he is deliberately obfuscating. He admits that the trail has not gone cold as far as scientific exploration of evolution is concerned. He tries to make an analogy with claiming a person was killed by accident that actually hurts his point, for several reasons. First, in many cases, even where murder might seem likely, ‘accidental death’ is considered if there are other reasons for doing so, such as there being no explanation how any other person could have entered the room, for instance. Murder investigations occasionally lead to the conclusion ‘bizarre accident’; they never lead us to supernatural or extraterrestrial murders, nor should they. Criminology, like most sciences and other disciplines that involve critical investigation, deals with matters as far as the surprising natural. It doesn’t go further. Second, science is not committed to the view that life was an “accident”. That is certainly possible, but it is also possible that the production of organic molecules and their eventual synthesis into living things is fundamentally rooted in the basic laws and functioning of the universe. If so, then this cannot be called an “accident” any more than rain can. We usually don’t call rain an accident, because it occurs regularly and naturally according to explicable processes.
At least he was honest enough to say “the illusion of design hasn’t gone away.” Give him credit when he gets it right.
At any rate, DaveScot thinks he has solved the murder case. That’s just because the trial (and any ‘trial’ at Uncommon Descent) is rigged, since the lawyers for the other side are not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses.
Dare I note as well that the folks at Uncommon Descent still seem not to be getting any better at attributing the things they quote and materials they use to their rightful sources?
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