I’m putting this here, rather than in GD 'cause I’m looking for a specific answer/clarification: I don’t want to debate “Intelligent Design: Good or Bad?”, I’m just asking how one of the arguments is supposed to work.
Disclaimer: I don’t believe in Intelligent Design, I don’t think it’s science and I don’t think it should be taught in schools. That said, I’ve got a question about a standard refutation of ID from ‘my’ side.
I was reading The Science Of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch (not bad, typical Ian Stewart mix of brilliant insights, lucid prose and occasionally witty writing with the occasional lapse into condescending “speaking to a retarded 3-year-old” speak. In other words, he needs a better editor)
ANYway, after spending some time dismissing the “blind watchmaker” theory, he gets to the ID point that it’s incredibly unlikely that given the billions and billions of variables that need to line up juuuuuust right to produce a universe capable of creating life, one occurred without some sort of intervention. It’s like taking a stick and stirring a junkyard and even in an infinite number of years, producing a working TV.
The book then gives the standard rebuttal I’ve heard: Well the only reason you’re here to ask that is that this is a universe that did allow intelligent life.
What? That doesn’t rebut the argument. It doesn’t even dodge it. It’s a non-sequitur.
To rephrase it as I understand it:
ID person: Look! A watch! I’ve found it sitting on a hillside! Given how unlikely it is that a watch would spontaneously be created by natural forces, I’ll posit that the watch was created by an intelligent creator.
Anti-ID Person: Heh. You’re only saying that 'cause if a watch wasn’t there, you wouldn’t ask the question.
Me: ? Wha?
Am I misunderstanding the argument? Can someone help clarify it for me, please?
Thanks,
Fenris