Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Satires of Intelligent Design

Teach the controversy. 


Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) seeks to (1) discover intelligently designed features of life and the cosmos and (2) attribute its features to an intelligent designer. This is done with the intent of overthrowing the "materialist" sciences like evolutionary biology and replacing them with a teleological view of the world. IDC advocates, however, have to face a dilemma when it comes to identifying this designer. If they say that it is a theistic God (like they would like to), then IDC appears to be nothing more than Old (or, in some rare instances, Young) Earth creationism. This would mean teaching it in public schools in the USA would be unconstitutional. If, however, they don't identify the designer, then their ideas have absolutely no explanatory content. 

One thing that many skeptics have done is to make satirical designers or other untestable entities to point out the absurdity and vapidity of both horns of this dilemma. Some of these predate modern IDC and others are a direct consequent of their cowardly unwillingness to disclose that the designer they have in mind is the god of the Bible. "If the designer could be many things," the skeptic argues, "then why not x?" Or, the skeptic argues, why should we prefer your intelligent designer to designer y?" 

To have some fun with this, I thought I would put together a list a few of the better satires of IDC's design hypothesis. If I missed one that you think is very good, then feel free to add it in the comment section and I will add it to the list. 

  • Flying Spaghetti Monster. Pastafarians argue that the FSM is the intelligent designer of the cosmos that IDC points to. They also argue that their ideas are on par with traditional religions that that they should be protected under the law in the same way.
  • Intelligent Falling is a design based alternative to gravity. Advocates of this new theory believe that the controversy about IF and gravity should be taught in the science classrooms and that the latter is a theory in crisis.  
  • Jibbers Crabst was proposed by The Oatmeal as the identity of the intelligent designer. Matt Igman, the creator of this comic, argues that it is a better account of nature than naturalistic theories like Darwinian evolution.