GYC 2008: For This Purpose

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Sean Pitman ~ The Emperor Has No Clothes: Creation vs. Evolution

Sean Pitman

Early Man

The Geologic Record

The Fossil Record

Theologians for Darwin

Darwin vs. God

The Best Arguments Against Intelligent Design

These are the most common arguments I hear when I go and debate people, like on TalkOrigins.

The first 1 is, intelligent design answers everything.

The intelligent design theory answers everything, therefore nothing.

So Intelligent design theory is utterly boring, because the standard reply is, how did this happen?

Intelligent design theory is thinly disguised creationism.

And we all know creationism is wrong, so intelligent design theory must also be wrong.

The next argument is intelligent design uses the God of the Gaps argument, which is a logical fallacy.

The next 1 is intelligent design proposes no testable falsifiable predictions that have not already been falsified.

For example, irreducible complexity proposed by Baigie a few years back, well that's been falsified.

Not, you know, things are reducible, Nothing's irreducibly complex, so that's wrong.

And specified complexity, proposed by Densky, that's also been falsified.

Nature can produce very specified levels of complexity just as easily as anything, so that's wrong.

And the last 1 is no intelligent God would have done it that way.

God is rather stupid if he made things the way they are.

So, What about the everything and nothing argument?

Does God explain everything and therefore nothing?

Or does intelligence explain everything and therefore nothing?

Well, I like to flip it around and ask evolutionists, like, does the theory of evolution explain everything and therefore nothing?

So wasn't everything evolved by mindless nature, or everything ultimately produced by mindless nature that we see today?

So does evolution or natural process explain everything, or at least attempt to explain everything and therefore nothing?

Or it only worked against intelligent design?

Also, how can scientists like forensic scientists, anthropologists, and study scientists propose intelligence behind certain phenomena when mindless nature could have done the same thing?

So is it really true that intelligence explains everything and therefore nothing?

No, if it explained everything and therefore nothing, there would be no science of anthropology or forensics or even study.

So, what about the argument that intelligent design is utterly boring?

William Probein writes, the most basic problem with intelligent design theory is that it is utterly boring.

Everything that is complicated or interesting about biology has a very simple explanation.

Study scientists are looking for particular types of radio signals coming from space as evidence of alien intelligence.

If such a signal were ever found, would any scientist be bored by such a hypothesis?

Is the truth boring just because intelligence is behind it?

No, that would hit the front page of every newspaper in the world, right?

70 scientists have found ET, is that boring?

No, Computers also have very simple explanations.

Like your laptop, anybody have a laptop in here?

Is there a very simple explanation how your laptop came to be?

Is that really as, is that inclusive enough about a real explanation of how your laptop came to be.

Yeah, it's a simple one-liner, but that doesn't really encompass the full complexity of how to make laptops, right?

Saying that God did it or an intelligent agent did it is not really encompassing the full complexity of how it was done.

It's just saying that this could only have been done by intelligence.

Also, just because something is simple and boring, perhaps, does that make it false?

Simple, boring, perhaps, for most people in this room.

But is, it's boring, yeah, I mean, but is 2 plus 252 plus 2 equals 5, is that more interesting?

How about intelligent design is a religion, therefore it's not a science.

Religion talks about non-physical, non-testable, non-falsifiable truths, according to most educated people.

Any examples, for example, are there examples of non-falsifiable truths?

And here I've listed some that are potentially non-falsifiable because they're in the eye of the beholder.

That's commonly, you hear the phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What makes somebody happy might not make another person happy, right, or joyful.

Love, too, you can know you love somebody else, absolutely.

You don't need to ask anybody else if you really love somebody.

You know, do I need to ask you if I love my wife?

Some people like certain types of foods that other people would gag at, right, or desire.

Do you need to have the physical world to help you understand mathematics?

In a sense, maybe it would help, but sometimes you can just imagine mathematics in your head.

It's somehow, mathematics or the understanding of math is somehow given to you as a gift.

You can think about math in your head and do thought experiments without actually having to go and look at the real world?

Something like mathematics, does He internally derive truth?

Does God speak to you in a still small voice inside your head that you can know that only God is talking to me.

Some people tell me that I've been inspired to tell you this.

To be honest, I had never heard an audible voice in my head.

I'd never had a direct, what I would call a direct inspiration from God.

And I can't tell you as an internally derived truth that God exists.

Some people maybe can because God has actually talked to them, like some prophets say that God has verbally talked to them, Moses face to face, right?

Okay, so how, upon what basis then do I believe in God?

Because he does not talk to me in little, small little voices that I can actually hear.

I maybe have some sort of impulse or whatever, but maybe that's indigestion, I don't know.

Okay, God, or what about the argument of intelligent design uses the God of the gaps arguments.

After a point, no scientific hypothesis or even theory is absolutely provable.

Everything's open to potential falsification.

You come up to a limit in your evidence, and then you have to make a leap, a leap of faith before you can actually believe your hypothesis or theory is actually true and will actually happen in the future as you predict it will.

And in fact, if you did absolutely know, if you had absolute knowledge about something, science would no longer be needed.

Science is only needed when you don't know complete knowledge, or when you don't have complete knowledge.

Series

Sean Pitman ~ The Emperor Has No Clothes: Creation vs. Evolution

The Best Arguments Against Intelligent Design

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Breakout Session B

Life Commandments for Daily Living

56m

Designed With Purpose

It’s All Just a Bunch of Gas

29m

Creator’s Masterpiece: Preserving Vital Force

1h 23m

1-Defending the Faith

Jesus and Science

1h 16m

Called By Accident

39m

2nd Quarter 2020: How to Interpret Scripture

08- Creation: Genesis as Foundation - Part 1

1h 6m

Misc

Bootstrapping a School Farm

48m

Steve Conway - Morning Devotionals

Be Ye

58m

Misc

Entrepreneurship: Why & How?

52m

The Rise and End Time Role of Science in Education

50m

Yes, Creation!

DNA and Design

21m

Plenary Sessions

Faith and Science

57m

Sound Doctrine