Hitchens addresses Intelligent Design (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 22:22 (4391 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: It has been clear to me for some years, that the distinction between chance and design is false: Especially if randomness is part of the equation [...] the fence itself could well be the actual answer. We *know* chance had something to do with our development. An option hereby ignored is the one where there is a concrete mixture of chance and design: Maybe one or two major events were "designed".-I think there is a degree of confusion here. I can't answer for David, but for me it goes back to the "major event", the origin of life. The mechanism which governs life, reproduction, adaptability and innovation is of such extreme complexity that even our finest minds can barely understand it, let alone recreate it. This is a machine that works. Can you believe that such a mechanism could assemble itself by sheer accident? I can't. Once it exists, then yes, chance plays an enormous role in the unfolding of evolution, as it does in our everyday lives. The origin is the problem. However, if you believe the mechanism was designed, then you move to the question of what designed it. And you come up against a whole series of improbabilities just as great as that of the original mechanism assembling itself. I needn't go into them again. A mixture of design and chance means there is a designer, so you are still pinned to the same impossible choice. As agnostics, we don't choose ... we sit on the fence.