William Dembski responds to the "spaghetti critics"
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:05 pm
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.ph ... 7#more-297The anti-ID community is congratulating itself for yet another brilliant coup. Case in point, the Spaghetti Monster:
The challenge mounted against us is supposed to be momentous. Indeed, how can we design theorists rule out ridiculous designers like the Spaghetti Monster? And if we can't do that, then how can anyone take ID seriously? Case closed.
I'm reminded of Steven Weinberg at the Nature of Nature conference in April 2000 dismissing all religious and theological discussions of God as the study of “fairies.” Take that Augustine and Aquinas, you nincompoops!
What we see here is a case of mass delusion in which a dysfunctional community of smug, cossetted intellectuals tell themselves exactly what they want to hear and then commend each other on their brilliance. Dawkins and Dennett made this self-congratulation explicit a few years back when they proposed referring to atheists as “brights.”
Questions: Does the Spaghetti Monster consist of durum semolina or some other grain? Also, was that grain as well as its processing into spaghetti designed? Since in all our experience spaghetti is designed, who or what designed the Spaghetti Monster?
Dembski has a good sense of humor imo and I enjoyed how he answered the following comment posted by an ID-critic on his blog...
Just for completeness, and to make the contrast as stark as possible: how does ID answer the equivalent questions? What is the Intelligent Designer made of? Are those components designed? In our experience, all designers are human and therefore designed, does that mean that the Intelligent Designer is himself designed? If so, who or what designed the Intelligent Designer?
[I'll respond to your questions, but this is your last post here. ID from the start has argued that intelligence is empirically detectable but that to know characteristics about such an intelligence requires further evidence. The problem with the Spaghetti Monster is that it is proposed as a designing intelligence without any evidence of its spaghetti-like characteristics. As for your other questions, read the chapter titled “The Designer Regress” in my book The Design Revolution. —WmAD]