More on ID and Creationism

The Cambrian explosion figures large in the ID arguments; ID’ers argue that the appearance of multiple multi-celled animals of many types all at once undermines or even disproves the frame of gradual evolution. Stephen J. Gould also wrote a whole book about it. Gould’s point – attacked in the linked review by Richard Dawkins [“The view that he is attacking - that evolution marches inexorably towards a pinnacle such as man - has not been believed for 50 years.”] - is that many body plans radiated quickly [millions of years, but quick in the full record of geological time] once an evolutionary step [unrecorded in the limited fossil record] was achieved. Gould’s interest is that present conditions – the RWMOT situation – is one of many outcomes, not inevitable, and therefore subject to social change.

Which brings the Dodger to the theo-illogical piece of ID. Cosmology now posits the “Big Bang” which motioned the universe we live in, including the laws by which nature rules us. The big bang hasn’t been attacked by the ID crowd; arguably the laws of nature could have been set by the creator at the instant of the Bang, and that could be the intelligent design. These laws are understood now as a bunch of equations, and not so many equations at that. Consistent with that frame, at some point the earth formed, chemistry worked, a replicating system arose, that replicating system is life itself which evolved into BrooklynDodger blogging this.

Some ID’ers posit something like a second, biological, Big Bang. That’s the creation of the first replicator. The problem with the first replicator is that it requires a time when the laws of nature were bypassed by the Deity. Problem is, you only get one chance to have a singularity.

More risible is the idea of multiple interventions by the Deity. One day, the Deity decided to make the rat. On another, the AIDS virus.