Intelligent Design: what do you think of this analogy?

Question

Here is an analogy: You find a pie baking in an oven of a vacant home. After looking around and finding no one is home, you remove the pie from the oven and observe it. You begin to try to explain how the pie was made. After much evaluation, you figure out exactly how the pie was made, and what it was made of. You list all the ingredients: eggs, flour, cherries, sugar, and you write down that the pie was baked. You also write down in what order all these ingredients were added, and that the pie was baked at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. After several days of unsuccessfully trying to find out who made the pie, you conclude that no one made the pie. Since there is no evidence that a person made the pie by hand, you come up with a theory of how all the ingredients came together after a small earthquake shook the house. This also caused the oven to turn on and the pie to fall in the oven. You conclude that this theory is sufficient to explain how the pie was made. When your friend hears your results, he suggests that it is probably more likely that a person made the pie, and then intelligently placed it in the oven so it can evolve into a baked pie, all before you discovered it. You tell your friend that his idea is absurd because the earthquake theory is sufficient, and there is no evidence that a person made the pie.

Answer 1

Testability - that's the problem with intelligent design, you can't test the hypothesis.

You can test the earthquake.  Seismic records.  You can search the county records for the owner of the house, too.

The problem with intelligent design is that if a watch demands a watchmaker, and a watchmaker demands a creator, who created the creator?  Obviously, this requires an uber god.  Next, a super god then a supra god on into infinity where each god is more complex than the god that came before.

This logical fallacy is a "reduction into an absurdity" and is false.  Complexity is not reason enough to postulate Intelligent Design.

Answer 2

Evolution is true dude.  It's a fact.  You can deny it if you want, but you're wrong if you do so.  Plain and simple.

Your analogy is called a straw man argument, it's a logical fallacy.  You're creating an untrue representation of evolution - a straw man of evolution - and attacking it instead of attacking the real thing.

Here's a tip: evolution does NOT say that anything formed by chance or that it was random.  Does natural SELECTION sound random to you?

Answer 3

Your Additional Details redeemed your question somewhat.  It is very astute of you to point to evolution as the part of the puzzle we *DO* know ... equivalent to the fact that we attribute the *BAKING* of the pie to the oven in which we find it.  That is exactly analogous to the status of evolution in science ... we do not yet know fully how the ingredients for evolution got here, or what started the process (turned on the oven) ... but we absolutely *DO* know that evolution occurred (the pie baked in the oven).   Very clever!

But as for the rest of the analogy, here's where it falls short:

The analogy reveals a world in which we *know beforehand* that pies are made by people.  This is a given ... the awareness of "pie-baking people" is something we are aware of from other experience *beyond* the evidence we are given.   We know this because (by the wording of your analogy), we are already aware that "ovens" are used by such people for the purpose of baking, and that "pies" are one such product of this activity.   The fact that your friend can suggest the "person baked the pie" hypothesis, without having to explain what words like "person", "oven", "bake", or "pie" mean, reveal that these are all *givens* in your analogy.

So with the existence of "pie-baking people" (PBP's) AS A *GIVEN*, it is indeed a reasonable application of Occam's Razor to conclude that this pie was made by such a pie-baking person (PBP).  The very power of the analogy is that the reader already assumes all these as *givens* ... so the reader scoffs at the suggestion that an earthquake started the baking process because we all *KNOW* that people exist that bake pies!  We even know *HOW* people bake pies, and even *WHY* they bake pies (they're yummy).

But **if** the existence of pie-baking people is NOT a given .... i.e. we don't *know beforehand* that "people" exist, or "ovens" are the mechanism used by such beings, or that "pies" are the deliberate desire of such beings ... then the conclusion is not so clear.    It would be making a logical error to say that the pie *alone* is evidence of the existence of "pie-baking persons" and therefore that a pie-baking person made the pie.  This is circular logic.

This is precisely the circular logic used by creationists.   The creation *ALONE* is evidence of the Creator!  And therefore, since we now "know" the Creator exists, it is far more reasonable to conclude that the Creator created the creation, than to find some alternative explanation.

This is also the circular logic used by Intelligent Design advocates.   The fact that we call it a "design" *ALONE* is evidence that there is a Designer!  

So (back to your analogy) if we don't "know" beforehand that there are pie-baking people ... if there is no *INDEPENDENT* way of verifying the existence, mechanisms, or motives of such a being ... then introducing such a being to make your explanation easier is a violation of Occam's Razor.  It is introducing an assumption.  As a *scientist* you first have to explore alternative explanations ... like the earthquake explanation.   Yes, it sounds absurd (that is the point of a clever analogy) ... but it doesn't matter how *improbable* an explanation is ... as long as it is *possible*, and introduces fewer outside assumptions, then Occam's Razor says we have to go with that explanation until we find something better.

Or to put it another way ... if you are a scientist studying the question of *origins* of the pie ... it does not improve your situation to simply declare that "pies are baked by pie-baking people (PBPs)" ... because you've just shifted the question of *origins* from the origin of the pie to the origin of PBPs.  You have replaced one thing to be explained (pies) with something far more mysterious (PBPs, which have some unknown *motive* for making these "pies").  You have raised more questions than you have answered.

Answer 4

what do you think of this analogy?

Some old guy about 10,000 years ago makes up god and angels and devils.  

On down the road idiots with Southern accents still believe it although there has never been even one shred of evidence that god, angels and devils exist or ever existed.

The idiots make up "analogies" to sell to the school district so the schools will be forced to teach their delusional nonsense.

Bush get "elected" President of the United States proving that Americans are easily fooled.

Answer 5

I think you need to do a bit more reading - you have an overly simplistic and pretty much all wrong idea of how evolution works.  Here's a hint - every field of science has confirmed evolution.  It is supported by the fossil record, genetic evidence, and direct observation.  Intelligent design and creationism are basically someone saying 'I don't know how that could have happened, therefore my particular god did it' and ignoring the perfectly reasonable natural laws of physics and chemistry.

Answer 6

This made me laugh!!  I love it!  :o)

Answer 7

The police will be at your place shortly to arrest you for breaking and entering.

You will probably get the maximum sentence for misusing Occam's Razor. He posited that the simplest explanation THAT EXPLAINED ALL THE EVIDENCE was most likely to be correct. Just hope that I am not on the jury.

Answer 8

You are confused between random mutation and natural selection.

Your analogy is false. I suggest you truly educate yourself and give the no evidence based ideology. We have the evidence.

http://www.talkorigins.org

Trouble is, you people are so heavily invested in your particular ideology that you have forgotten how to think.

No, I do not see it that way because I need evidence to see anything. Abiogenisis has nothing to do with evolution and your " putting the pie in the oven " analogy is still false.

Answer 9

No - with respect to your elaboration.  We don't need to discuss evolution; you correctly accept it, and in any event it's a proven fact.  What we are dealing with here is how life started in the first place, which the theory of evolution does not and cannot address.  The short answer is that we don't know how it happened, and it is unlikely in the extreme that we ever will -- but it is not necessary, and is provably useless, to introduce any sort of supernatural tinkering into the process.  I expect that within the next hundred years, scientists will create life de novo starting from elements; but the probability is vanishingly small that the mechanism that gets used will have anything to do with how it happened naturally some four billion years ago.

Answer 10

LOL!!!

edit: No, seriously. LOL!!!!!! I love it.

edit 2: So I'm totally imagining this amazing earthquake and this pie... get this... not only bakes itself, but after a few aftershocks, flies out of the oven, divides into eight equal parts, one lands neatly on a plate with a fork and vanilla ice cream and slides across a table in front of me. What do you think? Better?

Answer 11

I think it is dumb. I think the whole arguement is dumb. I'm not denying the possible existance of God or a creator. Having studied ID I have to say it doesn't prove the existance of God either. Also, ID does not make all previous scientific findings nullified.

Evolution is a fact. There is a lot more evidence for evolution (and I'm not talking about Darwinism) than there is for spontaneous creation. You can see evolution in your lifetime if you pay attention to virus's. Virus's evolve at a much faster rate. It is proof that lifeforms evolve to operate efficiently in their environment.

ID has some interesting findings, but it should not be used to try to prove the Bible. That's just silly. It doesn't prove God any more than PHI does.