afaren­sis dis­cuss­es Dawkins and Dem­b­s­ki:

IDthe Future has a response [to Dawkins]. The Inter­est­ing bit:

“And William Dem­b­s­ki takes on Dawkins’ argu­ment-from-igno­rance objec­tion here.”

So I fol­lowed the link and this is what we get: “He claims that ID is an argu­ment from igno­rance. But is the prob­lem igno­rance of the mate­r­i­al caus­es need­ed to bring about bio­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty or an inher­ent inabil­i­ty of such caus­es to do so? Dawkins can’t seem to get his mind around this lat­ter possibility.”

At first I thought Dem­b­s­ki had just missed the point Dawkins was mak­ing. That it is the desire to demys­ti­fy the mys­te­ri­ous and explore the unknown that dri­ves the sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise. I espe­cial­ly thought this because Witt, the author of the ID the Future post, mis­char­ac­teris­es Dawkins argu­ment as “an argu­ment from igno­rance” — birds of a feath­er and all. Then I real­ized that Dem­b­s­ki was just being per­verse and real­ly believes igno­rance is proof of Intel­li­gent Design. Bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism has a way of doing that to people!

Some­one asked me once:

[D]oes Dem­b­ski’s point boil down to:

Dem­b­s­ki: Evo­lu­tion can’t explain the fla­gel­lum.
Me: But isn’t that just an argu­ment from igno­rance?
Dem­b­s­ki: No. Evo­lu­tion real­ly, real­ly, real­ly can’t explain the flagellum.

And I replied:

You’re too gen­er­ous. If evo­lu­tion real­ly, real­ly, real­ly, could­n’t explain it, that might start to be interesting.

It’s more like this:

De: I don’t know how evo­lu­tion can explain the fla­gel­lum.
Me: But isn’t that an argu­ment from igno­rance?
De: No. I real­ly, real­ly, real­ly, don’t know how evo­lu­tion could explain the flagellum.

IDol­a­try!