Open thread: Who designed the fine-tuned Edge?

Link to: original blogpost - comments

Categories : Intelligent Design, Richard Dawkins, Fine-tuning

Editor : Krauze

published: vendredi 5 janvier 2007 1:07:37

It's long time since we've had an open thread. Have fun.

Who designed the designer? Evolution News & Views point to this review by evolutionary biologist Allen Orr, in which Orr demolishes Richard Dawkins' favorite argument:

First, as others have pointed out, if [Dawkins] is right, the design hypothesis essentially must be wrong and the alternative naturalistic hypothesis essentially must be right. But since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data? Second, the fact that we as scientists find a hypothesis question-begging - as when Dawkins asks "who designed the designer?" - cannot, in itself, settle its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind, however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?

Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Laws,