An intelligent man completely misses the point. Most proponents of "intelligent design" accept evolution as change over time, including a species like the salamander losing its eyes. The issue over eyes is how evolution via natural selection works to create complex organs like eyes. Multiple evolutionary steps (mutations) would be necessary in the process, most of which would not confer any competitive advantage because the incomplete eye would not give the animal sight. Even accepting that some step might have conferred the advantage of primitive sight, that does not explain the occurrence of (and selection for) the many mutations necessary to achieve the complex eye that would not have improved sight along the way. There are many intelligent arguments against "intelligent design." Hitchens hasn't made one here.

There is actually no argument against intelligent design except that the whole concept is founded on a logical fallacy. That is the idea that since the world and life is complex it could not have occurred naturally. Therefore, some even more complex being was responsible. This makes no sense from a logical standpoint.

Now if such a being existed and wanted to steer things along the way and then to cover his tracks, he certainly could dupe little old me. Picking holes in the evolution argument (which should be done) does nothing to prove intelligent design. You need to clear that first logical hurdle.

I've always been amazed at the argument "the world is so complicated god had to have made it," which sounds to me like "it's too hard to understand so I'm not going to think about it."

Yes, the world is magnificent and complicated, and it seems highly unlikely that it evolved to it's present state from a big bang, atoms, molecules, enzymes (whatever) into what we know today, even I can admit that. To assume that it was like, magic, or whatever, or some guy that lives in heaven with people who have wings and stuff, though? That's seriously MORE outrageous than any cosmic coincidence could ever possibly be.

"Intelligent design" proponents raise numerous valid questions about the hubristic claims of evolutionary theory. In my opinion. the most notable of them include:

1) the irreducible complexity of the most basic life forms;

2) the unexplained origin of complex organs;

3) mathematical improbabilities; and

4) the similarity of DNA to an information storage system

Now, all of these might be explainable. I'm not taking sides. I clicked on Hitchens' piece for such an explanation. It wasn't there. That doesn't mean that "God" is the answer. And, by the way, it also doesn't disprove the idea of an intelligent designer. It simply points out that evolutionary theory does not yet offer a satisfactory explanation.
The whole point of "picking holes in the evolutionary argument" is to provide an honest assessment of what explains and what it doesn't. That is, at bottom, a scientific inquiry.

Considering that the possibility of an intelligent designer is not disprovable, I'm thinking, yeah it doesn't disprove it.

Hubristic claims. That would be a new one by me. Scientists do take some pride in work that they have spent, oh, 150 years trying to piece together. Sure.

1) Not irreducible. See the development of the eye if needed on Wikipedia.

<link>

2) Name an organ and we can talk. Perhaps the eye?

3) This point has been disproven. Saying that something is improbable does not make it impossible especially when I have a lot of time and generations to get from point A to point B.

4) Well DNA IS an information storage system so it does look like an information storage system. How could it look like anything else and still function?

I guess I just feel like, no matter how improbable and complex life on this planet may be, evolutionary theory is an effort to explain and understand using the best clues we have available to us, while intelligent design (as far as I, an admitted atheist, can see) is an effort to avoid understanding and promote ignorance.

Yep.

ID summary: It's complicated. Aliens must have done it.

People think that supporters of evolution are arrogant. Personally I just get tired of arguing against this drivel.

I mean if you have legitimate questions about evolution, fine, but until someone comes up with an alternate hypothesis that isn't just freaking inane, I'm sort of stuck with it.

Is it just me or did Hitchens' article not have an argument against creationism?

1. He uses the example of the salamander to show that natural selection does happen, as if this is something that creationists don't believe. Natural selection is an important part of creationism, so it looks like he's setting up a straw-man here.

2. He then uses the example of losing the ability to see as something that creationists can't explain. Well according to creationism, everything is cursed by sin, so it wouldn't be a surprise at all for this to happen.

3. For good measure, he lumps creationism and ID together in the same boat. If he really had a good argument, he wouldn't have to do this, but since he doesn't, he settles for name calling.

@shootemupsally:

The argument is not that the world is so complicated, God had to have made it. Complexity is just one aspect. You're missing specificity. It happens to be the same priciples that Evolutionists use to try to find ET, so it's only fair to use it in this context too.

It's a useful argument, but it's not the reason why creationists believe that God created the world. The reason there is because he said so in the Bible. So it's not believing in a "God of the gaps", where anything too complicated to understand is attributed to God.

Just to clarify:

I use the term creationist to refer to "Biblical Creationists". There are other creationists who do not believe in the Bible.

I use the term Evolution to refer to the theory of Evolution, not the much broader definition of "change over time".

So the bible says that God created the world, so that is the definitive answer? Then you are simply not scientific, but base everything on faith. Fine. Why do you now hold science to a high standard if you have no standards for the existence of your God?

Complexity is a major component of the Creationists debate. I notice that you still don't demonstrate how throwing God into the mix simplifies things. Let's just start there and work from that point because until you lay down that groundwork, you don't actually have a hypothesis.

It would be sort of like OJ Simpson saying that aliens killed his wife without first establishing that these aliens existed. And no you can't prove the existence of God by citing the Bible.

Come on Hitch, weak argument, as most creationist I know believe in some sort of evolutionary change below the level of species. They would say to you, WOW its cool that a creator makes a specials free enough to adapt to a changing world. But that still begs tha question on changes that happen from one species over time becoming a new species.

Johnny Cake, those arguments (from Michael Behe, yes?) have been disproven many times over. If you read the Dover decision, you'll see where a conservative judge actually called the whole thing "a canard."

Ok, he said "at worst a canard" and I can't remember what the "at best" was.

I mean, you could check youtube if you want an explanation for 1-2. Irreducible complexity has been dead for a while and Behe is officially an embarassment to the university where he works. #3 you can google, assuming that by "mathematical improbabilities" you are referring to the guy who counted all the atoms in the universe, then multiplied over time and determined that the probability of a strand of DNA popping randomly into existence was so unlikely as to be impossible... these people have been debunked everywhere.

#4 though is harder to debunk, mostly because no one has any idea what ID advocates mean when they say "information." Under their view, what possibly couldn't qualify as "information" of some sort? In a way, the shape of a landscape "informs" the air currents moving above it - is that also proof of design? But we've already shown how nature can gradually produce an eye. Why couldn't nature also produce an information storage system?

Me personally, I'm kind of an atheist depending on the asker's definition of "god." And at this point, I'm going to say that it is just idiotic to try to physically or mathematically prove that god exists and intervenes in the universe. Intelligent design represents a number of deluded but well-intentioned individuals chasing after a phantom.

There is plenty of assertion in these comments about these questions being answered (and, yes they mostly come from Behe). But I am pretty sure no one has convincingly done so. If someone had shown how even the simplest (yet still incredibly complex) life form evolved from non-life, I think it would have made the news.

Again, these are just questions that remain unsettled in my mind. I'm not passionately involved in this, and I'm not calling anyone names. As to the court case, judges are not scientists, and the issue before the judge was a policy question, not a scientific one.

Should intelligent design be taught in school? Probably not. The leap from the questions raised to the existence of a designer is not scientifically defensible. On the other hand, pretending that evolutionary theory explains things it clearly does not (yet?) explain is also not scientifically defensible.

“ Multiple evolutionary steps (mutations) would be necessary in the process, most of which would not confer any competitive advantage because the incomplete eye would not give the animal sight.”

>>Here’s where you go wrong: the presumption that the intermediate stages leading to an complex eye would not confer an increased fitness until the entire process was complete.

The truth is that we observe the intermediate stages present in living organisms, where they do confer a fitnes advantage—in mollusks, planaria, nautilus’s.

See <link>

“Even accepting that some step might have conferred the advantage of primitive sight, that does not explain the occurrence of (and selection for) the many mutations necessary to achieve the complex eye that would not have improved sight along the way.”

>>I agree that if a change doesn’t result in improved fitness it will not be selected for. That’s why evolutionary theories predict complex structures arise as the result of the serial accumulation of discrete genetic changes that do increase fitness with respect to environment at the time they arise. Your suggestion that eyes absolutely require intermediate stages that do not increase fitness doesn’t correspond to our understanding of how evolution proceeds.

“1) the irreducible complexity of the most basic life forms”

>>Irreducible complexity fails as an indicator of design, however, because it proceeds from a false premise: the idea that biological systems must have always existed exactly as they exist now, rather than having evolved from a previous system that wasn’t irreducible. Note also all supposed examples of irreducibly complex systems (the clotting cascade, the bacterial flagellum) have be reduced.

“the unexplained origin of complex organs”

>>Their origin isn’t unexplained: like all other biological features they are the result of gene regulation and expression during development.

“mathematical improbabilities”

>>There are no valid arguments from probability against evolution or in support of ID, I’m afraid.

“the similarity of DNA to an information storage system”

>>Why would a perceived similarity argue in support of ID?

“The whole point of "picking holes in the evolutionary argument" is to provide an honest assessment of what explains and what it doesn't.”

>>It explains the body of evidence regarding observed biological diversity in a comprehensive and predictive manner, and as such is the fundamental unifying principle of the biological sciences.