We all know the game of the Intelligent Design Creationist crowd. Yes, point at something that looks complex, find out that we don’t have the complete story for how it came to be, erroniously call this evidence for design, whip out some flash animations making fun of scientists, and then whine about the dogmatic repressive science establishment and the school system and the constitution and whatever else they think is keeping their empty ideas out of the schools. (Notice how at no point in this process, they actually do any scientific research.)

Some of you may know that “Irreducible Complexity” is Michael Behe’s way of saying “I don’t know. Therefore it was designed.”

Some of you may know that “Complex Specified Information” is William Dembski’s way of saying “If we don’t know how it evolved, it has CSI. If we do know how it evolved, it doesn’t have CSI. Therefore, CSI demonstrates that if we don’t know how it evolved, it was designed. And evolution cannot generate CSI, by definition. I’m so smartt.”(sic)

But have any of you heard what Toronto-based ID proponent and Dembski’s Co-blogger, Denyse O’Leary thinks intelligent design predicts? Stupid. Another topic ripe for Monday Madness.

MADNESS

Denyse O’Leary asked the question: Why do people take Steve Weinberg’s opinions seriously?

A 1979 Nobel Prize winner, when asked what he thought about Intelligent Design, answered (in part):

Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

For those unfamiliar with one hairy aspect of ID, one of the main aspects of creationism (ID being one strain) that makes it pseudoscience is that no matter what the characteristics of the universe are, God some un-named designer could have made it that way. Earth the only planet with life? Designer made it that way. Life on other planets? Designer made it that way. Molecular machines exist? Designer made them. Molecular machines evolved? Designer made them evolve. Universe exists on its own? Designer lets it do its own thang!

Denyse O’Leary, not to be outdone, was ready to strut her stuff. Pah! Intelligent Design will not be made fun of so easily! Intelligent Design makes no predictions about the nature of the designer, just like arson investigators have no need (or way to) discern the identity of the arsonist or determine their intentions. All they do is say that someone somewhere somehow for unknown reasons, and with unknown methods, committed arson.

…With a match on gasoline in the corner of the building that houses the office from which someone was just fired and their fingerprints were found on the matchbook tossed into the garbage can that survived the fire. Absolutely NO way to figure out identity or intent there!

Intelligent Design, so we are told by its proponents, cannot delve into the identity or the intentions of the designer. Unless of course you’ve actually read anything by ID proponents where they make assumptions about the nature of the designer and run with them. Even Behe claimed that he knew (in court - KvD transcripts rock) that he knew that the designer intended to design what it did. Accidents, of course, never happen. Like that gaffe.

You see, it is plain to see for all objective observers, that Intelligent Design cannot make predictions about the kinds of design that a designer will make, because there is no way to know what kinds of things different kinds of designers will make. There is absolutely no correlation between the intelligence of a designer, and the sophistication of their design. Incredibly complicated machines are made by ignoramuses, and the super-smart can make stupid things without thinking. Right?

So getting her keyboard fired up, O’Leary fires back! Steve Weinberg is sooooo wrong on that account:

Not likely. A universe designed by an idiot would be ful of intelligently designed stupid systems.(sic)

Intelligently Designed Stupid Systems! Brilliant Response! Wait a second.

Intelligently Designed, yes, yes. Stupid Systems. I see where she gets that - systems that although designed, are fatally flawed, and from that we can infer that the designer is an idiot. As in un-intelligent. Lacking the proper weight of neurons in their head. Not firing on all thrusters. Losing chess games to a poo-flinging monkey. Un-intelligent. So let’s put that together:

Intelligently Designed Stupid System: (n-tl-jnt-lee d-zn-d stpd sstm) A system composed of parts, arranged in such a manner that the complete lack of intelligence in the process of synthesis or arrangement can be reliably confirmed, but is also simultaneously present in sufficient quantity so as to conclude that intelligence was actually involved. When it was not. Ex: A post by Denyse O’Leary on her blog is an intelligently designed stupid system composed of words that lead to a self-contradiction and thus self-refutation.

It is clear that Denyse O’Leary in fact believes that you can make predictions about design based upon assumptions about the designer. An idiotic designer would, for example, intelligently design something stupid. Ok, we already know how stupid that line was, but wait, there is one way to look at this: The designer was intelligent, but purposefully made stupid systems. The designer is in fact a cunningly mischievous and tricksy designer who wants you to think they’re stupid so they can steal your lunch money when you’re not looking!

So the stupid systems are in fact evidence of an intelligence far surpassing our own! If not for the simple fact that the given condition of this thought experiment was that the designer was an IDIOT, she’d be totally on to something!

So still, wrong again. An unintelligent designer could make something totally random, something with systems put together stupidly, even the rare occurrence of something that looks well-made, but was arrived at by accident. An intelligent designer would only make them if they were hiding something.

Which leads to the ultimate question: Denyse O’Leary put “Intelligently Designed” and “Stupid Systems” in the same sentence, in conjunction - not opposition. We can take this in only one of two ways: Intelligently designing stupidity to take your lunch money, or losing games of chess to the afore-mentioned fecalphilic monkey. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt that she’s not maliciously after everyone’s pocket change. How would she even get it? Let’s be nice and rule out the former option.

That’s it for another weekly installment of Monday Madness - the most inane things I come across in my weekly readings, diced up and served cold to warm you up in the wee hours of the morning. Or over lunch. This time we’ve learned that you can in fact predict the design from the nature of the designer. In this case the designer is Intelligent Design. And the design it hath wrought is Stupid. Intelligently Designed Stupid. Thanks for reading.