How many fallacies are in this quote?
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Original Question
“If biologists know anything at all about life, they know that every activity within even the simplest known living cell is exquisitely organized. Life is genomically and epigenomically controlled and regulated. How did that organization, prescription, processing, control and regulation of biofunction get started in inanimate nature?”
- David Abel, life-origin scientist, intelligent design proponent
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Answers
5I can see a few areas where fallacious reasoning is involved. One, with equivocation regarding "organization." Typically, organization requires an organizer—a deliberate act. This is different from apparent organization—the kind we find in natural selection. Second, he is begging the question by using the term "prescription." This is not been established.
Of course, theologically speaking, according to the same line of reasoning, how did the intelligent designer's level of organization, prescription, processing, control and regulation get started? special pleading .
Equivocation, the argument from incredulity, special pleading, begging the question are all cogent possibilities for the OP's question:
"How many fallacies are in this quote?"
I would point out that False equivalence applies to one particular respondent's feeble defense:
"Intelligent design is an alternative theory to natural selection for the mechanism behind the appearance of organization."
Intelligent design may be an "alternative" theory in the most generous of terms but is as equal to valid evolutionary science as astrology is to behavioral science, phrenology is to neuroscience, or homeopathy is to medical science.
"In fact, In the United States federal court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), intelligent design was judged a repackaged version of creationism and as such introducing intelligent design in public school science classrooms was unconstitutional religious infringement."
It should also be pointed out that since the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington and more recently, Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University surveyed over 20,000,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers over the last twenty years, approximately 150,000 dealt with evolution, and out of these 150, 000 peer-reviewed scientific journals 80 papers on Intelligent Design were written and submitted by Christian mechanical engineers and not qualified evolutionary biologists.
150, 000 scientific papers on evolution versus 80 on Intelligent Design out of 20,000,000 submissions over 20 years.
So, the overwhelming consensus is that Intelligent Design is a religious rehash of Creationism and not a science, and therefore not equivalent in any manner.
While Steven Meyer's most recent "Return of the God Hypothesis" has earned great accolades and newfound respectability for ID as a legitimate scientific rebuttal to evolutionary theory, I challenge anyone's brain not to freeze up by the strenuous machinations and glaring confirmation bias running rampant through every single page of Meyer's laborious assertions. (It's 400 pages!)
Ultimately, while there are obvious notes of fallacious reasoning in the OP's query what we are essentially dealing with is Cognitive and Confirmation bias. The fallacious reasoning that springs up from the ID hypotheses comes from primitive cognitive mechanisms and intuitive by-products rather than responsible scientific inquiry.
What is true of Intelligent Design, as with theology itself, I align myself with the views of philosopher Andrew Borstein: The tragedy is... in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction—studying nothing.
Science Should Not Try to Absorb Religion and Other Ways of Knowing www.scientificamerican.co. . . via @sciam
If the questioner truly wants an answer, certainly Dawkins explains it in ways even children understand. Fallacies? Well, two immediately come to mind:
Nonethless, it is a question asked, not a proposition proposed.
"If biologists know anything at all about life, they know that every activity within even the simplest known living cell is exquisitely organized"
I see an Appeal to the Crowd. "Obviously all live is exquisitely organized." He is actually right about this, although evolution organized it and not god.
I think I see an Affirming the Consequent.
Intelligence causes organization.
This cell is organized,
therefore it was created by an intelligence.
Non intelligent forces can create organization.
For me, the Expert Fallacy is at play here. When someone who has a title, maybe an advanced degree, some prestige, some history and some cred in his chosen field says anything, most people immediately tend to believe what they say, even if their "argument" or, in this case, some kind of rambling creationist cobbled-together BS (which I believe he said or wrote in order to cloud his narrative) is potentially flawed.
My goal here is not to pick apart his argument; my goal is to simply be skeptical of anything anyone says unless they can back it up with a fact-based narrative. Personally, his quote smacks of the History Channel's oft-repeated "The Aliens Built the Pyramids" crap, e.g., "Some people say that..." or "It is often discussed in academic circles that..."
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Looks to be merely a statement of alleged facts followed by a question. Where is the logical argument?