Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer? Or the same detective is the desert and in the middle of this barren? wasteland he finds a laptop with no evidence of an owner or anything identifyng who made it. Should he assume there was never an owner or it just naturally came to being in the desert? How rational is that?
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Well, if it has been ascertained that someone has been MURDERED, then of course that by itself is evidence enough of a culprit, as opposed to just finding someone dead. Your laptop analogy is stupid though since a laptop is an inanimate, synthetic object incapable of reproduction or any sentient thought...... unless it's running Windows 95.
1) No, because the fact that she looks like she was brutally murdered is itself evidence of a brutal murderer .
2)No, because a laptop is an obviously man-made object, which means that someone had to make it.
Or, translated: "I flunked Kindergarden."
Either that or it's a Poe, but that laptop thing sounds like a real example.
If a person is mutilated (as they would be in a truly brutal murder) that alone is evidence of a murderer. People tend to have a hard time doing such things to themselves, especially as they're dying or soon after they're dead.
Your laptop/desert analogy also fails. We know exactly where laptops come from and that they're not natural in any way. Rational thinking involves thinking about the evidence at hand and coming to a logical conclusion after taking knowledge and experience into consideration.
Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds evidence of the killer, such as an ax, fingerprints, a cigarette butt, the letters "GEOR" written in blood with her dying breath and a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend named "George". Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer because no one actually witnessed the murder?
Or the same detective is the desert and in the middle of this barren wasteland he finds a laptop with no evidence of an owner or anything identifying who made it. Should he assume an undetectable being just poofed it into the desert by magic? How rational is that?
Well, if he's a detective, he's seen murders before, and knows that murders are performed by people. He's also seen laptops and knows that laptops are made by people. However, he has not seen that planets are made by sky daddies, and thus has no reason to assume they are.
Knowledge that humans murder leads detectives to the conclusion that the woman was murdered by a human. Knowledge that humans manufacture laptops leads detective to the conclusion that the laptop belongs to a human.
Very poor examples, considering the human is both the discoverer and the agent of both "phenomena."
What's wrong with the fundie chewy toys these days?
I guess it's a stretch of the imagination to think the fundies would actually come up with some better arguments and ones that have not been debunked somewhere in the vicinity of Graham's Number of times before....
It's actually impossible. The very fact that you can conclude it is a murder or a laptop means that there are things the murderer or designer includes to indicate such.
For the murderer, you would see some indication of the weapon that did it. For the laptop, you would see the marks on the cut microchips, if you could look at it on a small enough scale.
If, in the case of the murder, the body is too decayed to tell what happened to it then yes, it IS irrational to conclude that it was a murder.
> a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer?
No, they can deduce that a death has occurred. Based on the evidence, they can deduct that it was a homicide.
If the detectives find a suspiciously agitated fellow who insists that it was a suicide and the poor victim just happened to shoot themselves in the head sixteen times, eyebrows tend to rise. They'll clear the guy of suspicions if he demonstrates that he believes all deaths are suicides. Just a harmless nutcase, you know.
The latter is how ID proponents usually come across. Instead of relying on evidence, they rely on dogmatic statements that may or may not work in real life.
Analogies are funny in that they rarely completely hold water.
Let's say somebody finds a laptop, no logo, no identifying marks. Should his first thought be; 'Hey! There must have been a big junkyard here and a great big tornado came along and assembled all these parts, isn't God great!'
Or would that just be some more fundie idiocy?
@ Stimbo...
I was once involved in a debate against a creationist fundy who 'reasoned' (for want of a better word) just like pisbucket here. He tried to draw the same analogy of the universe being a corpse at a crime scene, and wanted me to agree with him that the only conclusion was that it was a murder. In other words, the only rational explanation for the universe must be that someone did it.
He abandoned the thread after I pointed out that it could just as easily have been natural causes.
Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer?
If there's no evidence of a killer, then how do you know it's a murder and not an accident or suicide?
Or the same detective is the desert and in the middle of this barren? wasteland he finds a laptop with no evidence of an owner or anything identifying who made it. Should he assume there was never an owner or it just naturally came to being in the desert? How rational is that?
It's not rational which is why we wouldn't think that. A single laptop in a place with no other laptops suggests that it comes from somewhere else. Plus, it's incapable of moving on it's own means something had to move it there. And we haven't even gotten to the fact that LAPTOPS CAN'T REPRODUCE! Go back to your watch and spin on it.
Here's where your analogy completely fails: we know from past experience and observation that humans can brutally murder other humans. We also know from past experience and observation that laptops can be made by humans. Now, the killing MIGHT have been caused by an animal (assuming that there is no way to clearly identify the cause of death), but either way we have seen scenarios in which people can die and have died. However, we have never observed anything being created by a supernatural being and there is no evidence. Therefore, it is more parsimonious (ergo rational) to conclude that a murdered woman and a laptop are the result of human action (or possibly animal action in the case of the death) but it is not rational to assume that an unobserved and unevidenced phenomenon is responsible for life and the universe. And that's the whole problem with most fundie analogies: you compare apples to oranges and pretend like they're the same fruit.
After reading this I can think of at least two similar (Though vastly better) analogies that convey picbusket's point better than his own.
How bad is it when then people they are trying to convince know thier own stories better than they do?
Um, you do realize that if there's no evidence that there was a killer then it would in fact be logical to think that the woman wasn't murdered, yes? Of course, one wouldn't just assume that. They'd further investigate the incident and try to determine the real cause. Hint: Believe or not, but people have in fact staged their suicides so it looked like murder. You see, as much as you may want to simplify everything into A + B = C, some things are much more complicated than that.
Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer?
What are you talking about? Were you there 6000 years ago when the murder took place? None of you so-called "detectives" were there to witness the murder, so how can you be sure? God is the author of everything, so it's obvious that God murdered this woman.
"Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered . He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer?"
Tautological nonsense. If there wasn't a killer, it wouldn't be a "crime scene", and the woman wouldn't have been "brutally murdered", just dead. And assuming that a dead person has no killer until proven otherwise is pretty rational.
"Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered."
No, You'd look at the evidence, perhaps it was suicide, perhaps an accident. But Blood+Dead body isn't enough to decide this.
"Should he assume there was never an owner or it just naturally came to being in the desert? How rational is that? "
rehash of design argument, fails miserably. There are no known natural processes that can produce a laptop. There ARE however natural processes that can produce life, planets and yeah even the cosmos.
We all have (of course) noticed something these (and all ' it must have a creator') arguments demand. That the person finding these things has no life experience or common sense derived thereof.
Like he was just created a minute ago himself. Someone this incomplete will be amazed by his toes and fingers for a week, he'll certainly not come to the conclusion of a Christian creator God by himself.
Or, you know, he could look for CLUES, which what scientists and archaeologists and anthropologists DO, which is how we know what we know about...oh, never mind.
And this has fuck-all to do with evolution. In other words, bad analogy.
Funny you creationists should talk about evidence when there are mountains of evidence for evolution.
If the detective is a creationist, he will just shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, since I wasn't there, there is no way to tell what happened. I'll just ignore the evidence and make up and explanation that agrees with what I want to believe." This is why creationists make poor detectives. It is also why they make poor scientists.
Except those things are evidence of people. We know there must be a killer because the woman has been killed. I'm assuming you're talking about evolution. Well, evolution didn't just pop out of nowhere. It all started with cells that mutated over time, and the cells that were stronger survived.
"Let's say a detective comes across a crime scene where he finds a woman has been brutally murdered. He finds no evidence of the killer. Should he conclude using his own rational thinking that there is no killer? Or the same detective is the desert and in the middle of this barren? wasteland he finds a laptop with no evidence of an owner or anything identifyng who made it. Should he assume there was never an owner or it just naturally came to being in the desert? How rational is that?"
Ever watched an episode of CSI? There's always evidence left at a crime scene (even if it's not murder). The forensic investigators use scientific means to discover evidence of a crime, to base a case against a suspect(s). Y'know, science. As in rational.
Archaeology/paleontology is similar, using scientific methods to gather evidence, and thus increase understanding & knowledge on what's been found.
@Wehpudicabok
"Hey, I can parrot Behe too. But I don't, because I know better."
If only Behe had known better, but he didn't. Fortunately Judge John E. Jones III did. Thus his finding for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller vs. Dover. Therefore the precedent set, and the teaching of 'Intelligent Design' being illegal in US educational establishmemts.
Rational Thought - 1. Creationism - 0.
"Or the same detective is the desert and in the middle of this barren? wasteland he finds a laptop with no evidence of an owner or anything identifyng who made it."
In the case of Windows, in the installation process (if done by the owner; or usually if bought 'off the shelf' once booted up, it goes into the final stage of the post-OS installation setup process), where one types in their name. then obviously it did once have a previous owner. And to my knowledge, except for generic desktop cases (used by those who have built their own computer), laptops are made by the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Apple, IBM (now Lenovo), Acer, ASUS etc. And have the manufacturers' name on such.
Even Inspector Clouseau could deduce those facts. I guess "Columbo" would confuse you eh, pisbucket?
"Or the same detective is the desert"
Is his name Sandy?
X3
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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