is there a name for this argument?

[proudnonbbeliever]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

[Hokulele]

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.


"Asinine".

[proudnonbbeliever]

:D (giggles)

[paximperium]

False Analogy

[Ron_Tomkins]

Argumentum Ad Architectum

[Pure Argent]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

Idiocy?

[Personal Grudge]

I call it this:

"I had this brilliant thought one night... it was around 3:00 AM, so my mind was extremely clear. It was the perfect refutation of evolution, and therefore the perfect evidence for the existence of my divine creator of choice. I just knew this argument would shut all those silly scientists and evolution-believers up! I was so excited! Unfortunately, when I presented this thought to an evolution-believer... he confused me with logic. I felt so stupid and insecure, I decided to cover it up by acting belligerant and arrogant."

Hmm... not sure that's a very good generic name for an argument, though. And I'm not even going to try to form an acronym from that. :D

[Dancing David]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

Overgeneralization, poor analogy, fallacy of construction

[Pure Argent]

I call it this:

"I had this brilliant thought one night... it was around 3:00 AM, so my mind was extremely clear. It was the perfect refutation of evolution, and therefore the perfect evidence for the existence of my divine creator of choice. I just knew this argument would shut all those silly scientists and evolution-believers up! I was so excited! Unfortunately, when I presented this thought to an evolution-believer... he confused me with logic. I felt so stupid and insecure, I decided to cover it up by acting belligerant and arrogant."

Hmm... not sure that's a very good generic name for an argument, though. And I'm not even going to try to form an acronym from that. :D

Don't worry. I can do it for you.

I.H.T.B.T.O.N.I.W.A.T.A.M.S.M.M.W.E.C.I.W.T.P.R.O. E.A.T.T.P.E.F.T.E.O.M.D.C.O.C.I.J.K.T.A.W.S.A.T.S. S.A.E.B.U.I.W.S.E.U.W.I.P.T.T.T.A.E.B.H.C.M.W.L.I. F.S.S.A.I.I.D.T.C.I.U.B.A.B.A.A.

Or Yrreg for short.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Don't worry. I can do it for you.

I.H.T.B.T.O.N.I.W.A.T.A.M.S.M.M.W.E.C.I.W.T.P.R.O. E.A.T.T.P.E.F.T.E.O.M.D.C.O.C.I.J.K.T.A.W.S.A.T.S. S.A.E.B.U.I.W.S.E.U.W.I.P.T.T.T.A.E.B.H.C.M.W.L.I. F.S.S.A.I.I.D.T.C.I.U.B.A.B.A.A.

Or Yrreg for short.

Some people really do have a lot of time on their hands :D

[Personal Grudge]

Some people really do have a lot of time on their hands :D

Shh... at least he didn't try to work out a way to pronounce it. ;)

[Pure Argent]

Shh... at least he didn't try to work out a way to pronounce it. ;)

Well, actually, I did. But phonetics are difficult to post on forums. I attempted it for the first part, and it looked like

ihitbahtahohneewat...

And then I realized that going any further would summon Cthulhu. Which I could have lived with, except for the fact that I was typing the summons. So he would have appeared in the intertubes themselves. And then they would have been clogged. And that would not have been a good thing.

[Ysidro]

It's just a variation of the Watchmaker Argument. That, as paximperium mentioned, is just a False Analogy.

[Lord Emsworth]

Bob.

[Personal Grudge]

Well, actually, I did. But phonetics are difficult to post on forums. I attempted it for the first part, and it looked like

ihitbahtahohneewat...

And then I realized that going any further would summon Cthulhu. Which I could have lived with, except for the fact that I was typing the summons. So he would have appeared in the intertubes themselves. And then they would have been clogged. And that would not have been a good thing.

I, for one, welcome Cthulhu, our new overlord.

Hey, does H.P. Lovecraft show up with him?

[Pure Argent]

I, for one, welcome Cthulhu, our new overlord.

Hey, does H.P. Lovecraft show up with him?

Didn't you hear? Lovecraft's soul was eaten twenty years ago. By Nyarlathothep, I believe.

[Jeff Corey]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

I had two ringing the doorbell at dinner time. When one got to the part about talking about the bible, I shut the door.
I don't find this crap fun.

[Jeff Corey]

I, for one, welcome Cthulhu, our new overlord.

Hey, does H.P. Lovecraft show up with him?

Only if you chant, "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"

[Elizabeth I]

Argumentum Ad Architectum

or, alternatively, argumentum de rectum

[Ron_Tomkins]

or, alternatively, argumentum de rectum

Or then again, its variation, Argument from Uranus

[Beth]

Actually, houses have evolved along with humanity. I doubt you live in a one-room hut made of mud bricks and sticks.

[bluesjnr]

I had two ringing the doorbell at dinner time. When one got to the part about talking about the bible, I shut the door.
I don't find this crap fun.

Hmmm strange, I had two ringing the dinner bell at door time. When I got to the part about shutting the door they talked about crap.
I don't find this bible fun!

:D

[dogjones]

Ad home-inem, of course.

[Twiler]

You could, in fact, argue that the house did evolve; The designs used by architects will have changed over centuries to eliminate flaws, and to match up with what people desire. In addition, it is likely that the quality of the materials used to construct have also improved.

Every individual watchmaker did not invent the watch from scratch.

[paximperium]

You could, in fact, argue that the house did evolve; The designs used by architects will have changed over centuries to eliminate flaws, and to match up with what people desire. In addition, it is likely that the quality of the materials used to construct have also improved.

Every individual watchmaker did not invent the watch from scratch.
If houses did evolve why are they still huts?

[Last of the Fraggles]

You could, in fact, argue that the house did evolve; The designs used by architects will have changed over centuries to eliminate flaws, and to match up with what people desire. In addition, it is likely that the quality of the materials used to construct have also improved.

Every individual watchmaker did not invent the watch from scratch.

Yeah. Would have been interesting to see the direction the 'conversation' would have taken with a 'Yes' answer.

Why do idiots like this never knock on my door? I only get people selling double glazing.

[Vox Humana]

If houses did evolve why are they still huts?


If man evolved, why are there still monkeys?

[Sun Countess]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.


You could have told him that your house's father was a bit of a player, who only mated with shacks and lean-tos from the other side of the tracks, so all his little house descendants were still loitering in the shallow end of the gene pool. It was all on an episode of Maury.

Then I might have asked him who created the tapeworm currently residing in my intestines. :D

[UndercoverElephant]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

It's a version of William Paley's famous "watchmaker analogy" argument against Darwinism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy

It was never a particularly good argument. It's an example of an argument produced by a critic who doesn't really understand the position he is arguing against, rather like Samuel Johnson trying to refute Bishop Berkeley's idealism by kicking a rock.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Originally Posted by paximperium
If houses did evolve why are they still huts?

If man evolved, why are there still monkeys?

I believe the question Paximperium posed was "why are they still huts", not "why are there still huts", though.

As in "why are they essentially still huts?"

[The Platypus]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

Yes there is a name for that kind of argument. bull "manure".

[Twiler]

It's a version of William Paley's famous "watchmaker analogy" argument against Darwinism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy

It was never a particularly good argument. It's an example of an argument produced by a critic who doesn't really understand the position he is arguing against, rather like Samuel Johnson trying to refute Bishop Berkeley's idealism by kicking a rock.

I was going to say that Berkeley kicked the rock, but I checked first and realised I've been wrong about that for years. AAGH!

Actually, I thought that Johnson made a good point; I think he was trying to demonstrate that pain and thus our perception of objects are more real than abstract ideas of them. Of course, I may be wrong.

[dogjones]

I was going to say that Berkeley kicked the rock, but I checked first and realised I've been wrong about that for years. AAGH!

Actually, I thought that Johnson made a good point; I think he was trying to demonstrate that pain and thus our perception of objects are more real than abstract ideas of them. Of course, I may be wrong.

That would actually have been Berkley's point. "Esse est percipi" was his big thing. To be is to be perceived.

[UndercoverElephant]

I was going to say that Berkeley kicked the rock, but I checked first and realised I've been wrong about that for years. AAGH!

Actually, I thought that Johnson made a good point; I think he was trying to demonstrate that pain and thus our perception of objects are more real than abstract ideas of them. Of course, I may be wrong.

Whatever he was trying to show, it doesn't work as an argument against idealism, because under Berkeley's system, kicking a rock should still just be exactly like kicking a rock. So anyone who understands Berkeley's argument would realise that kicking a rock demonstrates nothing. Similarly, anyone who understands evolutionary theory must surely also realise that pointing at something complex in nature and saying "see, it's complex, it must have been designed" also demonstrates nothing, because evolution is a theory which explains how that complexity originated.

[JoeTheJuggler]

As others have said: it's a false analogy and a version of the watchmaker argument.

If you come across a watch in the woods, you infer a watchmaker. (But if you come across a leaf in the woods, you don't infer a leaf-maker.)

If you come across a house, you infer a house maker (or designer). But most of the universe is not like a house in this way, so the analogy doesn't hold up when you look at the universe and try to infer a Designer.

You can also answer that it's reasonable to infer a house designer for a given house because we know for sure that other houses were designed. Not so, with the rest of the world. (Claiming that we do would be begging the question.)

Further, not only do we not know that some humans, for example, were designed, we have a reasonable scientific theory supported by multiple lines of evidence which has become the central organizing principle of all biology that does explain how humans evolved. So not only is there no proof for the Designer, it's not even needed--that is, there is no gap for this Designer to occupy.

[~enigma~]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.
Tool Time argument.....aka Erector Set

[thaiboxerken]

So the person thought he had a brilliant argument for creationism. You simply asked a question about the analogy, and he ran away. What a buffoon!

[ponderingturtle]

If man evolved, why are there still monkeys?

If flys evolved why are there Flyfishing Flys?

This and many other classic arguments are available in A History of Creation.

[PixyMisa]

Whatever he was trying to show, it doesn't work as an argument against idealism, because under Berkeley's system, kicking a rock should still just be exactly like kicking a rock. So anyone who understands Berkeley's argument would realise that kicking a rock demonstrates nothing.
It demonstrates that Berkeley's argument tells us nothing and leads us nowhere. If kicking a rock feels exactly like kicking a rock, why not accept that you kicked the rock?

Similarly, anyone who understands evolutionary theory must surely also realise that pointing at something complex in nature and saying "see, it's complex, it must have been designed" also demonstrates nothing, because evolution is a theory which explains how that complexity originated.
Yes.

[Beerina]

It's just a variation of the Watchmaker Argument. That, as paximperium mentioned, is just a False Analogy.




Yup, false analogy. It's not even a "stretched too thin" analogy since it simply doesn't apply. One doesn't know, apriori, that complexity, in and of itself, implies a designer.

If anything, as each challenge to evolution using that argument, e.g. flagellum motor, hemoglobin, immune system, et al. ad nauseum, gets shot down, the likelihood the remaining arguments will survive assault becomes less and less, and the attendant implication, that such claimants know what they're talking about as an argument in the first place, lessens.

In other words, their "rules", so to speak, for finding examples of irreducible complexity, are shown to be broken because they're failing to weed out non-viable examples. Thus the remaining examples lose reliability, even in the face of no successful challenge to them (yet).

It's a Boy Who Cried Wolf issue.

[RobRoy]

I thought this was called the Teleological Argument? It's an argument via analogy.

There are three major issues with it, that have been pointed out by far more eloquent folk than me, but essentially they boil down to this:

1 - Complex artifacts do not require a designer, but can arrise from a mindless, natural process (Infinite Monkey Theorum).
2 - The watch is a faulty analogy, as has already been discussed.
3 - The argument for complexity is itself flawed, since it begs the question: who made God?

[Marduk]

I had a jeebuz lover doorknock me this morning, in the process of the ensuing debate he asked me if I believed my house had evolved.

I replied no, it was built. He then tried to use this as a basis for ID, to which I replied if god is the creator where did he get the materials, as a builder can only use pre-existing material.

That was when he got angry and left :( i was having fun.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows if this argument has a specific name, the evolving house thingy that is.

you should have told him that your house just popped into existence like his God did, see him try to talk his way out of that
:p

[UndercoverElephant]

I thought this was called the Teleological Argument? It's an argument via analogy.

There are three major issues with it, that have been pointed out by far more eloquent folk than me, but essentially they boil down to this:

1 - Complex artifacts do not require a designer, but can arrise from a mindless, natural process (Infinite Monkey Theorum).
2 - The watch is a faulty analogy, as has already been discussed.
3 - The argument for complexity is itself flawed, since it begs the question: who made God?

Minor quibble...

The term "begging the question" is a technical philosophical term which has been adopted incorrectly into mainstream usage...to the point where the incorrect version is now used by TV presenters. To "beg the question" means "to assume your conclusion in the premises". It does not (or didn't until non-philosophers started using it incorrectly) mean "this just leads to the obvious question: xxxxx."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

[Skeptic]

It is an extremely old argument: if X exists, something made X. It goes back to antiquity, and probably was unconsciously used when man first thought about Gods ("World exists. Who made world?"). It is sometimes seen as the "prime mover" argument -- God as the original cause.

It is not exactly the Paley's watch argument; the point of that argument is that the structure of the house proves the creator of the watch -- which is assumed to exist -- was intelligent (had a purpose in mind when creating the watch). That is the ID theory.

You didn't quite get there.

[RobRoy]

Minor quibble... [snip]

I sit corrected. Thanks for keeping me honest, or at least enlightening me slightly.

[Vox Humana]

I believe the question Paximperium posed was "why are they still huts", not "why are there still huts", though.

As in "why are they essentially still huts?"

Me fail English? That's unpossible! :blush:

You are correct, of course, I misread Pax's post. But now it make no sense at all; how does the fact that a house shares common functionality with a hut refute the proposition that houses have evolved? Perhaps they share a common ancestor, right?

It has crossed my mind that maybe I'm missing a joke here... :confused:

[Ron_Tomkins]

Me fail English? That's unpossible! :blush:

You are correct, of course, I misread Pax's post. But now it make no sense at all; how does the fact that a house shares common functionality with a hut refute the proposition that houses have evolved? Perhaps they share a common ancestor, right?

It has crossed my mind that maybe I'm missing a joke here... :confused:

I'm not sure. I think our best bet is to ask Pax what he meant, for any attempt to guess on my part would be speculating and putting words in his mouth ;)

[RoboTimbo]

Minor quibble...

The term "begging the question" is a technical philosophical term which has been adopted incorrectly into mainstream usage...to the point where the incorrect version is now used by TV presenters. To "beg the question" means "to assume your conclusion in the premises". It does not (or didn't until non-philosophers started using it incorrectly) mean "this just leads to the obvious question: xxxxx."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Thank you, that has always bugged me too.

[Towlie]

And me. "Begging the question" means treating as granted the very thing being argued, such as "How could the Bible be false? Why would God lie to us?"

It doesn't mean "this leads us to this next question."