We, here at Design Argument, have come to realize that the spiritual crisis we are undergoing will not end by simply producing better content for our blog posts. Nor will it be alleviated by improving our search engine ranking or even by increasing blog traffic to the point where Google Ads are actually useful. The time to act is now and that is why we have hired Rabbi Emmanuel Rabinovich as our spiritual guide and keyword adviser. What may come as a surprise to many of you is that we have also retained the services of Rose Rabbinovich (2 b’s).
Although the primary goal is to upgrade our spiritual quotient on the blog, we are proud of the business opportunities that this new synergy will grow and sprout, unveil and reveal, and release into the web 6.0 environment. We are also pleased that Rabinovich and Rabbinovich are both actual fictional characters that can be looked up on Wikipedia. This is a first for Design Argument. Although we have created many fictional characters from scratch, this is the first time that we are using pre-existing fictional characters.
The environmental benefits of recycling fictional characters are significant and we are doing our part to reduce, re-use, and recycle.
Rabinovich and Rabbinovich (2 b's)
By way of introduction, Rabbi Rabinovich is a non-existent figure conjured up by anti-semites for propaganda purposes. He is probably most famous for his speech “Our Race Will Rule Undisputed Over The World” which he delivered to the Emergency Council of European Rabbis in Budapest, Hungary on January 12, 1952.
Rabbi Rabinovich’s speech invoked The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as proof of Jewish global conspiracy and appeared in the well-respected early 1950s right-wing newsletter, Common Sense – A Newspaper Upholding Christianity and Patriotism.
The Rabbi Rabinovich speech is often distributed online with a cover letter by Rose Rabbinovich (two b’s – who has graciously offered to work with us on our reputation management crisis). Rosie states that the speech was found on her Rabbi’s favorite website, Radio Islam, which is a sweet twist.
So we give a hearty welcome to Rabbi Emmanuel Rabinovich and to Rose Rabbinovich (two b’s)! We look forward to the progressive changes that they will bring to our blog. We are pleased to use and transform a character created by vile human beings in a way that will bring joy, happiness and memories of fresh daisies to the eyes of our readers and the staff here at Design Argument.
Watch for the addition of an exciting Design Argument outreach Rabbinical staff member coming very soon. This Rabbi will lead us into the great future that we are embarking upon. Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Rabbeinu Bachya, in his minor philosophical work “The Duties of the Heart” [10th century] misrepresents the argument for design in the following manner:
Do you not realize that if ink were poured out accidentally on a blank sheet of paper, it would be impossible that proper writing should result, legible lines that are written with a pen? Imagine a person bringing a sheet of handwriting that could only have been composed with a pen. He claims that ink spilled on the paper and these written characters had accidentally emerged. We would charge him to his face with falsehood, for we could feel certain that this result could not have happened without an intelligent person’s purpose.
Since this seems impossible in the case of letters whose formation is conventional, how can one assert that something far subtler in its design and which manifests in its fashioning a depth and complexity infinitely beyond our comprehension could have happened without the purpose, power, and wisdom of a wise and mighty designer? (“The Duties of the Heart,” The Gate of Oneness, Chapter 6)
According to the Aish HaTorah Propoganda Central Office, the two most common objections to this argument go as follows:
1. The argument is too simple. There seems to be a big jump from concluding that someone must have made rock formations in the desert to concluding that there is a Creator who must have made the universe.
2. What about evolution? Over a very long period of time everything could have come about as a random occurrence! With millions of years to play around with, isn’t it possible for some kind of order to emerge just by chance?
Oh Aishele, Aishele, Aishele! How you misrepresent things in order to convince people of the God Doll that you sell in your Aish Mall. From Ebon Musings(now get this into your head Aish and stop playing dumb!)
It is clear to see that natural selection, which is not chance but the opposite of chance, is what makes evolution work. If there were no selection, change in living things would follow a pattern called a “random walk” – sometimes the changes would be beneficial, sometimes not, and the population as a whole would wander back and forth across the fitness “landscape” but, on average, never get anywhere. That would be an example of random change, and it is absolutely correct to say that such a process could never produce all the intricate diversity and marvelous adaptations that living things possess.
Natural selection changes all that, by preferentially preserving the good variations and eliminating the bad ones. It is like a ratchet, allowing a population to move only in one direction – the direction of greater fitness. And the changes that natural selection favors are not random, but are determined by the characteristics of the environment. This is why, for example, both fish and aquatic mammals such as whales and dolphins have the same streamlined body shape – because this is the shape that is most efficient for moving through the water in which they live. This shape has evolved separately in the fish and cetacean lineages, in an example of an evolutionary phenomenon called convergence, precisely because it is the best shape for that environment regardless of what kind of creature has it. If evolution were random, we would not see this kind of predictable pattern.
Like all natural processes, evolution is guided by laws that do not change. If you throw a rock up in the air, its path is not governed by pure chance, but by the law of gravity. It cannot fly off randomly in any direction, but will travel in a parabolic arc and land at a predictable point. If you put a hot object next to a cold one, the transfer of heat is not governed by pure chance, but by the laws of thermodynamics. Heat cannot flow randomly in either direction; it will move consistently from the hotter object to the colder one. And if you set a population of randomly mutating organisms in an environment, their future is not drifting at the whim of chance, but is directed by the law of natural selection. Their evolution will not proceed in just any direction, but only in those that make them better adapted to their surroundings.
Now based on your false Aish HaTorah assumptions you can pretend to address these two objections that are coming from uneducated people.
Addressing the envelope for design argument number one
The principle “design implies designer” applies across the board, whether the designer is a Bedouin nomad piling rocks in the desert or the Infinite Regression of all existence. The design from ignorance states that it is the same logical process. In fact, there is more reason to assume a designer in the latter case since the level of design is much higher. And there is more reason to assume that that designer also had a designer since it has already been stated that a more sophisticated being is required to design a pile of rocks, a watch or what not. Especially WHAT NOT!
Simplicity is not an inherent fault in an argument. Perhaps the reason why some people take issue with this application of logic is due to the accompanying consequences. The reason why some people take issue with this logic is due to the consequences. (Oh here we go with the false and intellectually insulting reasons given by Aish HaTorah as to why people don’t accept the design argument. Instead of listening to the logical responses to their argument they will counterattack with an appeal to morality or claim that people just don’t want the inconvenience of keeping kosher or not blending wool with linen. Watch to see if they use the phrase “cognitive dissonance” for that is always a nice “intellectual” insult!)
aish hatorah general meeting: “Since the Bedouin doesn’t make any moral demands on our life, there is no resistance to drawing the logical conclusion that someone designed that rock formation. But when the conclusion points to God,
cognitive dissonance kicks in, creating an instinctive opposition to what one perceives to be threatening.
When the interference of cognitive dissonance is removed, what is the objective standard of design that we need to see in order to conclude something was created? What we need is a control experiment that determines this threshold of design in a case that has no threatening consequences. “The Obvious Proof”, a book by Gershon Robinson and Mordechai Steinman, delivers a compelling presentation of the design argument, and describes such a control experiment involving millions of people concluding the necessity of a designer.”
I am tired of this. Aish HaTorah is a machine spewing out a party line. They think they have everything covered but they are intellectually dishonest and they themselves suffer from cognitive dissonance. You can’t argue with a machine. Garbage in, garbage out as they used to say.
I am happy if you wish to read the original Aish HaToraharticle on the Design Argument. I am equally happy if you don’t.
Imagine, if you will, that you are walking in a bad neighbourhood where the houses are neglected, there is a lack of education, and a lot of dangerous gangs. You suddenly come across two small stones in close proximity to each other. Most probably, you would think nothing of it unless you needed one of the stones for a particular purpose, perhaps to defend yourself from someone. Two stones randomly sitting beside each other is not such a big deal. No need to sweat it.
You continue your stroll through the neighbourhood and stumble upon three piles of human corpses piled up in a brick-layer fashion. Chances are you would quickly surmise that someone was here and arranged these bodies in this manner. It didn’t just happen. A shock for sure but still really no big deal and nothing to sweat about.
You continue your walk and happen to find a dead puffin lying in the middle of the road. Would you suspect that a windstorm somehow threw the puffin pieces together and randomly created a puffin?
Somebody gave birth to that puffin. It didn’t just happen. A creature implies a mother.
Alternatively, say you didn’t see a puffin at all but instead you came across a Patek Phillipe watch, say model 4907/ij. You will surely notice that it celebrates the 10-year triumph of the famous Twenty~4® collection. Patek Philippe was likely not involved in the design of this model directly and it was probably the work of many different people having different levels of expertise – certainly not just one designer! You already know, just by looking at the complexity of this watch that it had more than one designer to deal with the different aspects of functionality, colour and style. You would also know that there would be a marketing section of the Patek Phillipe company that would be on the look out for trends to determine what styles would likely do well with high end consumers. They would have also had an enormous impact on the look of this particular model.
By handling this watch and examining it you might then ponder as to whether it would work as an analogy for the design of the universe proving that God is One – an Indivisible Creator. You would realize that the watch proved nothing of the sort but rather it might “prove” that the universe – even if it could be analogous to a watch at all, and that is not likely – was designed by several gods, some involved with creating the suns, some determining which animals would exist (and which would uselessly become extinct), some involved with answering the petitions of Olympic curlers, and some designing the potato bug.
You would note that the universe bespeaks timeless elegance, the new model universe in yellow gold would be the first unset version without a diamond-set case. You would note that three color choices are available for the universe: “Night Glow” and “Autumn Brown” – two hues created especially for this yellow-gold universe – and, of course, the endearingly classic “Timeless White“. If you bought into the design argument you would expect to have a selection of universes to pick from perhaps.
Did the universe have a designer or group of designers that must have also been designed ad infinitum?
David Hume may I say is calling?
The intricacy of design in our world, when intoxicated, is staggering — infinitely more complex than a gang related pile of corpses in a bad neighbourhood, a puffin or a Patek Phillipe watch. Therefore the team of designers for the universe must have been considerable and who could have afforded to pay them all in this economy?
Now I am going to commence to use really large numbers to give you a sense of being a little out of control. Here goes: There are 10 billion nerve cells in the brain. Each of the 10 billion cells sprouts between 10,000 to 100,000 fibers to contact other nerve cells in the brain, creating approximately 1,000 million million connections, or, 10 to the 15th power.Are you shvitzing?
Here I come now with some really enormous numbers. Serious serious numbers. Behold! There are 10 billion nerve cells in the brain with approximately 1,000 million million connections.
It is hard to imagine the multitude that 1015 represents. On and on I go. Take half of the United States, which is 1 million square miles, and imagine it being covered by forest, with 10,000 trees per square mile. On each of the 10,000 trees, which are on each of the one million square miles, there are 100,000 leaves. That is a whizbang bulbous amount of leaves. I take it you are still with me and feeling the groove of the number thing I am doing to your head. You see sir, that’s how many connections are smashed inside your brain. And they’re not just haphazardly thrown together by an impostor God or a monkey washing a cat. They form an incredibly intricate network system that has no parallel in the military industrial complex or in the other brands of universes that have been designed by other manufacturers.
Imagine walking by that in the seedy neighbourhood! The natural response when perceiving design of such mind-boggling complexity is to conclude that there must be a huge team of busy, possibly amoral, designers, behind everything that created this model of universe. Not to mention the team of designers that created the team that designed the team that designed the universe that you may be wearing on your wrist right now.
Should you wait until you have content? Shouldn’t you have the idea of the article and then come up with the headline afterwards?
We, at Design Argument and Goldstein Auto, Goldstein Solutions (Classical Mechanics), and Goldstein Subaru emphatically say NO to these two questions. In fact we believe that you don’t need to know anything at all about what you want to write before you begin to write.
God willing we are going to produce 180 articles full of excellent content on the subject of why you should write when you have nothing to say.
You will all to become good monster writers by reading these here articles.
Keeping relevance to a minimum may be important sometimes: Aish Bible Code proving that Paul is dead!
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