A Case Study in the Failure to Properly Distinguish Intelligent Design

There is also an analogical connection of metaphysics to engineering insofar as metaphysicians can draw analogies from the way things are made and function to make inferences about those things that cannot change. This reflects Aristotle s crucially important principle Art(ifact) imitates nature, and not the other way around. 

6 A Case Study in the Failure to Properly Distinguish Intelligent Design 

A mistake often made is to forget (or neglect, perhaps even intentionally) this principle, and hence to fall into one of the most common errors the fallacy that nature imitates art(ifact)—the mechanistic reductionist error shared by Intelligent Design and DarwinlSM. Consider the following claims  

Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe Modern science reveals the cell is a sophisticated, automated, nanoscale factory (Discovery Institute, 2007) [emphasis added]. 

Darwinist Bruce Alberts The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.. . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, 1998, p. 291) [emphasis added]. 

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