He built the world to look older than it is.
The letter's central move: every measurement that contradicts the creation account was altered at the moment of measuring, by a Noodly Appendage. The claim is unfalsifiable on purpose, and it is unfalsifiable in exactly the way its target is.
The claim that the creator falsifies the evidence for creation is not original to Henderson — it is Philip Gosse's Omphalos of 1857, rewritten. What Henderson added was the demonstration that once the move is permitted, anybody can make it about anything, and that a theory built this way cannot be preferred to a rival built the same way. The letter's carbon-dating passage is the clearest statement of it: the scientist measures the decay of carbon-14, infers an age, and does not realise that a Noodly Appendage was altering the result during the measurement. This is why the Kansas letter worked where a straightforward objection to intelligent design would not have. It did not argue that the reasoning was wrong; it applied the reasoning faithfully and let the reader watch where it went.
But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.
Bobby Henderson, Open Letter to the Kansas School Board, 2005The carbon-dating passage. It is Gosse's Omphalos argument of 1857, applied faithfully rather than refuted.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.