Intelligent Design is a failure of the imagination.

And current evolutionary theory is a failure of sufficient cause.

The central problem of both intelligent design and evolutionary theory is that, given our natural world as we know it, neither one is falsifiable.

From the perspective of science, it's not enough for a theory to explain something; it must also be testable. That is, a scientist must be able to design an experiment based on the causal implications of the theory, at least one of whose outcomes would prove the theory wrong. If such an experiment cannot be designed, the theory cannot be falsified -- and therefore, cannot be verified.

None of which is to say that either intelligent design or evolution is necessarily wrong. Indeed, both might be correct, one following from the other. But we cannot determine this with our limited powers of investigation, within our natural milieu.

Is there a Black Book of Darwinism outlining the hundreds of millions who have been exterminated by this "ism"?

If Orrin were as exercised against the progressive income tax, one of Marx's planks, I may not to worry about April 15.

My problem with Intelligent Design is not only that it is non-falsifiable, it doesn't even qualify as a theory, because it cannot define its terms. Lets start with Design. How do you quantify this concept? What measure do you apply to an artifact to say that it is definitely designed, and not the product of random processes?
Also with Intelligent. How do we define that a material cause is intelligent? An IQ test? We can't interrogate the cause, so how to arrive at a scientifically rigorouos evaluation of it by studying the artifacts of the cause?

Besides, it is not intelligence that ID are attributing to the cause per se, it is personality. A more accurate name would be Personal Design. A computer can beat a human chess expert, so it has a degree of intelligence, no? But ID proponents aren't thinking that the world was created by a machine-like intelligence, but a personal, purpose driven intelligence.

In the end, ID will fail because it cannot answer the question "What does the Universe do?". Meaning, what purpose does it serve, not just how to describe its dynamic processes. What is the "End" of the universe? What purpose is it fulfilling? If this end cannot be clearly determined by an empirical study of the universe using scientific methods, than ID is a failure as a scientific theory. ID proponents want science to confirm theology, which it cannot do. Theology is a hope, it is not an observation.

Of course evolution is falsifiable.

It's just that after 150 years of trying, nobody's been able to find the evidence that would do it.

That's the problem Harry,not in 150 years or ever. The theory is not structured that way. The theory is simply not falsiable.

. Darwinist true believers need to believe for sundry reasons but the conclusions thet reach regarding the nature of the universe ain't based on science,only faith.

Mayr doesn't agree Harry:

"The natural laws apply to biology just as much as they do to the physical sciences. But the people who compare the two, or who, like some philosophers, put in biology with physical sciences, they leave out a lot of things. And the minute you include those, you can see clearly that biology is not the same sort of thing as the physical sciences. And I cannot give a long lecture now on that subject, that's what the book is for.

I'll give you an example. In principle, biology differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don't know exceptions so I think it's probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.

Now then you can say, how can you have theories in biology if you don't have laws on which to base them? Well, in biology your theories are based on something else. They're based on concepts. Like the concept of natural selection forms the basis of, practically the most important basis of, evolutionary biology. You go to ecology and you get concepts like competition or resources, ecology is just full of concepts. And those concepts are the basis of all the theories in ecology. Not the physical laws, they're not the basis. They are of course ultimately the basis, but not directly, of ecology. And so on and so forth. And so that's what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics."

It's all just concepts.

Why is this still an issue? The Catholic Church settled this issue over a hundred years ago.

Harry: Do you even bother to read the research in dispute? (See The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, By Stephen C. Meyer, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, September 29, 2004). Part of the problem with ID is its name -- at its scientific core it is a statistical complexity criticism of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Darwin's theory, involving random mutation and selection, is falsifiable by statistical analysis. Progress in molecular biology is finally allowing us to make rough estimates of the probabilities involved.

The key problem is that the molecular sequence space is very large(>>10^100), most sequences are nonfunctional or lethal, and the functional ones are vulnerable to even small variations and are widely separated. From the article cited:

"Ohno (1996) has noted that Cambrian animals would have required complex proteins such as lysyl oxidase in order to support their stout body structures. Lysyl oxidase molecules in extant organisms comprise over 400 amino acids. These molecules are both highly complex (non-repetitive) and functionally specified. Reasonable extrapolation from mutagenesis experiments done on shorter protein molecules suggests that the probability of producing functionally sequenced proteins of this length at random is so small as to make appeals to chance absurd, even granting the duration of the entire universe. (See Dembski 1998:175-223 for a rigorous calculation of this “Universal Probability Bound”; See also Axe 2004.) Yet, second, fossil data (Bowring et al. 1993, 1998a:1, 1998b:40; Kerr 1993; Monatersky 1993), and even molecular analyses supporting deep divergence (Wray et al. 1996), suggest that the duration of the Cambrian explosion (between 5-10 x 10^6 and, at most, 7 x 10^7 years) is far smaller than that of the entire universe (1.3-2 x 10^10 years). Third, DNA mutation rates are far too low to generate the novel genes and proteins necessary to building the Cambrian animals, given the most probable duration of the explosion as determined by fossil studies (Conway Morris 1998b). As Ohno (1996:8475) notes, even a mutation rate of 10^-9 per base pair per year results in only a 1% change in the sequence of a given section of DNA in 10 million years. Thus, he argues that mutational divergence of preexisting genes cannot explain the origin of the Cambrian forms in that time."

It is no longer enough to chant the magic spell "random mutation, selection, and billions of years" together with a lot of hand waving. Estimates of the probablities are so low that there is not enough time to account for the observed record. Something else must be involved. The ID people propose intelligent design; the evolutionists will not even admit there is a problem and that their current theory is insufficient.

jd.

Well done, but why would any of that trouble dogmatic evolutionists? They'll just change the theory and posit a stasis in reverse. "The fossil record shows that mutation and natural selection occurred lickety-split during the Cambrian period for reasons we don't yet fully understand but which will be revealed by future research. No educated person questions this and it can now confidently be considered a proven, objective fact."

JD:

For our edification, it would be helpful to explain what Ohno means by "random". Many people think of this as the "100 monkeys" test, where, eventually, some monkey would type, from the start, Romeo & Juliet.

However, that does not model what Evolution says life does--life does not start over from scratch with each generation. A better fit is 100 monkeys that start typing, and the first one to hit the correct first letter wins. From that starting point, a 100 monkeys type until the second correct letter, etc.

Randomly generating Romeo & Juliet recursively requires an infinitesimal portion of the trials the redo-from-start model does. And that portion gets even smaller if the comparison is any meaningful series of characters, not just R&J.

I don't know, but rather suspect, Ohno is going on the first model, and is presuming, apropos of nothing, that a subset of the molecular sequence he discusses had absolutely no other function, whatsoever.

The extinction side of Evolution is, save for a few absolutely allergic to scientific evidence (unless, oddly, when it comes to disproving National Guard memos), both overdetermined and subject to falsification.

The genetic side is far more of a black box--to make a particular conclusion from ignorance (a logical fallacy of the very first order), though, is just silly. But worse than silly, a conclusion from ignorance immediately and forever shuts off further investigation.

Proponents of "irreducible complexity" might also note tails, and gills.

Fair enough.

But they need to explain the presence of those structures in humans.

Without pathetic hand waving.

Jeff:

Which monkey tells the other ones they got a passage right and saves it? That's the intelligent design your own theory depends on.

OJ, the monkey called "survival". No intelligence needed.

Noone answered my questions about ID. Peter, JD, you wanna take a crack at it? You can't even say that ID is a theory, because it specifies nothing. It would be interesting if someone could make a real theory out of ID, then there could be a debate. As it is now, Evolution is the only theory on the table.

Robert:

That won't do it for you--everything survives.

Everything survives? That is a classic example of a blanket assertion apropos of nothing.

For starters, nature, or God, take your pick, has seen to it that some 40 million human embryos over the last 30 years--within the US alone--did not survive.

And some are born, but genetically destined to die, before reproduction.

QED: Not everything survives.

humans survive

Robert:

I certainly don't because I don't understand the details of the science of either side well enough to make critical judgments, and I assume most people can't. I've admitted before that ID doesn't persuade me much more.

But the politics are interesting. I am struck by how you and so many evolutionists are not content to say ID is wrong and explain why. You must take the position that it is not science, even though it is being positied by scientists and is full or arcane data, observations and calculations. Of course, the practical effect of this is that you and your judicially active allies can use this argument to keep it from being taught in schools on the grounds that is it an imposition of faith. Science, of course, no matter how shakey, suspect or nebulous, is gloriously neutral and can always be taught. That's why we can't teach the Ten Commandments but impose courses on sexual hygiene for tweens. I'm surprised you aren't more troubled by that.

I'm still waiting for the day that you, Jeff or Harry admit that wrong or bad or discredited science is still science.

Astrology is "scientific".

It's not science.
The mere presence of arcane data, observations and calculations don't guarantee that science is occuring.

Peter:

The experiments that supposedly illuminated the sudden prevalence of peppered moths was science--an series of experiments intended to prove the truth of falsehood of a proposition.

It was bad science, in that the experimental procedures were insufficient to accomplish that end.

But it was still a scientific process.

ID is not science because it falls prey to the logical fallacy of conclusion from ignorance.

A couple things strike me as surpassingly ironic. According to anti-Evolutionists blinded by their antagonism, Evolution is not science, since it isn't falsifiable. Then, in virtually the next breath, they trot out some nonsense that "falsifies" Evolution. (I take it Ohno's work above is just such nonsense, since no one has stood up to explain its comprehensive misunderstanding of statistics; or intentional misrepresentation? Perhaps you should reconsider that "well done.")

The other is the objection that Evolution simply explains what is, a la "everything survives." Not only is that grotesquely incorrect on its face--after all, nearly 100% of all species that ever existed have most certainly not survived--but it should also equally serve as an indictment of Newtonian mechanics.

After all, it only explains what is, right? All planets orbit. Therefore, Newtonian mechanics explains nothing.

That line of reasoning is ridiculous when applied to physics; it is equally ridiculous when applied to Evolution.

So, to reiterate, here is why ID is not science:
1. It makes conclusions from ignorance.
2. It routinely misunderstands--or deliberately misreperesents--the concepts upon which it bases its arguments.
3. It makes assertions long since disproven. At one time, birds' wings were the prototype example of irreducible complexity--after all, how could a feather evolve into a wing (last I saw, one of OJ's book reviews still pushes this canard). Well, it couldn't, and didn't, as the fossil record very clearly shows. But IDers still trot their conclusion from ignorance out at every opportunity, except that birds' wings are no longer mentioned.

ID's worst crime is not that it is an imposition of faith, but rather it is the attempted imposition of a masquerade--a hodge podge of misconception, misrepresentation, and ignorance tarted up to look like science.

Unfortunately for ID, doing actual science is fatal to their preconceived outcome.

Jeff:

Darwin isn't falsifiable not least because, as you point out, when the experiments and evidence that claim to prove it are shown to be garbage you just fall back on the pure theory. However, if the peppered moth experiment did work it would prove ID, not Darwinism.

Jeff:

Are you in favour of ID being taught in the schools as a comparative theory to evolution or not? If not, what is the basis of your objection?

(Don't cheat. I don't mean as an elective in university, I mean as part of core studies of the history of life.)

Peter:

I am against ID being taught in schools as a part of science instruction for the same reason I am against teaching astrology but even more so.

It is not comparable in any way to the theory and observations underlying Evolution. Unlike OJ, I have actually taken the time to investigate the opposition's claims, methods, and data. Combined they--there is no way to be kind about this--constitute a pathetic joke.

Roughly 10 years ago, Creationists (as IDers then called themselves) used Thermodynamics to conclusive disprove the undisprovable. They insisted, of course, their view be taught as an equal alternative to Evolution.

Unfortunately for them, their knowledge of Thermodynamics was either woefully lacking, or willfully deceptive. Which alternative do you want taught in school?

They then hit on this bogus concept of irreducible complexity, citing the example I noted above. Unfortunately for them, they chose structures amenable to fossilization, allowing the basis of the claim to be conclusively rubbished. Now they choose structures that won't fossilize, all the while ignoring the sheer emptiness--absent supporting data--of the basic concept.

Do you want that taught as science?

Then there is the Ohno quote above. I haven't read the rest of the article, but absent contradiction, it appears my premises about its bases are correct. Which means either Ohno is ignorant or willfully deceptive.

Does his conclusive disproof of Evolution deserve a place in science instruction?

ID is a classic example of conclusion from ignorance, Evolution conclusion from evidence. The latter is testable, therefore falsifiable, and has made many successful predictions. The former is none of those things, and has repeatedly been shown to be a den of ignorance and charlatinism.

By the way, I am awaiting an explanation from irreducible complexity "theorists" as to why humans have both tails and gills.