"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left — however improbable — must be the truth."

Well, if this is what passes for scientific reasoning nowadays, then teleology does not deserve being summarily dismissed as being simply a criticism of Darwinism and a theory incapable of being falsified. In this case, the challenge for supporters of intelligent design would "simply" be to prove Darwininsm "impossible". I don't think this is necessarily an easy task, but is easier than having to prove (scientifically) the existence of a higher intelligence.

Moe -

Essentially, that is the aim of Dembski et al. IIRC, their cutoff of 'intelligently designed' is 10^-150; i.e. if the chances of having arrived at a certain cellular configuration is via natural processes is less than 10^-150 we can be justified in inferring design.

Moe:

That's the beauty of it:

Creationists can eliminate ID and Darwinism; IDers can eliminate Creationism and Darwinism; Darwinists Creationism and ID; and each can claim it must be correct. Which is the point we've arrived at.

Bruce --

I read Dembski's compendium of essays from various sources (forgot the title) but did not come across one that reduced natural evolution to a 10^-150 event. Where is that analysis?

Darwinism's saving grace is that, no matter how unlikely it is, it took so long that it can't be ruled out on the basis of chance.

I am reminded of the first life-discovery experiment that landed on Mars and indicated that life existed on Mars. It was later determined that it had been fooled by a hitherto unknown chemical reaction whose byproducts would have been mistaken for the byproducts of life processes.

The reasoning that this gentleman is going through merely says "We have only X ways of explaining this phenomenon, and eliminated X-1 of them. This leaves the last one, which happens to be dark matter. Ergo-it is proved."

This, of course, assumes that he is correct in ASSUMING that there are ONLY X explanations, or that he properly eliminated the X-1 that he claimed to have eliminated. The whole point of publishing, of course, is to let other scientists take a crack at suggesting an X+1'th explanation, or pointing out a flaw in eliminating the X-1's that, when corrected, would give an adequate explanation independent of the Dark Matter theory.

It helps to trace the geneology (sp?) of Dark matter: The FIRST question is, "Is the Universe open or closed?" That is, will the Universe suffer a heat death by infinite expansion (open), or will the current process of expansion slow down, reverse itself, and cause a universal collapse (closed)? If closed, then it is futile to figure out where the blasting cap of the Big Bang came from, since it obviously is a BANG AFTER the collapse of the PREVIOUS universe: the evidence that could tell us of the origin of the Universe/blasting cap/BANGER was wiped out during the collapse phase of the previous universe that created the BANGER which, when it went BANG, created THIS universe.

The closed universe, and the hope that there was, and always will be, an "oscillating" universe, is philosophically attractive to some, while the "one time" open universe poses many uncomfortable questions that lead to places where nobody (except OJ) wants to go.

There is only one mechanism that could close a closed universe, and that is gravitation. Gravitation comes from matter, so proving the open/closed question involves computing the distribution and amount of matter in the universe and seeing if it is at, or above, a certain number. Turns out that all VISIBLE matter falls significantly short of the required amount. If you look at VISIBLE matter, the universe is open. To keep the Closed Universe option open, its adherents proposed dark (invisible) matter.

There is, of course, the obvious question of: if it is dark, and not visible, then how are you going to prove that it is there? It is significant that the proof of the existance of stuff that you can't demonstrate visually rests on the NON-existance of an explanation that you can't demonstrate exists.

If this sounds like a scientist taking a page out of the Loopy Liberal Left playbook advocating that there is a powerful secret conspiracy afoot, and that, as proof of its power, that it has ELIMINATED PROOF OF IT'S EXISTANCE, well, keep in mind that the prime advocates of such a conspiracy reside on the SAME campus upon which these researchers reside...

Ptah;

No, dark matter was original proposed to explain how galaxies work. When you observe the orbital velocity distribution of stars in galaxies, you have either

* Radically change our theories on how gravity works
* Assume a large component of "dark matter"

There is further evidence from the structure of clusters and superclusters in the Universe and also the time scales for galactic formation. So there was evidence for dark matter before the concept was coined, it's not something simply made up to gravitionally close the universe.

Note also that "dark matter" literally means "matter that is dark", i.e. doesn't glow as stars do nor is illuminated by stars as many dust clouds are. Whether it's something exotic or just lumps of mass that too small to support fusion is a very different question. One notes, however, that being dark is in fact the basic state of matter. It is illumination that is odd.

My understanding is that this cannot possibly be the "missing mass." Calculations of the amount of ordinary matter created in the Big Bang are well supported and they do not account for enough mass to keep the universe from flying apart a lot faster than it is doing so at the present. The missing mass must be in a form other than ordinary matter. Proposals for its nature and location have gotten downright barouqe.

My belief is that the "missing mass" is the Shekinah (Hebrew for the Divine Presence).