What is the use of designing something that doesn’t work all that well? Intelligent design is not a falsifiable argument as I can’t disprove that the designer doesn’t exist and Dr. Behe cannot prove that he does. He can bring up instances which he feels (cannot prove however) shows a designer. By the same token, I can demonstrate evolution but cannot prove or disprove a supernatural designer.
You presume you know the purpose of the design. How very god-like of you.
My take is ID is not the focus or intent; perhaps the motive but it is irrelevant to possible utility of the perspective.
What is useful perhaps is disregarding mechanics and focusing on interactions or as referred to in this as ‘a set of relations’. How much farther can science be advanced by this approach? I think a lot.
Other questions beg, can a set of relations be mapped independent of the organism’s anatomy (mechanics)? I think in some cases yes. What relations are ‘introduced by’ or more correctly ‘created by’ distinctions in anatomy? Etc.
There is one tautology to all of science:
“All models are false, some are useful.”
The premise of theistic evolution is incoherent. The theistic part connotes a creator God who knows what he wants to do and does it. The evolution part connotes a process that is random and in no need of supervision by any conscious agent because it is sufficient unto itself. So theistic evolution might be rephrased as a system whereby God creates using a process that he cannot influence in any way and which has no need of him. Huh?Now, as to your claim that ID is not falsifiable Ill let Behe respond:If the theistic evolutionist responds, Oh I dont mean that kind of evolution. I mean the kind of evolution which is guided by God to fulfill his purposes, then the true evolutionist will reply, Well, thats no kind of evolution. Thats some sort of creation scenario and you have no right to use the evolution word.
But!, protests the theistic evolutionist, I want you to know that I have nothing to do with those Intelligent Design idiots. Im one of you! Im one of the smart guys who is up on science, not some primitive religious fanatic. I truly do believe that Darwin got it right and random mutation coupled with natural selection is all there is. All Im saying is that God uses that process to create all the living things on Earth.
Oh brother, says the true evolutionist, You just dont get it do you? As soon as you toss God into the equation you blow evolution to smithereens and reveal yourself as exactly what you say you arenta religious nut case. Evolution doesnt need god, or goals, or interference by any intelligent agent. All evolution needs is a steady supply of random mistakes and the process of elimination called natural selection. That will get you to any form of life no matter how complex. Its beautiful and youre just too stupid to understand that its self sufficiency IS its beauty. Now get lost. You bore me.
As Ive played out this imaginary dialogue, I hope Ive made clear that the last thing a theistic evolutionist wants is to be invited into the ID camp. The whole point of being a theistic evolutionist is to be good buddies with the smart guys of the world, the evolutionists; yet, to keep a toe in the belief system they grew up with and towards which they retain warm and fuzzy feelings. In any showdown, whether it be abortion, euthanasia, or school textbooks, staying in harmony with evolution will trump warm and fuzzy feelings about religious heritage.
-Laszlo Bencze
The National Academy of Sciences has objected that intelligent design is not falsifiable, and I think thats just the opposite of the truth. Intelligent design is very open to falsification. I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly dont expect it to happen, but its easily falsified by a series of such experiments.Now lets turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, hed say maybe we didnt start with the right bacterium, maybe we didnt wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis.
I think the very opposite is true. I think intelligent design is easily testable, easily falsifiable, although it has not been falsified, and Darwinism is very resistant to being falsified. They can always claim something was not right.