Posted on 02/22/2007 6:22:34 PM PST by Boxen
In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.
Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.
ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.
A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.
This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.
Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.
"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this." In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.
Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.
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Sober, Elliott. "What is Wrong with Intelligent Design," The Quarterly Review of Biology: March 2007.
Since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology has been dedicated to providing insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics.
A checked the names you gave and could find only one "who use to be eager in disproving the bible and later changed their minds because of what". This one was the first you named (correctly!), i.e., Dr. C.L. Cagan.
The rest of the names: window-dressing
Given the duplicitous nature of most of them, it's more like cross-dressing.
Ha! (said ALF-style)
See the links I provided in post #516, above.
I see you are still afraid to address the questions I have asked you in numerous posts now.
For the lurkers, those links in post #516 will provide a significant amount of information on radiocarbon dating. However, apparently Wakeup doesn't believe in that data for religious reasons, and will accept the most flimsy and unscientific arguments against the radiocarbon method if they seem to support his beliefs.
| youth in asia: | 42,900,000 |
| "youth in asia": | 63,100 |
oh not, the you with yourself tell me the one point not websites where tell me or you in place points to the specific could be right!
Do you mean this site:The Problem with Carbon 14 and other dating methods?
You didn't show this site, you gave a vague hint by giving a corrupted link...
~chuckling~
The Problem with Carbon 14 and other dating methodshas to be scientific - it uses footnotes and stuff!
Granted, it's just three footnotes, but they show the wisdom of this remarkable essay. So, here they are, in their whole splendor and somewhat odd - but original - enumeration1:
Carbon dating references:
1) From a video Lecture by Dr. Kent Hovind2
6) Antarctic Journal, Washington
10) "Dry bones and other fossils" by Dr. Gary Parker
Gee; is that by any chance the same Kent Hovind who bought his degree from an unaccreditted diploma mill called "Patriot University" and who is currently cooling his heels in jail for Tax evasions convictions?
Just for reference, here's photo of the original campus of "Patriot U" -- Hovind's alma mater:
Yup; anybody who gets a doctorate from a school like that must be a leading expert on the science of Radiometric Dating techniques.....
< /sarcasm>
of thousands of scientists and historians and archeaologists who use to be eager in disproving the bible and later changed their minds because of what?and sleeper mentioned him in his post #367. So, now there are two names on the list: I suppose that even sleeper won't stretch the definition of "scientist" in a way to include "Dr." Kent Hovind.
@ sleeper: only 998 to go, keep them coming!
I have adressed all points you have brought up, you are just unwilling to accept it, bring up one point at a time, make a specific comment regarding science pointing to evolution, and you will be easily shown that it is not scientific fact. just one point at a time. you are unwilling to do this because it makes it very clear when it is done this way. And thats just what evolurtionist propagandists are about making things anything BUT clear and specififc.
your replys are unfounded and petty ay best! lets debate the specific science! not refer to the petty and unscientific.
That's what the main point of The Problem with Carbon 14 and other dating methods
is about:
They know, that carbon dating won't give meaningful results for samples which are older than ~50,000 years. They do it non the less. And they do it again. And they claim that they have proved either that the world is less than 50,000 years old or that carbon dating doesn't work.
To get back to our little analogy: this is like claiming that their is either less than one litre of liquid or that it is impossible to measure the amount of one gallon...
Wow, he fully qualifies for wake-up sleeper's list ofof thousands of scientists and historians and archeaologists who use to be eager in disproving the bible and later changed their minds because of what?and sleeper mentioned him in his post #367. So, now there are two names on the list: I suppose that even sleeper won't stretch the definition of "scientist" in a way to include "Dr." Kent Hovind.@ sleeper: only 998 to go, keep them coming!
Careful. Don't get trampled in the stampede.
Petty? Maybe... But unfounded? I gave you the sources, your very words of wisdom, showing your "arrogance, lack of credibility and maturity", things you seek in others...
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? - Luke 6,41
False again!!!! there are many upon many scientists who use to be evironmentalists, evolutionists, and archeaologists and all the many more who are very credible and highly learned in their subjects and have contributed greatly to science, unlike evolutionists who hold to creation by God the only God the Father of Jesus Christ.
let me give you another SCIENTIFIC source, Radiometric dating deception, www.cs.unc.edu
Recovery of Neandertal mt.DNA answers in genesis
just a little tid bit! Another ridiculous mathmatical joke for evolutionists! An average sized protein molecule composed of 288 amino acids, and contains twelve different types of amino acids, can be arranged in 10300 different ways (this is an astronomicaly huge number, consisiting of 1 followed by 300 zeros) Of all these possible sequences, only one forms the desired protein molecule, the rest of them are amino acid chains that are either totaly useless, or else are potentialy harmful to living things.
In other words the probability of formation of only ONE protein molecule is 1 in 10^300. Now thats funny!!!! That alone should bring laughter at the thought of this thing called evolutionism. 1 in 10^300 for one protein! and you still wouldnt have life!!! it doent even give enough for the proper function of the protein, theres more to it. and to add a protein with only 288 amino acids is a modest one compared to some that need a 1000 amino acids!
Lets continue shall we!
If you want to learn more go to the
unjustmedia.com I know you will come back with a no science answer like "you spelled the word "the" wrong " or "thats a laugh, its riddled with errors" but I will say it again you point out a specific error if you think there is one, and then we will debate it specificaly, you have to back up what you say, not just propagandise with more no evidnece and put downs! Peace!
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