Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?

Russ Paielli ^ | 2006-10-01 | Russ Paielli

[Southack]

"Well, yeah, but this is an exceedingly trivial observation in that certainly one can simulate anything with a computer program. However computer programs don't normally, as part of their inherent nature, reproduce, vary, die, etc."

Nonsense, it's not trivial. And computer viri do it every day, inherent in their nature and environment.

[Southack]

"...in this universe abiogenesis ia not part of the TOE because the TOE doesn't deal with the origin of life. That's the way the TOE is defined."

Incorrect. How ToE is defined/intended matters less to its boundaries than do its actual borders, and one of those borders is the mechanism for inanimate matter evolving into the first living cell.

[Gumlegs]

You keep asserting this, but you've yet to demonstrate that anyone other than you and some others who don't like the TOE think it has any bearing on the theory. How is it you are the one who defines "the borders" of the TOE?

[Southack]

Borders in science exist irrespective of our efforts to define them.

[Gumlegs]

Borders in science exist irrespective of our efforts to define them.

Okay. So why not knock off now?

[RussP]

"Again to correct you - evolution depends on the first living organism,"

Bingo! Give that man a cigar. Now, how is that "correcting" me, when that is exactly what I said?

The development or formation of the first living organism is known as "abiogenesis." Look it up. If you don't like the definition, don't complain to me.

The point here is whether the development or formation of the first living cell can be explained without resort to intelligent design. If it cannot, then what is the point of insisting that the ensuing evolution that DEPENDED on it *can* be explained without resort to ID? Would you insist that ID is impossible after some point in time but not before?

By the way, please don't confuse yourself with the idea that the first living cell could have come from space. That does not answer the question of its ultimate origin. It just pushes it to another planet.

[Southack]

Because Evolutionists wish to pretend that ToE can't apply to first life (probably because they know that they'll always lose said debate at that point).

[Gumlegs]

Your objection that the TOE doesn't cover material it doesn't pretend to cover is noted.

[Southack]

Your protest note is noted.



Me thinks thou doth protest too much, in fact.

[Virginia-American]

... and for another, you've basically made them all up since they aren't itemized in any peer-reviewed paper on ToE, anyway.

How do you know this?

[dread78645]

Astrology placemark

[Southack]

I've seen no evidence to the contrary. And you?

[grey_whiskers]

(Witness the global warming debate; changing something as simple as the cell scale in a climate model can have drastic effects on the model's output. One such change caused the model in question to "prove" that we were in a global ice age, with 20-foot-thick glaciers as far south as Mobile, Alabama.)

Details, please?

I *Love* funny computer bugs ;-)

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Bravo, Elsie.

You answered succinctly in a line or two what I took an entire novel

to write.

Someone on one of these threads brought up Strunk and White (aka The Elements of Style). In that classic work, they constantly say : "Omit Needless Words!"

Methinks I should heed their advice.

Full Disclosure: White also wrote Charlotte's Web.

Cheers!

[bvw]

Over time, this process can result in speciation, the development of new species from existing ones.

That is a mere hyposthesis stated as a fact.

[Gumlegs]

That is a mere hyposthesis[sic] stated as a fact.

It's not a hypothesis, it's a theory. Read the list of definitions Coyoteman posts.

I was stating the theory. Do you really need an insertion of "The theory states," to begin each sentence, much as Bin Laden lards in "Allah's name be praised" every fifth word?

[bvw]

Even with a extra s, it is not a theory -- merely a very weak form of theory, a hypo-theory, also called a hypothesis. (Coyoteman is not Webster's, btw.)

[Elsie]

I 'know' something about astrology.

That's what we WERE talking about; right?

[Elsie]

;^)

[highball]

I 'know' something about astrology.

That's what we WERE talking about; right?

In a way. But only insofar as it relates to Intelligent Design and the central point of this thread.

The major proponent of ID, Professor Michael Behe, admitted under oath that astrology is every bit as scientific as ID. You recognize, and rightly so, that astrology is not scientific at all.

Therefore, either:

1. you know more about ID than the Discovery Institute; or
2. ID is not scientific.

Which is it?