Replies

Coyoteman, I guess your forgot. You sent me a ping, and the page could not be accessed. I guess a fluke in the system for that page. No matter.

Guess there's two sides to every story (or maybe twenty-two)

FALSIFIABILITY:
7b. Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.
If there were no continuity in genes, Darwinism would be false. Darwin didn't know about genes, but we do.
How is it possible to falsify intelligent design in general (to me a belief that the the universe is the result of the actions of a creative designer? It is possible to falsify the Intelligent Designer of the ID movement, by showing naturalistic paths to achieve the apparently irreducible complexity. To me, this is the fatal flaw of the whole movement as many will inevitability jump to the conclusion that falsification of the second means that the first is also falsified. This was the whole problem of Paley and Darwin and God of the gaps thinking.
For a specific example (e.g. flagellum), this is correct.
8. On the other hand, falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure. What's more, Darwinists are apt to retreat into the murk of historical contingency to shore up their theory. For instance, Allen Orr in his critique of Behe's work shortly after Darwin's Black Box appeared remarked, "We have no guarantee that we can reconstruct the history of a biochemical
pathway." What he conceded with one hand, however, he was quick to retract with the other. He added, "But even if we can't, its irreducible complexity cannot count against its gradual evolution."
I, for one, find the argument that Darwinism is unfalsifiable a persuasive one. That does not make it untrue, of course, but it does suggest that "Darwinism is a fact" and "gravitation is a fact" seem to be in two different categories, for we can conceive of observations that would falsify the second but not any that would falsify the first.
This is false, as noted above. Additionally, given any set of empirical data, we can have an infinite number of equally good models. So "no conceivable Darwinian pathway" is impossible of attainment.
both evolution in general and darwinian evolution are falsifiable. Evolution in general (descent with modification) is falsifiable by detailed study of fossil lineages and molecular biological studies. Darwinian evolution (natural and sexual selection) is falsifiable by field and laboratory studies. As I recall, neodarwinian evolution also includes for geographic isolation
Correct!
9. The fact is that for complex systems like the bacterial flagellum no biologist has or is anywhere close to reconstructing its history in Darwinian terms. Is Darwinian theory therefore falsified? Hardly. I have yet to witness one committed Darwinist concede that any feature of nature might even in principle provide countervailing evidence to Darwinism. In place of such a concession one is instead always treated to an admission of ignorance. Thus it's not that Darwinism has been falsified or disconfirmed, but that we simply don't know enough about the biological system in question and its historical context to determine how the Darwinian mechanism might have produced it.
"I have no proof" is not equivalent to "There is no proof," so this is specious. Fermat's Last Theorem and the Four Color Theorem remained unproved for centuries, but today they stand proved.
Correct! (However, Darwin gave a few examples which he said would falsify his theory). - The problem is that any theory claiming that a process whose mechanism is unknown occurred supernaturally is, in principle, always falsifyable (in the sense Dembski describes in 7b), namely by verifying that a natural mechanism is sufficient. But any theory claiming that a process whose mechanism is unknown occurred by a purely natural, reductionistic mechanism can, in principle, never be falsified: an unknown mechanism may always be awaiting detection and verification. Falsification of an ID origin requires knowing just ONE feasible Darwinian mechanism, but falsification of a Darwinian origin requires knowing ALL formulatable mechanisms to be impossible. This asymmetry shows that ID and Darwinism are not alternative scientific explanations on the same level. - A related problem with ID is its strict "either - or": either a process occurs naturally or it occurs supernaturally, implying that God has nothing to do in a naturally occurring process, which clearly contradicts biblical theology. He gifted creation at least with Van Till's functional integrity, if not with continuing, more concrete providential actions. How about the possibility of God causing a natural process to occur despite an infinitesimally small probability? - The basic problem with Darwinism, on the other hand, is that no test is feasible for its fundamental premise that the known evolutionary mechanisms were sufficient to produce the biosphere of the Earth within the past 4 billion years (macroevolution in the sense of producing fundamentally novel functions is required).

10 For instance, to neutralize the challenge that the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum raises against Darwinism, Ken Miller employs the following argument from ignorance. Like the rest of the biological community, Miller doesn't know how the bacterial flagellum originated. The biological community's ignorance about the flagellum, however, doesn't end with its origin but extends to its very functioning. For instance, according to David DeRosier, "The mechanism of the flagellar motor remains a mystery." Miller takes this admission of ignorance by DeRosier and uses it to advantage. In
Finding Darwin's God he writes: "Before [Darwinian] evolution is excoriated for failing to explain the evolution of the flagellum, I'd request that the scientific community at least be allowed to figure out how its various parts work." But in the article by DeRosier that Miller cites, Miller conveniently omits the following quote: "More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human."
Miller's request must be granted. And DeRosier didn't say that the flagellum was intelligently designed, just that it appeared so.
11. So apparently we know enough about the bacterial flagellum to know that it is designed or at least design-like. Indeed, we know what most of its individual parts do. Moreover, we know that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Far from being a weakness of irreducible complexity as Miller suggests, it is a strength of the concept that one can determine whether a system is irreducibly complex without knowing the precise role that each part in the system plays (one need only knock out individual parts and see if function is preserved; knowing what exactly the individual parts do is not necessary). Miller's appeal to ignorance obscures just how much we know about the flagellum, how compelling the case is for its design, and how unfalsifiable Darwinism is when Darwinists proclaim that the Darwinian selection mechanism can account for it despite the absence of any identifiable biochemical pathway.
The flagellum is certainly design-like; whether it is designed is a different matter. - The knock-out test would be convincing if the parts to be tested were atomic, indivisible. This is not the case. Behe's mouse-trap model doesn't apply that easily. Knocking out a component protein might destroy all activity, but a slightly simpler derivative of the protein might be found which makes the whole system work just a little less efficiently. This is just what Darwinism claims. But this is what would have to be shown impossible to prove irreducibility - a proposition every bit as immense as Darwinism's task of verifying that an evolutionary path was possible. In virtually all specific cases of complex systems, Darwinists are incapable of proving that its origin by evolution works, and IDers appear to be incapable of proving that it doesn't.

CONFIRMATION: Read the rest at link.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Apologetics/2001Dembsk1.html