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.
To put it simply there is NO adding to the genetic code!!!! You cannot have monkey to man or anything else to anything else every thing produces after its KIND!!!! and there is no other evidence otherwise absolute scientific fact!!!!
Sorry, that happens not to be the case.
Examples:
Blue eyes
Light skin color
Gracile body form
Several malaria resistant adaptations
Lactose tolerance
You are shown to be incorrect.
Try again?
What kind of lame-ass silly impotent God are you worshiping that can't add to the genome?
You cannot have monkey to man or anything else to anything else every thing produces after its KIND!!!! and there is no other evidence otherwise absolute scientific fact!!!!
What? Try that again when you're sober.
A look at baraminology, or the "science of "kinds" (debunked).
Beautifully said, SAM! I'd be satisfied if these brainwashed scientists could create just one "simple", working cell! (lol) After all, if *Nothing* could do it, it should be a snap for thousands of brilliant minds working together. Fools all!
I have to remember your Secular Bible verse, "In the beginning there was nothing; then it exploded into everything!" If a majority of scientists form a consensus, this must make it true, ehh? (lol)
More adhock coyoteman and you know it!
Thats called natural selection not macro evolution!!!! BIG difference!!!!
You should try it when your ready to be honest!!!!
False.
In an earlier post, you stated:
To put it simply there is NO adding to the genetic code!!!!I provided you with five examples of addition to the genetic code.
Whether this is natural selection or macro evolution is not the issue. Don't try to change the subject. The issue is that you are wrong again in a statement about a scientific matter.
There are things called hybrids, that has nothing to do with macro evolution or should I say the hypothetical macro evolution which does not occur! you guys should realy catch up there is even an evolutionist isnt given to wanting to be embarrassed as trying to make such claims as you guys are. Mutations happen about 10 to the 7 power and for just four of them to occur is called just absolute O% let alone they would have to be related let alone they would have to be beneficial let alone they would have to have reason to even occur let alone it would take hundreds which four isnt even possible, Its time to be Honest first and formost and its time to quit trying to propagandise with things that have long been debunked!!!
It is the issue, natural selction occurs, but it is already existing within the gene pool of its kind just like chickens have the genetics for teeth and other such examples, but birds are always birds they dont turn into other things people are always people they dont turn into other things, this is called natural selction or simply the the already existing gene pool, there is no adding to this pool to somehow turn something into a completely different creature this is already been understood for a long time now that why evolutionists are trying to make up thigs like punctuated equilibrium and other adhock nonsense to cover the embarrasement for the impossibility of mutations/macroevolution, the lack of a fossil record,/"missing link" just like the past nonsense as darwin tried to propagandise with the ridiculous "pangenes" gibberish.
Not to mention when mutations occur in people its called disease, because it always leads to the demise of the being and it has nothing to do with changing them into something else!
Yeah its funny how they forget so easily what the second law of thermodynamics tells us, things start in order and run down, not things start in disorder and then come to order!
To put it simply there is NO adding to the genetic code!!!!Lets try just one of the examples I provided: lactose tolerance. This trait appears to have resulted from mutations, and quickly spread within several different populations. Here is a good article: Lactose tolerance in East Africa points to a surprisingly recent moment in human evolution.
Here are some paragraphs from the article:
Genetic evidence shows that the mutations conferred an enormous selective advantage on their owners, enabling them to leave almost 10 times as many descendants as people without such mutations did. The mutations have created "one of the strongest genetic signatures of natural selection yet reported in humans," the researchers write.This is new information -- an addition -- to the genetic code. You are wrong, and simply can't admit it.The survival advantage was so powerful perhaps because those with the mutations not only gained extra energy from lactose but also, in drought conditions, would have benefited from the water in milk. People who were lactose intolerant could have risked losing water from diarrhea, Tishkoff said.
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, an archaeologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the findings were "very exciting" because they "showed the speed with which a genetic mutation can be favored under conditions of strong natural selection, demonstrating the possible rate of evolutionary change in humans."
From Index to Creationist Claims, edited by Mark Isaak:
This is not macro evolution!!!!!!!! Your own paragraph said natural selection!!!!!! natural selection has nothing to do with adding to the genetic code!!!!!! A little lesson, your gene pool has a vast variety of possibility, greeen eys blue eyes, red hair, black hair, shoet, tall, dark skin, light skin, etc...etc... just a whole bunch of gene pool there. But you will always remain and have always been a human being!!!!! same for finches!!!! same for fish!!!!! cows or there kinds!!!! But I can assure you a whale was never a cow!!!!
Wrong again! Don't you ever check your facts?
The mutations which led to blue eyes did not lead to the demise of the individuals with that mutation -- as shown by the millions of people with blue eyes!
Same for thousands of beneficial or neutral mutations. Even mildly harmful mutations (sickle cell anemia) can convey an advantage (resistance to malaria) and spread within a population.
(Your knowledge of science is not looking very good tonight.)
Thats just more adhock coyoteman!!! The second law of thermodynamics is plain and simple!!!! Its funny how evolutionists just follow around Creationists to see what they can try and come up with to try and conjour up a rebutal to say you see we have an answer to you creationists REAL scientific logic, with our evolutionist adhock!!!! I mean you can look through out history and its the same story from evolutionists!
Thats because its not a mutation!!!!
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