so here's a graphical characterization that says it all:
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.
###
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.
err-or! er-ror - 404!
The dog ate your webpage. Yeah, that's it.
Actually, we couldn't find the page you requested. Please check the URL.
so here's a graphical characterization that says it all:
Dont pout about it scrutinizer!
Another mistake.
Try clicking on it: www.angelfire.com/mi/carbondating.html
I have added "http://" for the above html, but otherwise its your link.
You can't even get a link to a creationist site right. And we are supposed to trust what you post?
Your credibility is sinking even lower, if that's possible.
There are many scientists to this day as well as the past and even those who could have been atheists regardless of darwins junk science! who do not believe in evolution, thousands!
But there are many religious to this day as well as the past and even those who could have been believers regardless of junk theology! who do believe in evolution, millions!
Ok try this site.
www.bible.ca
radio metric dating
I tried radio metric dating once. Unfortunately, I'm too strongly tied to English units. When it came down to the nuts and bolts, we didn't fit together when we screwed.
False. You've been refuted so often its pathetic. You and science are not even within light years of each other.
But you seem immune to fact, logic, reason, the findings of science, and anything else outside of your tiny artificial worldview.
I am beginning to wonder if you are for real. None of the other creationists on the site are quite as in-your-face-far-out as you are.
If someone was trying to mimic the bad characteristics of creationists, and take them to the most ridiculous extreme possible, I imagine they would post somewhat like you do.
You say millions? The bible does say narrow is the way that leads to life and few their be that find it!
and wide is the way and broad is the gate that leads to destruction and many there will be that enter there in.
I never got past the antenna ...
Ive shown you countless science, did you look up the site radi metric dating? www.bible.ca its full of science and it shows as many scientists who use to be evolutionists and no longer are they also point out these gross errors and out rite lies by evolutionists propagandists..
In any case,
"Don't you see yon narrow, narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briars?
That is the road to righteousness,
Though after it but few enquire."
"Don't you see yon broad, broad road,
Lying lies across the lily leaven?
That is the road to wickedness,
Though some call it the road to heaven."
"Don't you see yon bonnie, bonnie road,
Lying across the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night must gae."
-"Thomas the Rhymer"
Trad. Scots.
It's that third road that makes things intereting, nu?
And the article is a laugh. In one of its major points it cites dates in Radiocarbon only up to 1969? What a joke! There have been hundreds of thousands of dates done since then, and the technique has been improved greatly. And what it did cite was riddled with errors.
Why is it that creationists can't make their case on its merits, and have to deliberately mislead folks and distort the scientific evidence?
No wonder scientists don't take creationists or creation "science" seriously.
Most issues of Radiocarbon are on line, and folks can check them out for themselves.
Here are some good links for those who want to see what radiocarbon dating is really about:
ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth CreationistsRadiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.
Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
Tree Ring and C14 DatingHow does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How precise is radiocarbon dating?
Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?
Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?
Radiocarbon WEB-info Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
What third road? there is no third road even in the natural world there is no third road! you either do or you dont, all reasoning is exclusive, so you need to make the wise decision in your choices. You either choose one way or you dont, a statement is either true or false! there is no third road. quit reading goofy poems and wakeup!
Face it, --the competition is pretty tough ...
Wake you up, wake you up, you seven sleepers,
And do take warning of me;
O do take care of your oldest daughter dear,
For the youngest are going with me.
-"Earl Brand"
Trad.
Ha! What a laugh.
One section of this press release says,
One Darwinist went so far as to say they are not ready to respond to this if it gets out into the "wider arena." Patrick Henry, a moderator at darwincentral.org posts, "I have faith in this kid. Science has obviously lost its way. But with this kid's scientific insights, and a bit of Plato's mysticism, we may have an opportunity to get back on track."The poster who registered at darwincentral.org as "the kid" and tried to peddle his unscientific nonsense couldn't even detect satire when he was hit over the head with it.
The full thread is here, in the Darwin Central Zoo (where we store crackpots, trolls, and assorted nuts)!
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