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.
gumlegs: Given the duplicitous nature of most of them, it's more like cross-dressing.[...] Before your attempt your next response, please have someone tell you what the words mean.
sleeper: some may have been duplicates but not most, but I can still give you more names if you like?
gumlegs: I see you didn't take my advice.
It may be a little bit too late, but, as it is said: Be not ignorant of any thing in a great matter or a small.
(Sir.5,15)
duplicitous:
The current incarnation has exactly the same grammar, sentence structure, egregious errors, and argumentation technique as the one who got the boot. If they aren't the same person, or the members of the same family, they surely went through the same school system.
FWIW, the disregard of the rules of syntax, grammar and spelling reminds me of the liberal dictum that "rules don't apply to ME"....
There was no deception. look at the science! and can keep giving names of scientists if you want who are favorable to evolution? If I must continualy keep writing bunches of names down over and over.
those cheesy comments arent going to cut it!
Entwined and woven? Thats some real science there!
You have to show that the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14 is a constant. Dr. willard Libby the founder of the carbon 14 dating method assumed this ratio to be a constant. In order for the ratio to be in consistance, you must have the amount in the atmosphere at the same rate of decay (equilibrium) even in Dr. Libbys work he noted that the atmosphere did not appear to be at equilibrium. This was a troubling idea for Dr. Libby since he wanted to believe the world was billions of years old and enough time had past to acheive equilibeium he found it would only take 30,000 years at best to reach equilibrium. But guess what Dr. Libby deliberatly ignored the evidence that he didnt want to believe and tried to blame it on experimental error. It is fact that the ratio of c12 to c14 is NOT a constant. Read about Dr. Libbys dishonesty!
Do you have any real science or are you an eNgLiSh teacher!
I mean scientists who arent favorable! hahahaha Peace!
Lets get into the missing "missing links" shall we? does it take along time for something to fossil?
Answer NO
Are there dinosaur bones with soft tissue in them today?
Answer YES
How can there be fossils i.e. polystrate, fossils if the strata is layered and sealed for millions and billions and millions of years?
Answer There cant
can proteins form on their own and just happen to form the proper squence by chance just make one protein that still wouldnt make life?
Answer NO
Are there a great many studies out there now starting to show remarkable probability that once thought of constants may actualy not be constants?
Answer YES
Can the earth be billions of yearsold and the mountains not have eroded away?
Answer NO
Is there enough sediment at the moutths of rivers and sediment on the ocean floor for it to be billions of years old?
Answer NO (and to add not even close to near enough)
Are there fossils at the tops of mountains and sediments even on everest which gives possible evidence to a global flood?
Answer YES shall I keep going? There is absolute no science to refute what ive just expressed here! There isnt a scientist who would even dare to argue it, evolutionist or not!
Hessel de Vries, a Dutch physicist at the University of Groningen, furthered the detection methods and applications of radiocarbon dating to a variety of sciences. He has been called "the unsung hero of radiocarbon dating" by Willis.In 1958, de Vries showed that there were systematic anomalies in the carbon-14 dates of tree rings. His explanation was that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere had varied over time by up to 1%. He hypothesized that the variation might be explained by (a) something connected with climate, (b) that it was not created in the atmosphere at a uniform rate due to variations in the Earth's magnetic field, or (c) a cause lay in the Sun itself. Source
Atmospheric variation of up to 1%? Wow! That shoots the radiocarbon method down for sure doesn't it?
(Oh, wait. Scientists figured out a way to correct for atmospheric variation. Never mind.)
Can Wakeup Sleeper truly be that ignorant of the principles and findings of science?
Answer YES
1% is what he claims but not fact. And if you arent sure what the effect of the carbon scources are or at what intensity at different time periods how can you make a claim that its only 1%. For example some say that we could have 500 times the amount of carbon 14 today fromjust a few thousand years ago.etc..etc...etc... Peace!
Go ahead and show me that what ive just posted has an error in it, of those things I just lited show me and express yourself here in front of all and refute just one! because they are absolute facts.
There are fossils in the tops of maountains,
there arent enough sediments in the river ocean floors,
proteins dont come together by chance and form the EXACT sequences etc...etc...etc... just refute one as not being a known fact!
And dont give me the adhock no evidence, theres subduction goin ons down yonder under them their contanants!
Wrong.
Here is an example of the "science" you are citing:
In the Creation model, all the layers of the geologic column were laid down 4350 years ago in the global flood. Also, taking into account the dilution effect of the antediluvian world, the Carbon ratio at the time of burial was maybe 1:300 of today's C-14/C-12 equilibrium of the Biosphere. So, The creationists predict that fossil carbon should have residual C-14 of maybe 1:500 of today's C-14/C-12 equilibrium of the Biosphere. A ratio of 1:500 would give fossil carbon an apparent age of approximately 50,000 years. Source
Clearly science is not your best subject.
(I still think my post #617 is the best explanation.)
It wouldn't matter; you're illiterate in both.
Amusingly, I don't have to. You asked in your post #551: give me one specific not websites you yourself tell me where at one point tell me where its wrong!
I did so in my post #577 in a way, you should be able to understand.
Deal with it...
Yes. Exactly. A real scientific theory must be rich in testable implications, and to do that it must be readily interwoven/integrated with any and all other relevant scientific theories and principles.
This is also exactly why ID isn't scientific. It seeks to remain alone and apart, making a full stop at drawing, as they call it, the "design inference." IDers refuse to posit any specific claims that would tie the theory into a scenario of earth history, claims about the fossil record, issues related to comparative anatomy, patterns of the geographical distributions of organisms, modes of genetic change, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Perhaps the home-schooled scion...
Home schooled chidren out perform public school children!
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