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To: Dinsdale

"Evolution can be falsified by finding a fossil that is too evolved for the age of the surrounding rock."

HA! Fossils can be moved to different layers of rock for a thousand reasons. There's no way that finding a fossil that is "too deep" would be considered anything more than a fluke. Much less disproving evolution entirely. Plus, this already happened in many areas and there are plenty of theories about how either the layer dating was wrong or the fossils got pushed around.

"Further finding anything that truly was 'irreducibly complex' would also disprove evolution. Note for something to be 'irreducibly complex' we have to understand it. Because we don't understand something (yet) doesn't make it 'irreducibly complex'."

You can always make up a "just so" story for any structure. Irreducible complexity is a nice idea, but it's no smoking gun for ID.

"Now it's your turn. What would falsify ID? What would falsify YEC?"

First, historical sciences aren't about falsification. Competing theories may survive for hundreds of years before significant evidence disproves them or a "smoking gun" proves them.

YEC has been disproven already, by geology, cosmology, and a hundred other findings. We know the Earth, and the universe is far older than 6,000 years.

ID has a lot going for it to explain why creatures of all types suddenly appear at different times in the fossil record, and it gets by the problematic co-evolution necessary for symbiotic mutualism and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity of the cell. It is becoming more elegant to simply assume an historical ordering force. Evolution already has intelligence colloquially attributed to it by scientists anyway.

"Smoking guns" in historical biology are not easy to come by, since we are not talking about inanimate objects. With a theory as broad as evolution, nothing may be a true smoking gun without more focused predictions.


141 posted on 03/14/2007 11:18:51 AM PDT by dan1123
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To: dan1123
First, historical sciences aren't about falsification. Competing theories may survive for hundreds of years before significant evidence disproves them or a "smoking gun" proves them.

You're contradicting yourself. Granting sometimes significant evidence is hard to come by (which is why they look so hard for it). Theories are never proven by 'smoking guns' only supported.

It's always about falsification. You can make predictions about things you haven't seen yet (because you haven't dug their yet in the case of fossils, or because you haven't developed the instrument/method to see the data in the case of cosmology and DNA). When you see those things (e.g. new fossils, DNA sequences or variations in the background radiations) you test your theory, just like any experimental science.

You and I agree YEC has been falsified. What would it take to convince a YECist that it was false? (a boot to the head?)

152 posted on 03/14/2007 11:34:44 AM PDT by Dinsdale
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To: dan1123
ID has a lot going for it to explain why creatures of all types suddenly appear at different times in the fossil record...

That sounds a lot like baraminology. There is an interesting blog on that silliness here.

176 posted on 03/14/2007 4:49:16 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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