Well, that one's shot. The fossil record goes back almost 4 billion years. The first few billion it contains ONLY prokaryotes (cells without an organized nucleus) like bacteria. About a billion years ago, IIRC, nucleated cells finally make an appearance. Then it's hundreds of millions of years before the first multicellular creatures appear. Then for a long time after that it's nothing but worms and other simple invertebrates. Etc, etc. The emergence of complex animals took literally billions of years.
This will be long, but it covers several replies, and covers important key points/allegations brought up.
**[Well, that one’s shot. The fossil record goes back almost 4 billion years]**
That is an opinion made on assumptions based on results of dating methods whos results are only accepted by peers less than 10% of the time. One has to ask why the other 90% are rejected?
**[About a billion years ago, IIRC, nucleated cells finally make an appearance. Then it’s hundreds of millions of years before the first multicellular creatures appear. Then for a long time after that it’s nothing but worms and other simple invertebrates. Etc, etc. The emergence of complex animals took literally billions of years]**
We’re all quite familiar with what evolution teaches based on preconceived opinion. The evidence has yet to show any of this.
**[Since ID refuses to posit any specific claims about HOW the Intelligent Designer goes (or went) about formulating or embodying his [her? its?] designs, how can ID possibly “predict” this?]**
How’s the ‘origin of species’ thing going? How is it that eovlution is allowed to propose somethign that can’t be proven or even showed and ID isn’t? Infact, all the proposed methods of origins fall apart and the exhaustive testing has only left more question than it’s answered, and presented more impossibilities for hte model, and shown that perhaps their proposals weren’t the mechanism by which life supposedly arose. I also wonder how the first vertebrates ‘evolved’- did they have just one spinal joint? Several? If so, where’d the NEW information come from? And more importantly, where are the fossils of the first evolving vertebrates? Istead, we find, as predicted by ID, fully formed vertebrates in the fossil records that appeared suddenly.
[3) re-usage of similar parts in different organisms]
ID proposes that the design has markers that show a designer. They have predicted that the design will be found in unrelated species and the same designs will have different purposes- Bingo- that’s what we find.
**[Intelligent design theory predicts: 1) that we will find specified complexity in biology. One special easily detectable form of specified complexity is irreducible complexity.
ID doesn’t “predict” that at all. For a scientific theory to “predict” something it has to have a mechanism or mechanisms and/or to make reasonably specific empirical claims. To “predict” means that the operation of the theory’s mechanism and/or deducible implications of the theory’s empirical claims entail consequences that can be observed.]**
It most certainly does predict specific complexity, and it most certainly is observable in even the most ‘simplest’ of organisms.
**[There are well known mechanisms, for instance, whereby ordinary evolution (i.e. preceding in small, progressive steps, each individually viable) can produce “irreducibly complex” systems.
]**
I’m afraid that’s not correct- precisely because irreducible complexity is absolutely undone by this so called ‘slow process of accumulation of mutations’ The whole premise behind irreducible complexity lies in the fact that the functioning organ in question would absolutely cease to function unless all the complex parts were inplace and operational to begin with.
When science finds all the parts lying around dormant for the Ecoli flagellum ‘motor’, please lemme know- or when science finds all the parts needed for the eye, just lying around dormant in a species- unnassembled, lemme know. ID predicted that we’ll find only completed fulyl functioning complex organs, and would not find all the parts just lying around dormant while the species waited billions of years for the improbability of accumulated mutaitons to create the last needed part before all the parts could start to migrate to the correct positions in order to ‘hook up’ so that the eye, the ecoli motor, the hearing etc, could all begin to work properly.
You showed a list of very different species with the jaw bones that when set side by side APPEARED to show a gradual movement- however, the drawings were deceitfully inept in that they didn’t mention that htese species were all so different that to suggest the ‘prediction’ that we’d see movement in the bones’ is nothing but an assumption/personal opinion, and open to MUCH fierce debate even amoungst secular scientists. Showing a hippo sized animal with the bone about mid way in the jaw, then setting that picture next to a rat sized animal with the same bone a bit further back, and suggesting that it ‘clearly shows the migration of hte bone’ is a HUGE assumption/personal opinion/leap of faith, and does nothign to undermine the equally valid view that they are nothign but two unique species with differenly positioned bones- that’s it!
**[ID has no mechanism. It asserts that there is, by inference, an “intelligent designer” [or designers?] but it refused to describe (or even speculate about) this designer in any way which would usefully characterize it as a theoretical mechanism]**
Since when do they ‘refuse’? As I mentioned, ID proposes that the designer’s fingerprint can be found in absolutely dissimiliar species sharing the same design features- it’s exactly what we find- the fingerprint of design. What we do NOT find however, (and what ID predicts) is transitional species showing the ‘evolution’ of these complex systems in the dissimiliar species. What we DO find is a very weak case for just ONE sytem- hearing, which is nothign more than assumptions based on VERY shaky evidences.
ID proposes testifiable, falsifiable predictions, nd that’s what we’ve got. Yuo test for design by observing the data- either the data supports or refutes the design proposal. Is design falsifiable? Certainly the observations will tell us.
Are Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity falisfiable? Absolutely! One can falsify intelligent design merely by showing that all the complexities of design features could arise naturally. Has science been able to do this? No. Despite having tried.
Darwinism has the magic wand of the omnipotent designer called TIME to fall back on in light of the absence of evidence, in the absence of a fingerprint. Time solves all- mention time, and the possibilities reportedly and supposedly abound. Given enough TIME we’re told, anythign could happen despite the overwhelming odds (as pointed out by ID). The lack of transitions is covered by the TIME argument despite the fact that we find fully formed, fully functional explosion of fully ‘created’ forms all at once, several times.. So tell me, which of the two models is unfalsifiable again?
You have a strong opinion about evolution, and I’m not deriding that, but I’d liek to ask that the same courtesy be afforded the science of ID as well. We may dissagree, but let’s be respectful of both sciences because both rely on testifiable models to degrees, and both are as valid an undertaking as the other.