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To: Southack
Second, as far as "testable hypotheses" go, ID is testable and falsifiable

So give us some falsifiable hypotheses. Tell us how you would test them. I have seen a couple of so-called hypotheses from ID people but they were not in fact testable.

it is Evolutionary Theory that has no published, peer-reviewed falsification criteria.

Now that is an ignorant statement. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.

Here is a testable hypothesis for you. Working with Bacteria Strain XYZ, you hypothesize that there will be no change over time in its susceptibility to Drug ABC. That's the null hypothesis, SOP in biological science. But as you do your experiment, the data force you to reject the null hypothesis. The bacteria shows increasing resistance to the drug over time.

The logical interpretation? The bacteria have been evolving so as to adapt to the environment to which you have placed them. Evidence of evolution--of the falsifiable variety.

BTW, are you sure you know how natural selection is defined? I will take a wild guess that there is a good chance you might not.

61 posted on 12/02/2007 6:39:01 AM PST by freespirited (I'm voting for the GOP nominee.)
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To: freespirited
"Here is a testable hypothesis for you. Working with Bacteria Strain XYZ, you hypothesize that there will be no change over time in its susceptibility to Drug ABC. That's the null hypothesis, SOP in biological science. But as you do your experiment, the data force you to reject the null hypothesis. The bacteria shows increasing resistance to the drug over time. The logical interpretation? The bacteria have been evolving so as to adapt to the environment to which you have placed them. Evidence of evolution--of the falsifiable variety."

False logic. The bacteria aren't changing. There's no evolution. Bacteria in the superset that have better pre-existing resistance to Drug ABC survive and propagate better than their peers in the test. Eventually, only those with resistance are left.

But there was no metamorphis. DNA didn't change in the survivors from pre-test to post-test.

66 posted on 12/02/2007 9:57:20 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: freespirited
Here is a testable hypothesis for you. Working with Bacteria Strain XYZ, you hypothesize that there will be no change over time in its susceptibility to Drug ABC. That's the null hypothesis, SOP in biological science. But as you do your experiment, the data force you to reject the null hypothesis. The bacteria shows increasing resistance to the drug over time.

The logical interpretation? The bacteria have been evolving so as to adapt to the environment to which you have placed them. Evidence of evolution--of the falsifiable variety.

What you've described is an excellent test for adaptation/natural selection of information already existing ina genome.

But extrapolating from that to account for "the grand sweep of evolution", from bacteria to man is not very good science.

How about a closed system test where bacteria are observed for 25 or 50,000 generations? Should we expect new information in the genome?

68 posted on 12/02/2007 10:17:40 AM PST by jwalsh07
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To: freespirited
The conclusion is that the bacteria in question has a sophisticated immune system with some very powerful tools not generally available to vertebrates (for example).

As you recover from your next head cold (caused by a virus) you will observe that the functioning of your immune system does not cause you to evolve.

Now, regarding "evolving" some parts of your genome clearly indicate that some of your ancestors were bacteria and viruses.

73 posted on 12/02/2007 10:50:48 AM PST by muawiyah
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