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To: Southack;Vercingetorix
What specific test has ID failed? Name it, please.

Does it make any predictions at all?

217 posted on 03/04/2002 1:59:15 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American
It failed the "make a prediction" test and the "do something besides jeer from the sidelines" test.
218 posted on 03/04/2002 2:01:19 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: Virginia-American; VadeRetro
What specific test has ID failed? Name it, please.

"Does it make any predictions at all?" - Virginia-American

Post #192 has already addressed that question decisively. Please read the entire thread so that redunduncy can be kept to a minimum.

222 posted on 03/04/2002 2:15:06 PM PST by Southack
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To: Virginia-American
"Does it make any predictions at all?" -- Virginia-American

Merely stating that life is Intelligently Designed makes at least two predictions -- intelligence and design. In order for these predictions to have any meaning in the physical world, where we are unfortunately condemned to conduct the entirety of our investigation, the evidence must be physical. Otherwise, we may just as well call the Intelligent Designer by the name, God, and be done with it.

Because ID really is just a surrogate for the god of Genesis, the ID proponents generally don't care to make testable predictions. However, some have been made in the vain hope that they will pan out. Irreducible complexity is one such prediction. It depends largely on an argument to incredulity. They point to some complex organism, chemical pathway, appendage, etc. and pronounce it as irreducibly complex and therefore impossible to exist unless designed by a higher intelligence. Then some humble journeyman chemist or anatomist works out the details and explains the thing so everybody (with the possible exception of the ID guy) sees how really simple and reducible it actually is. This doesn't stop the ID guy from trying. Meanwhile everybody else has abandoned even investigating irreducible complexity claims from the little boys that cry "Wolf."

227 posted on 03/04/2002 3:21:07 PM PST by Vercingetorix
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