I wonder if Darwin’s theory when he originally offered it would pass the same bar imposed on Intelligent Design. I took your words from #395 and reversed the actors to picture my question. I wonder what Darwin’s reaction would have been if a creationist said this to him so long ago:Evolution [ID} can point to no positive evidence for evolution [ID]. Every one of its current arguments amount to saying "there's a hole in creation [Darwinian] theory here." But even if those claims are true, merely pointing out a hole in an existing theory does not prove your competing theory. There are any number of competing sub-theories or future discoveries that could fill the gap without necessarily hurting the overall theory. And if those don't show up, there are any number of possible competing theories for the "supertheory" itself. Likewise, when evolutionists dismiss “design-centric” theories and insist on “designer-centric” theories – they are inviting the corollary: creationists dismissing evolution theories that do not incompass abiogenesis.
Hmmm... your Darwin analogy is interesting. I'll have to chew on that for a while. (Maybe a lot... :-)
Let's see if I can better explain my objection to ID as it is today:
Both evolution and ID are historical sciences. They both take fossil evidence - data points from certain points in time - and assume that they represent organisms linked to each other by common descent. From these shared premises, they both try to explain what are the most plausible explanations for how ancient species progressed from the earlier forms to the later ones.
To do this, both theories need to produce methods whereby the species can get transformed. Evolution claims these methods are random mutations of various kinds, filtered by natural selection and gene drift, with reproductive incompatibility (speciation) acting as a ratchet that keeps sufficiently separated populations diverging away from each other instead of blending back into one. Evolution claims that these methods are sufficient to have produced successful populations of organisms that changed quickly enough to get from one known data point to the next.
ID somewhat agrees with this, except they say that some kind of genetic engineering was also performed by a thinking person of some kind at several points in history.
Evolutionary biologists have positively confirmed that mutations exist, that they're random (AndrewC & one or two scientists notwithstanding :-), that selection exists, that genetic drift exists, that these all can have myriad effects on the organisms, etc. Most ID'ers agree with this much.
Where ID'ers disagree with Darwinians is in explaining the current gaps in knowledge. ID'ers claim that RM&NS alone (indeed any process that isn't guided by a person of some kind) was not sufficient to drive the transitions between all the paleospecies. They claim that there is a supernatural bioengineer who steps in sometimes to impose changes to organisms. So the task of ID'ers is to provide some positive evidence for this designer. Otherwise they're simply complaining about the current gaps in knowledge. (I mean, c'mon: Every scientific discipline has gaps in their knowledge! Simply pointing to the other theory's gaps isn't sufficient to prove your theory correct by default.)
Even when it comes to abiogenesis, naturalistic scientists have produced positive evidence on their side: Instead of saying "nobody has seen this God person zapping adult humans into existence out of thin air, therefore abiogenesis must be true by default", they came up with positive evidence for their proposed mechanisms. They've shown that complex organic chemicals form under a variety of natural conditions, they've discovered natural catalysts for both peptide and RNA formation & growth, they've discovered shorter & shorter polymers that can act as their own catalysts for replication, etc. People will differ over just how convincing these positive evidences are, but they are positive.
Keep hanging your hopes on this thread. Your faith is a great example to some weak believers.
Jen, there is more evidence for civilization on Mars, than abiogenesis.
If you look at the paintings in the Sistine Chapel do you think that they were painted at random by material forces? Don't think so. If after seeing that you see some other paintings by Michelangelo in museums and such can you tell who the painter was? Pretty likely you could. These paintings are the material expression of Michelangelo's intelligence. You cannot see his intelligence, just like you cannot 'see' anyone else's intelligence, but by their deeds you can come to know of their intelligence. ID says the same thing, by the Creation you can tell that a work was intelligently designed. There's your evidence and it is everywhere. You can find it in the Universe, you can find it in the creation of life, you can find it in the process whereby each new baby is created from a single cell. There's your evidence.
I do not see Intelligent Design as a competitor in the fossil arena as you do, nor do I see it as an endeavor focused on history.
To the contrary, I see Intelligent Design focused on analyzing the internal mechanism of biology, particularly where algorithmic features appear. IMHO, the information age itself will drive this search for the undlying algorithms even if the Intelligent Design movement were quashed.
In support of my view, I point to Stephen Wolfram on Natural Selection. Wolfram says At some level it is not surprising that there should be an analogy between engineering and natural selection. For both cases can be viewed as trying to create systems that will achieve or optimize some goal...…[I]n the end, therefore, what I conclude is that many of the most obvious features of complexity in biological organisms arise in a sense not because of natural selection, but rather in spite of it.
The underlying algorithmic structure is the basis of Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. And research continues into a mathematical theory of everything:
Jürgen Schmidhuber Algorithmic Theories of Everything
Iain Stewart Department of Computing, Imperial College, London
If I could make a recommendation to the evolutionist community it would be not to "bet the farm" on the randomness component - being malleable as research continues is prudent. Anyway, that's my two cents...
Thank you for the discussion! It has been very informative!