I can't tell you how this sounds this far along on this thread. gore3000 told me a long time ago that, for all you can tell from a fossil, there were mammary glands on dinosaurs.(response)
That's not what I was getting at. The ability for the theory of evolution to make predictions is cited as evidence of its accuracy. If, using this theory, one were able to consistently turn the descendents of a horse into cows, the debate would be pretty much over. Micro-evolution is consistently observed in nature and laboratories and nobody questions it.
Maybe you can help them out. Why does an evolutionary framework say Mrs. T was a flat-chested as Mr. T?
The point is everybody's guessing. I would say it's impossible to know for certain and we would all be better off admitting that. (There is nothing wrong with speculating but nobody should get upset when one's speculation in challenged.)
On this point, you're supposed to defend how ID really tells you something. To continue to attack evolution here is to stay stuck on the last item, which is where you feel more comfortable.
Again, since I belive in God i would be an intelligent designer even if I were to conclude that macro-evolution is right. I think the question (and glory) for science is always to try figure out how God does things -- sort of like a kid trying to emulate his father albeit one can never forget the rules Dad sets down.
ID seems to me to be more a strong critique of evolution rather than an attempt to find the mechanism of creation which is what evolution (not unfairly) tries to explain.
No. Not everybody is guessing. There's a powerful line of logic that says the odds of mammaries on Mrs. T. Rex are extremely remote. It's not just the lack of soft-tissue evidence.
Your characterization is accurate for ID. That's the problem. With ID it is just a guess.
I also think it's odd that none of the ID proponents will even acknowledge the existence of the evolutionary logic by reproducing it. The score now stands at 0 for 3 for the experts who happily force predictions on evolution that it doesn't make for itself all the time. ("The fossil record should be nothing but transitionals." "Where are the instances of snakes turning into birds?" "Where are the pre-biotic soups forming today?")
One prediction of evolution: Birds will never be born with mammary glands or three earbones, or differentiated dentition. Another prediction of evolution: Frogs will never develop feathers.
This all has to do with Vade's query to gore3000 on whether he can explain why paleontologists are sure T. Rex did not have boobs. It all has to do with the framework provided by evolutionary theory -- this framework allows us to categorically predict that some things will never happen, and other things will.