[Doctor Stochastic]

What predictions does ID make that would distinguish it from other theories?

[Virginia-American]

I've never seen it proposed, but I'd think that ID would predict 'chimeras' - species that don't fit into the Lineean scheme at all. EG, a feathered serpent.

[Heartlander]

“ In science, nothing can be said with 100% confidence. Deductive reasoning (i.e. things we reason to be true with 100% confidence) can only be used to disqualify given scientific hypotheses, and thus science can only say with 100% confidence that a given hypothesis is wrong. How then do we learn through the scientific method? Inductive reasoning, or inference, is used to validate hypotheses in science. While no hypothesis is ever said to be "proven", it can be supported, to varying degrees, by evidences which it predicts. Thus, science is tentative, incomplete, and never completely final. Well-supported theories are often said to be "fact", though in the strict sense of the word, there is no such thing as a true "scientific fact". Thus, intelligent design theory and all other scientific theories, such as the theory of evolution, can only be infered through fulfilled predictions. Epistemologically, design and evolution are on the same level for just like evolution or other historical unrepeatable events, intelligent design is inductively concluded as an inference. “

“ Intelligent design theory can thus be empirically studied because it does make predictions….. For example, if large measures of intelligent cause were inserted into the biological realm, one might expect to find record of rapid change in the history of life, as is thought to be found in the fossil record. Tied closely to specified complexity, one might expect to find highly complex biological structures which defy a mechanistic causal explanation. Thus, intelligent design and evolutionary theory are competing hypotheses which make different predictions. Evolutionary theory predicts that the biological structures we find must be evolvable in a step-wise fashion, while Intelligent Design theory predicts that it is possible that highly complex unevolvable structures might exist. “

• Many scientific or intellectual endeavors already detect and infer Design:
• Copyright and patent offices identify theft of intellectual property
• Insurance companies prevent themselves from getting ripped off
• Detectives employ circumstantial evidence to incriminate a guilty party
• Forensic scientists are able to reliably to place individuals at the scene of a crime
• Skeptics debunk the claims of parapsychologists
• Scientists identify cases of data falsification
• NASA's SETI program seeks to detect intelligence identify the presence of extra- terrestrial life, and
• Statisticians and computer scientists distinguish random from non-random strings of digits.
• We already see and understand how intelligence operates in the natural world, and we know how to recognize the products of intelligence. Why can't design be applied in biology?
• A number of complex interacting parts intuitively sparks notions of design, so why not follow that intuition and allow investigation into notions of design in biological origins?”