Checking back in, it seems like a lot of people are confusing "natural selection" with "evolution" - they are two completely different things. Natural selection is when changes occur WITHIN a given species - different breeds of dog, or strains of bacteria, for example. ID doesn't have a problem with that, and yes, we see it in the lab and in nature all of the time. What we don't see is evolution, which is when natural selection is taken to the degree that one species eventually evolves into a completely different species. This is only theory - no one has actually seen this happen, and this is where the ID / evolution debate comes into play.
Which goes back to my original point that NEITHER of these theories is falsifiable - none of us was around to observe the beginning of the world and of life on this planet and the original conditions were not documented and cannot be replicated (although it's been attempted in the lab, without luck.) I don't have a problem with evolution being taught - as a THEORY, which could very well be WRONG. The problem I have is that it is taught as FACT - I have a stack of biology texts which tell me that certain animals have common traits because they evolved from a common ancestor - but nowhere does it say that this is speculation based on the THEORY of evolution, and may not actually be the case. This is where I feel we do today's kids a disservice - whether we teach them ID or not, we should at least stop presenting evolution as the only accepted scientific truth, when it is still (IMHO) a huge leap from natural selection and a very UN-parsimonious theory. Again, apply Occam's Razor - this is NOT the simplest explanation for the diversity of life, and on the micro level, it seems almost absurd to assume this kind of complexity could have arisen by random combinations and mutations. It's a leap of faith, just like ID - the difference is, ID is the more parsimonious of the two theories.
Well, no, I think you are the one confused.
The term "Natural Selection" was the original theory backing up Evolution as described by Darwin. It is a process where nature favors a particular species trait for reproduction so that eventually the species changes in favor that trait. Enough accumulated generations of "natural selection" and a new species will result.
This is argued against by creationists who claim that so called "macro-evolution" could not happen. They give no mechanisim for WHY accumulated traits will stop at some limit, they merely claim that because only a limited amount of Evolution has been observed in the last 200 years, then that must be all there is.
Scientists believe that such an artificial wall limiting the effects of natural selection does not exist. Creationists have been unable to describe a mechanism for this supposed wall and have produced no evidence for it.
Which goes back to my original point that NEITHER of these theories is falsifiable
Creationists didn't start talking about falsifiability, until it was pointed out that faith in an omnipotent god could explain everything, and was thus non-falsifiable. Any observation could be explained by the magic words, "God did it".
Evolution, on the other hand, has several methods of falsifiability. One could find evidence of recent species in old fossil layers. Or, one could find old and new fossil types mixed in the same layer. Or, once DNA was isolated, it could have disagreed with Evolution theory. But amazingly, it verified Evolution, a hundred years after Darwin.
All it would take is ONE such find that would falsify Evolution as described above, and Evolution would have a serious problem. The fact that despite concerted efforts of creationists with money to spend and time to burn, they have not found even one magic fossil that would cause serious questioning of evolution.
That Evolution has withstood such intense examination for so many decades by such determined people is the reason I am so certian of it.
"Checking back in, it seems like a lot of people are confusing "natural selection" with "evolution""
Without natural selection, there is no theory of evolution, you can't attack one without attacking the other.
"What we don't see is evolution, which is when natural selection is taken to the degree that one species eventually evolves into a completely different species. This is only theory - no one has actually seen this happen, and this is where the ID / evolution debate comes into play."
This is not true, we cannot put stars in a lab, but we know what they are... We cannot 'see' certain particles in the lab, but we know they exist. This idea that that is it cannot be replicated in a lab, it's not science, only exists within the ID/creationism community. The scientific community sees it very differently.
From the National Academy of Sciences:
It is only a theory that stars go through a natural sequence delineated on the Hartzsprung-Russell diagram. No one has actually seen a star coelesce and die. No one has actually seen a continent drift with their own two eyes. It is only a theory. No one has seen gravity at work in the intersteller void in order to operate at galactic distances, it is only a theory, and a somewhat troubled theory, at that. Are you ready to attack the theory of gravity?
Could you tell us what is happening when a zebra, a horse, and a donkey mate? Could you tell us why God created ring species? Could you tell us why a Camel and a Llama can mate? How about a lion and tiger? Are they all the same species? Do you think a teacup poodle and a Great Dane can mate successfully?
By being extremely selective about what evidence you are willing to consider, You are constructing your own version of evolutionary theory, based on kind of a comic-book oversimplification of what a species is (treating it as if it were a physical entity with boundaries, rather than an arbitrary human convienience) and soundly refuting that. Nice, easy work, if you can get it.
As is often the case with soft degrees, Your education was, on the available evidence, extremely lightweight regarding the nature and philosophy of science. You are entitled to your rude opinions about how gullible or venal, or uncritical scientists are, but you are misrepresenting the depth of your authority on the subject. Evolutionary theory is highly falsifiable, and has withstood enumerable tests, every time, for example, that we send grad students out to dig for specific things, and they find it in greater abundance than pipeline diggers find it. If your allergy to historic data were to be taken seriously, we'd have to abandon galactic astronomy entirely, and I don't see that happening, do you? Before you throw your intellectual weight around on this forum, you'd be well served to come to a better understanding of why we have to trust inductive reasoning, dispite it's inherent frailties, about historical events, if we are to do science.
As the vast majority of scientists would tell you, if asked, evolutionary theory stands on ground that is, at present, much firmer than that of, for example, the astronomical theory of gravity--which presently can't explain the outer orbits of galaxies by referring to anything you can, at the present moment, touch, taste or feel--even with the help of instruments.
It is a shame to turn an advanced degree into a validation token for marginal crackpot theories that fly in the face of the most profoundly amazing co-incidence of correlating evidence--the triple co-ordination of the geological column, the fossil tree, and the DNA mutational clock-- that science has ever seen. As much as anything else on this planet, evolutionary theory is a confirmed science, and needs to be taught as such, if we are going to teach science in the classroom. if you want to teach Sci-fi, or religeous history, then you have my blessing on ID. If you want to teach science. Teach science as a scientists understand it, not as politicians, or science cranks with obvious axes to grind, understand it.