Intelligent Design is Falsifiable

Discovery Institute ^ | 8/26/05 | Staff

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

There is a belief among media commentators that intelligent design is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable or untestable: no empirical evidence can count against it. Though common, this charge is demonstrably false. Of course there’s no way to falsify a mere assertion that a cosmic designer exists. This much we are agreed on. But contemporary design arguments focus not on such vague claims, but on detectible evidence for design in the natural world. Therefore, the design arguments currently in play are falsifiable.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Also see:

Stephen Meyer Nightline Interview

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

ID Ping

[Congressman Billybob]

Albert Einstein took the exact opposite position. But then, he's dead and he wasn't much of a scientist, anyway. What did he know? /sarcasm

Congressman Billybob

Latest column: "This is a Court. Tuck in Your Shirt."

[Search4Truth]

For every question answered by science, ten more questions are revealed. Science is then creating more questions that it is answering. Is science then revealing that the universe's complexity is infinite?

[bobdsmith]

How does one test and discredit Behe’s argument? Describe a realistic, continuously functional Darwinian pathway from simple ancestor to present motor.

That doesn't test ID though. Even if the flagellum was shown to be not irreducibly complex, Intelligent Design of the flagellum would still be possible.

[balrog666]

Nothing to see here but more UnDiscovery Institute BS.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[plain talk]

ping

[headsonpikes]

1 Recent work in the philosophy of science has revealed the degree to which high level scientific theories tend to resist simple refutation. If it were applied consistently, in fact, every theory in science would be hastily rejected. As a result, Karl Popper’s criterion of “falsifiability,” which most commentators seem to presuppose, was rejected by most philosophers of science decades ago as a litmus test for science. Nevertheless, it’s certainly a virtue of scientific proposals to be able to say what evidence would count against it.

Blowing smoke like a squid! I believe he is misrepresenting Kuhn's SSD as well as Popper's LSD.

[headsonpikes]

That should be SSR, for Structure of Scientific Revolutions. My bad.

[PatrickHenry]

Ah yes, the Discovery Institute. Here's some background information:

Inferior Design. Revealing info on ID and the Discovery Institute.
One Nation, Under the Designer. The true goals of the ID movement.
Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project". Replacing science with theism.
The Wedge at Work. The Discovery Institute's war against reason.
The "Wedge Document": "So What?" The Discovery Institute defends the Wedge document.

And as for the "evidence" of design, check this out:
Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument is fatally flawed. Ichneumon's post 35. It's devastating.

Guys, should I ping the list for this thread?

[mountainlyons]

Evilution is the most falsifiable theory I have seen. Even the History Channel had some of the fraud the theory is based on.

[PatrickHenry]

Even the History Channel had some of the fraud the theory is based on.

Here's the entire catalog of evolution's "frauds." (None of them amounts to anything.)

Piltdown Man. Science (not creationism) uncovered the fraud.
Nebraska Man. Also: Nebraska Man in Textbooks? It wasn't much of a fraud.
Peppered Moths. Another non-issue.
Haeckel's Embryos. Yet another.
Ichneumon's Discussion of Haeckel's embryo drawings. A FreeRepublic post (#62).
Archaeopteryx. Despite howls from creationists, it's not a fake.
Archaeoraptor. A crude fake, publicised by Nat'l Geographic, then quickly exposed.
Lucy. The "fraud" claim is actually a creationist fraud.

[ValenB4]

I don't think this warrants a list ping.

[Clump]

I can only imagine what they will think at the moment when "every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord." No theories, no debate, just Almighty God.

[RobRoy]

>>Nothing to see here but more UnDiscovery Institute BS.<<

Yessirree, that's a genyuwine ohpinyun ya got there...

[timberlandko]

" ... Of course there’s no way to falsify a mere assertion that a cosmic designer exists. This much we are agreed on ... "

The first thing this clown does is concede and stipulate as illicit the core premise at the very foundation of his proposition, the "cosmic designer" premise, thereby invalidating his entire following argument, which pointless, self-invalidated argument he goes on to present anyway in a classic, and typical-of-the-genre, excercise of sophistry predicated upon denying the antecedent . Gotta love the irony.

[UseYourHead]

Yessirree, that's a genyuwine ohpinyun ya got there...

Wow - no preconceived opinions, attitudes, or subtle insinuation in that statement!

I always love how most of the anti-ID, anti-Creation folks in these Freeper discussions wind up using DU tactics to forge a "win" for their "science".

"There has never been an objective being. Knowing this, the rest is known." Upanishads

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Romans 1:22

[William Tell]

The linked article mentions the flagellum as being a system which demonstrates intelligent design.

I am curious as to why the "eye" is not used. I have read claims that there is no evolutionary path that could create the human eye. I have also read articles which claimed that there are intermediate steps and that it is possible to demonstrate the usefulness of just a partially formed eye.

Have those who support intelligent design abandoned the eye as proof of intelligent design? Do they have reason to focus on the flagellum now?

I am also curious about the linked article's claim that finding life on another planet would falsify intelligent design. How can they establish that an intelligent designer could not come up with a suitably different design to tolerate different conditions? There seems to be a "uniqueness" axiom in play here. That is, that the "designers" task was so unique that nothing very different from earthly life forms can exist.

[mdefranc]

Vestigial organs prove Unintelligent Design.