Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
"This is a ludicrous example. Nobody says that a single-celled organism is going to evolve into a vertebrate without countless intermediate steps. In nature it took over half a billion years. To demand that a scientist produce this, and to say that the failure to do so is somehow a validation of ID is astoundingly dishonest. The failure to produce a vertebrate from a single-celled organism is in NO way evidence for a designer."
You are missing the point, but evolutionists are masters of missing the point. The point is that I provided a prediction that, if false, would discredit ID theory. The claim was that such a prediction could not be made or has not been made. You're "moving the goalposts," as they say.
And isn't it convenient that evolutionists have a loophole because providing any actual direct evidence for evolution would "take too long."
Circular reasoning at its best!
"Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate."
I'm afraid Wilson was rather dysphemistic in his wording. Let's try and translate this sentence using less loaded words and see how horrendous it looks.
"Ethics as we understand it is a system developed through evolution, experience and thought to enhance our survival chances."
Works for me.
"Ethics as we understand it is a system developed through evolution, experience and thought to enhance our survival chances."
But what if I am only interested in my own well-being and don't care about my "species." What is my incentive to be ethical? Yes, I obviously have an incentive to *appear* ethical to others, but what is my incentive to *really* be ethical when no one is looking? None. Zip.
Think about it.
All of these proposed falsifications have one thing in common: they are attacks on evolution. A scientific theory cannot just be a series of jabs at an existing theory, it must be a theory in itself, with its own criteria for falsifiability. The only one I can think of is "The Creator comes down and tells us he's letting evolution run by itself." Even observed macro-evolution in the lab could be claimed to have been caused by a creator, so that one won't work.
The reason your criteria are as they are is that ID consists only of an attack on evolution, nothing more. Scientific attacks on accepted scientific theories are a good thing, as they help to weed out bad theories and alter good but flawed ones. However a set of attacks is not in itself a theory.
The "notion" of "Intelligent Design" is indeed unscientific and outside the domain of the NATURAL sciences, including biology, Geology, and Astronomy, because it assumes a SUPERNATURAL agent; which cannot be investigated by the methods of natural science. "Intelligent Design" is well within the domain of theological science.
I have not actually seen anybody "claim that ID has been thoroughly refuted by science," what scientists say is that Intelligent Design cannot even conceptually be refuted by science, and therefor it is not a scientific theory. No matter what evidence scientists have for evolution; Intelligent Design theorists can claim: "The Intelligent Designer did it that way for His own reasons."
Various advocates of Intelligent Design have made various, and some specific claims that this or that molecular or cellular structure was "irreducible complex" and could not have evolvolved by natural Darwinian variation and selection; and those specific claims have been refuted; and claims that life could not be the result of natural processes because of a notion of "specified complexity" have been demolished. So the various claims by Intelligent Design theory have been in fact refuted; but scientists do not claim to have, or conceptually be able to, "refute" the general notion of Intelligent Design.
Scientific explainations have to put their asses on the line and risk being destroyed. If they can't do that then they are not science. That is the main reason why scientific explainations must be potentially falsifiable.
For example the explaination that every one million years all the animals on Earth get up and do a dance would be falsified if we don't see that happen in the next one million years. But that is playing safe. The explaination is not on the firing line.
Your example of bacteria to vertebrate evolving in the lab being a falsification of ID is equally playing safe.
Contrast that with one of many criteria for falsifing evolution: Finding a modern mammal fossil in cambrian strata. This puts evolution directly on the firing line. Such an example could be found at any day. ID has nothing like this.
Also notice that evolution's tests reflect it's own explainatory power. In this case it is based on the history of modern mammals as explained by evolution.
On the otherhand the tests you have come up with for ID so far have been based on evolution. So does ID have any explainatory power of it's own? or is it actually just a collection of whines about evolution?
That's why all the intelligent folks on Venus and Mars are hiding from us. /sarcasm
I think Casey could use a brush up on the issues.
"No, you didn't. If a scientist COULD produce what you put as the test, a single-celled organism evolving into a vertebrate, it would still in NO WAY invalidate ID."
The point is that *evolutionists* would claim it discredits ID theory. Are you denying that? Are you claiming that if macroevolution (you specify the extent of macroevolution) were observed in the lab, evolutionists would *not* claim that it invalidates ID theory? If so, you are either incredibly naive, or you are just a bald-faced liar.
Find a rabbit in a Cambrian stratum. Or find a mammal with genes from two well-separated lineages.
If I handed you a deck of cards in perfect numerical order, would you refuse to believe they were ordered by an intelligent being unless I showed you a video of someone doing so?
Poor analogy. Genomes don't look like they're in perfect numerical order. They have broken genes, bits of ancient retroviruses, and close, tree-like relationships with other organisms. Everything about them screams evolution; nothing looks designed, unless the designer was drunk or insane.
attack of the recycled trolls placemarker
Well, Duh.
This gets very tiring when people reply with posts repeating points that I have already addressed and refuted in this very thread. I just don't have time to repeat my posts for every individual.
Yes, but look at it from the opposite side of the fence - if you allow only impossible-to-obtain evidence to cause you to re-evaluate your worldview, your worldview is in absolutely no danger of ever being challenged. It's positively bulletproof, safe from all those nasty ideas and facts out there that might disturb the comfort of knowing that you've got it all figured out. If you're worried about seeing nasty things, the safest way to avoid ever seeing anything nasty is to put your own eyes out.
Some may consider whether the "cure" is worse than the disease, but there is a certain logic there - the sleeper does not wish to awaken, and so will not be disturbed.
How did human thought escape the influence of evolution? Where did it come from?
Of course! It's like any other product of the human intellect, like a song, or a play, or a screwdriver, or a gun, or a model made from Play-Doh. These things serve human purposes, which may or may not pertain to human survival.
Are you claiming that human intelligence is anything other than "matter-based"?
Than keep a list so you can say "see thread such&such, post #???"
I can think of several instances where morality is to the detriment of evolutionary advantage. I've already mentioned one man, one woman. Then there's Christ, obviously a great man, a leader, someone who is extremely valuable to society, but he could have lived and reproduced had he not done the moral thing of trying to save everyone. Is becoming a priest moral? That definitely hurts reproduction. A man in WWII harbors Jews from the Nazis, an extremely moral act, and is executed for it. The immoral act of initially reporting the Jews would have allowed his genes to carry on, but the moral act stopped them cold.
I could come up with countless more situations where morality hurts your chance to reproduce and therefore pass on those beneficial "morality genes."
"Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”
I fail to see how this improves your original point but I'll address it anyway.
Our morals are indeed the result of selection against non-cooperative members of our ape progenitor populations. These ethics were developed in populations of less than 100 members, generally around 40. This number comes from observation of large chimp populations, Optimum Group Size and Dunbar's number
Once humans developed larger populations and the ability to preserve thoughts, it became necessary and possible to formalize ethical conduct. Since religion was the most effective means to ensure compliance it was inevitable that these ethics be included in religious texts.
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