Posted on 02/22/2007 6:22:34 PM PST by Boxen
In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.
Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.
ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.
A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.
This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.
Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.
"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this." In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.
Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.
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Sober, Elliott. "What is Wrong with Intelligent Design," The Quarterly Review of Biology: March 2007.
Since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology has been dedicated to providing insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics.
Its more vocal adherents augment that perception by their infantile behavior.
For consideration as a valid science, I would place Evolutionism at least a few steps below Cold Fusion, and perhaps one step above its stepchild, Environmentalism.
I don't have the time or inclination to discuss these things in detail.
If you are sincere, and really wish to explore the facts mitigating against Evolutionism, and to entertain them as things to consider by a thinking person with an open mind, then there are much better and more technical sources than yours truly, and you seem perfectly capable of conducting the research and compiling the results without my help.
I did half of my six years of graduate school in evolution and closely related fields.
I know the facts of evolution, and I have conducted the research and compiled the results without your help.
The arguments we see on these threads against evolution are almost always from religion (apologetics), and they generally pervert what evolution actually says, and misrepresent the scientific method.
For example, those who need to find evidence for a young earth, pervert the radiocarbon dating technique by one of several methods, including arbitrarily changing the rate of beta decay, claiming (falsely) that there is no accounting for atmospheric variation in C14, claiming that the method only extends back some 4,000 (or 7,000) years, etc. These claims ignore established science because the proponents have to discredit the method because they cannot abide by the results!
There are still a few scientists left on this website. Until banned, we still can call BS on anti-science nonsense.
You ask for an open mind? I have found far more open minded folks among scientists than creationists. Scientists say, "Show me the evidence." Creationists say, "My mind is made up; I won't believe your evidence no matter what you show me." Now where is the open mind?
Yep, it's all a communist plot.
Good for you. I place Evolutionism a step below Astrology. It far better qualifies as a philosophy of history than it does as a science.
Howsit hanging? Did you ever get around to the microwave and chocolate experiment?
>>Good for you. I place Evolutionism a step below Astrology.<<
Well it sure is a lot newer...
Scientists are even fired for presenting all the evidence that is overwhelmingly against evolutonists in universities!
Irreducible complexity simply put is that one or more entities is required symotaneously, therefor they had to be in existance at all times, not over a happenstance chance of one thing developing and then the other, And this irreducible complexity is everywhere.
Hehe. I knew before clicking on your post you'd still be stuck in chocolate. Do you really think the average human is capable of, and interested in, observing the speed of light with any accuracy? What percentage of the world's population is using microwaves and chocolate to make such observations? Are EMP's the be-all and end-all of scientific measurements?
Good grief. Why not try the cutting edge some day instead of sticking yourself into Hersheyville? Or is dark all that matters?
Well, of course! About time you cut and paste a reliable comment!
We have been trying to tell you for weeks that the radiocarbon method goes back only some 50,000 years.
it is only useful for relatively well-preserved organic materials such as cloth, wood, and other non-fossilized materials
Charcoal is the preferred material for radiocarbon dating, but bone, shell, and other once-living materials can also provide usable dates.
Here is another good site for information on radiocarbon dating.
How come in the 60s evolutionists said the universe was only millions of years old now its billions? from millions to billions thats quite a mathmatical error wouldnt you say? Oh yeah they use to say we were in a global cooling crisis too now its global warming! When we know already the the earth goes in cycles every ten to twenty years from a cooling stage and then to a warming stage.
Good posts, Westbrook!
Blind spot? what does that got to do with anything that shows evidence to a bad design, show me how it is a bad design, and not with oppion propaganda!
Chickens have genetics for teeth because thats in there gene pool from there original KIND, but there is no adding to the gene pool, and they could be flightless from a lot of breeding dominant and recessive genes, that means nothing, Penguins are flightless birds also but they swim very well.
Who says the human jaw is to small? you! over time people could have become recessive gene reasons, and perhaps you might know that in early days in the bible it mentions that mankind lived from five hundred to nine hundred + years of age people can have dispositions for disease or problems or seemingly problems but that doesnt constitute a bad design. Also it mentions that God cursed the earth and that we would now die, and as a result we have disease etc.... but everything still remains in its gene pool, if you will.
Hip bones in whales? these are hip bones? what evidence bonafies that? - pure propaganda no evidence junk!
Who says the holes in the abdominal is vulnerable? you again and the propagandists? Show me evidence of poor design, you claiming something is vulnerable isnt evidence! So as I said pure Junk! and I even went light in my rebutal! If you want resources I can get those too!
"We may not be Masters of our own destiny...this designer may expect somthing from us...and that is unacceptable to many of us".
If you think you are the "Master of your own destiny", just don't pay your taxes for a few years. Try figuring a way to prevent dying. If unsuccessful at that, then try to figure out how to survive the Grave.
When you've succeeded in all that, get back to me.
The knownfossil record fails to document a SINGLE example of phyltic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradulistic model can be valid. ( Steven M. Stanley,1979)
As a generative principle, providing the raw material for natural selection, random mutation is inadequate, both in scope and theoretical grounding,(Jeffrey S. Wicken)
Just so many more quotes I could post its not even funny!
Ha!
Do you really think the average human is capable of, and interested in, observing the speed of light with any accuracy?
About 15% are capable of, and maybe 1% are interested in.
Where do you (not) fall in the spectrum?
What percentage of the world's population is using microwaves and chocolate to make such observations? Are EMP's the be-all and end-all of scientific measurements?
As a guess about 0.7% use chocolate and the other 0.3% use cheese. And that's EMR (electro-magnetic radiation), it's not the end-all of scientific measurements.
Just one of the ways to measure the speed of light.
Good grief. Why not try the cutting edge some day instead of sticking yourself into Hersheyville?
Such as what, Nestles?
Or is dark all that matters?
Oh no. They have white chocolate too ...
God made the squid and octopus & mantis shrimp to rule over the earth.
We just don't know it yet.
What does panda meat taste like?
Evolution is a tricky word, but it does indeed happen - within species. My rat terriers are anything but wolf-like, and it amazes me that they could be bred down over the centuries to protect me, rather then have me for dinner. If the evolutionists would cease resorting to ad hominem attacks, their viewpoint would become more palatable. To both sides: if the science is pure, or at least sincere, then I am all for it.
"So what is ID's theory about why there are no 600 million-year-old mammal fossils?"
Beats me, but if I had to guess, I suspect it might be along the same lines as my theory about why there are no 1783 Ford Mustangs.
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