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.
placemarker
Suffice it to say, all of those issues were covered in my first Human Races course back in graduate school.
ps. Like the global flood, the tower of Babel is a local, tribal myth.
That doesn't make any sense. Care to elaborate? What has the magnetic field to do with the decay rate? Why should it be difficult to measure the decay rate?
You are mocking that which you do not understand.
I have made my points, so we'll let the lurkers decide. Bye for now.
Decay rates may not exactly always be constants for one! For example lightslows down when it goes through glass, It also has been slown down to 38 miles per hour and now they are working on tyrying to stop it and even backing it up, like light perhaps.
Thats a cheesy reply coyoteman!
Thats weak and just what I would expect from a cheese thinker! You wont debunk it trust me he has already debunked people who are just like you, even people who are the head of evolutionists organisations. So I can assue you, you wont! And as I mentioned he use to be an evolutionist, the reason you wont look him up is because all your interested in is your ego and your propaganda, thats why your here in the first place arguing, if it was absolute fact that evolution was true you wouldnt have to defend it it would be obvious to all, but the facts are it is not obvious. Its down right embarrasing for evolutionists all over again. But like I said before those who want to avoid consequences of sin, they invent an excuse.
Are constants realy constants? Is red shift realy only caused by objects moving away from us? Is the speed of light a true constant? Does the red shift of light prove a big bang? OR does it prove that the earth is at the center of the universe? There is overwhelming evidence that light id not a true constant over time!!!! let alone where did all the mass and energy come from???? I know you will try and answwer but save your breath because, these are highly contraversial and I know you dont have the answer like you will play like you do, but that typical of evolutionists.
Yes.
OR does it prove that the earth is at the center of the universe?
"Everywhere" is the center of the universe.
The same is true of religions.
By your quick response which shows arrogance! light is not known a true constant! For we know it can slow and it does by passing through things! It is being studied right now so there is no way you could say with such a quick easy answer! There is decay in the speed of light.
If the measured variation of alpha turns out to be real, then one of the most basic ASSUMPTIONS of science - that the laws of physics are the same everywhere and at all times - will prove untrue, notes Micheal S. Turner of the university of Chicago.
Constants are invented by man to help him describe the natural world that he sees...Points out taylor a Physicist who since the 1960s has been a leader in assesing the values of constants.
Theres a whole industry of people thinking about the variation of constants, Taylor notes.
More evidence of the discrepancy appears to be on the way!!!!
No arrogance needed. It is just a fact. The speed of light in a vacuum is by definition a constant.
Some data to back up your claim? Or is this made out of thin air like:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - David Hume
The same is true of religions.
The first statement is demonstrably true. The second statement is not varifiable. It is simply a matter of faith.
Evidence is there you have to be HONEST enough!!!!
The Bible is history in itself there are thousands of finds that give credit to the bible and none to discredit it!
The bible was written not all at once it started a few thousand years ago in the old testament writings and then ended shortly after Christ, do you realy think these records were kept and things recorded for thousands of years and it ended just after Christ and then there was an out break of Christianity, This is nowhere in history of any belief to be done. And to this day it is known everywhere. Painstakingly writings and events kept highly accurate and they just end after Christ and then there is an outbreak of Christianity? Is there any document written like the text of the bible, you know there is not!
Also it is a known fact that people GENERALY lived in a more moral disciplined society Christian or not, and today it is more disregarded and what are the results we have higher divorce, abortion, abuse, ever increasing disease, disfunctional households to the nth degree, crime is higher than ever, disturbing lifestyles, violence as entertainment, sexual perversion as entertainment, men who have no integrity etc...etc...
Just as John said we know that antichrist comes even now there are many antichrists this is how we know we are in the last hour!
Wiremen back up what you say!
False.
Geologists concluded by about 1830 that there was no global flood at ca. 4300 years ago.
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