What is wrong with intelligent design?

EurekAlert! ^ | 22-Feb-2007 | Suzanne Wu

[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.

###

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.

[DungeonMaster]

Evolution cannot be disproven, replaces God, defines all human behavorism and declares there is no spirit and no heaven. Therefore it is religion.

[atlaw]

Westbrook: The religion of Evolutionism has many of the same hallmarks as the religion of Environmentalism; the same kinds of assertive pronouncements and predictions from "on high" that, when proven false, are quickly shoved under the rug

be4: When you start to investigate the claims of the theory it completely falls apart.

Here's an excellent opportunity for you to educate the ignorant.

Westbrook, you can delineate some of the specific "assertive pronouncements and predictions" that have been "proven false" and then "quickly shoved under the rug." And while you're at it, perhaps list some of the specific reasons why you find the theory of evolution to be in error.

And be4, you can state what specific "claims of the theory" you have investigated, and the manner in which these claims "completely fall apart."

Please, don't be bashful. There's no point in hiding your wisdom behind unsupported generalizations.

[Creationist]

That is a statement of arrogance. To deny the fact that most of true science discoveries were made by men and women who believe in God as the creator (not intelligent design).

It was meant to belittle those who believe in God as the Creator, because you do not wish to believe yourself.

You also do not accept that Satan exists and is the father of all lies.

Creationist believe in true science, that is science of testable things.

Your religion of evolution has no testable parts that prove your belief, it is all faith based (adaptation and variation are not evolution). Mutations have been proved not to be a mechanism of evolution, natural selection has been proved not to be a mechanism. Chemical evolution has been proved wrong.

All the hypothesis's have been proved wrong, so they sit and wait as new hypothesis's are made up and then worship it at the local museum.

Darwin relied on the future to find evidence of his demented brainchild, and to the dismay of the future they can not find hard evidence. They can only make evidence appear to fit the theory, not make the theory validated by the evidence.

[Coyoteman]

Index of Creationist Claims

[LibertarianSchmoe]

Evolution cannot be disproven
Wrong (proof/disproof doesn't apply to theories)

replaces God
Wrong

defines all human behavorism
Wrongism

declares there is no spirit and no heaven
Wrong and wrong

Therefore it is religion
Therefore you are wrong

0 for 6. Maybe facts aren't your forte.

[edsheppa]

He implies that ID is a falsifiable theory, but it is not. To be falsifiable in the way we expect a scientific theory to be, it must explain phenomena independently of the factual knowledge that went into the theory.

He also says "if ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses" and, while that is a reasonable criterion for choosing a preferred theory, it is not a standard for a theory being scientific.

[Westbrook]

Westbrook, you can delineate some of the specific "assertive pronouncements and predictions" that have been "proven false" and then "quickly shoved under the rug." We can start with the prediction of the "evolution" of the fruitfly, or anything else for that matter, by random mutations induced by various stimuli, chemical and radioactive, in or out of the laboratory.

It was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky's claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed. ~ Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins (New York, John Wiley, 1999), p. 300

Of course, we'll be accused of taking these statements "out of context".

But just to amuse you, here's another quote.

Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination. ~ N. A. Takahata, "Genetic Perspective on the Origin and History of Humans," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics (vol. 26, 1995), p. 343.

There are so many more, they are too numerous to count. But you're a big boy and shouldn't need me to do your research for you.

I'm certain, since I was once on the other side of the fence, that you can find many creative ways to refute the Creationist's claims in the same manner that we can find many creative ways to refute your claims.

We have the same evidence.

But we have different worldviews.

But if your logic is a descendent of random chemical processes, how can you even trust it to correctly assess, analyze, and explain the universe in which it finds itself?

For the "Theistic" Evolutionists, you must choose Christ or Evolution. If God's plan was to redeem man by evolving him to a higher life form over time, then Christ's sacrifice is meaningless.

Without the Garden of Eden; without Adam's sin and the curse of death that followed; if "nature red in tooth and claw" was "very good" to God at the beginning; if death, which is as important to evolutionism as genetic mutations, was part of God's intent for man from the beginning; then why do we need Christ to redeem us from death?

.

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

I assume you are referring to the "religious consensus" that marks the mindset of evolutionists, who, by the way, hold their theory to be unquestionably true and correct, and thus unfalsifiable.

- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -

Exactly.

[atlaw]

I see. Well, thanks anyway.

[voltaires_zit]

> It was meant to belittle those who believe in God as the
> Creator, because you do not wish to believe yourself.

Long before evolution was proposed, most geologists (who had begun work uniformly believing the creation myth of Genesis) had come to the conclusion that the earth was much, much older than could be accounted for by a literal biblical chronology.

[TChris]

Honest question: How is the Theory of Evolution falsifiable? What evidence, if discovered, would disprove the ToE?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

So what is ID's theory about why there are no 600 million-year-old mammal fossils?

[Wolfstar]

What's wong with inteligent design? It's not intelligent.

[Creationist]

Please Coyoteman, show us beneficial mutations that will propagate into new species, this is the only way you can,

Stated by Dimensio, supported by Coyoteman

Aliens from another planet and/or dimension traveled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.

The fruit fly has been studied with man made mutations enough times to know mutations do not will not can not cause a organism to change into another. Mutations are adulterant to the organism, and cause it to die quickly or to be sterile

Stasis, my I believe I am a scion to a monkey friend, will not allow evolution.

[Creationist]

What by the dating methods of man. Fossils date the rocks, rocks date the fossils, wow that is science.

Or do you mean by the flawed methods of decay dating that assume that the material that is dated was pure at one time, that assume that the decaying magnetic field does not have an effect on the decay rate of the elements.

That leaching has not taken place, that one is my friend weasel out of leaching takes place everyday everywhere, and you can not tell how much and for how long it has happened to any specimen.
So your belief is unscientific that these dating methods are accurate at all. What is your test speciman a rock form a fossil layer that men gave certain dates to without logic.

[Creationist]

Waaaa ahhhhh waaaaaa ahhhhh wwwwwaaaaaa.

[voltaires_zit]

The methods that caused the early geologists to conclude that the so-called "biblical timeline" was a load of hooey were much simpler:

1) Observe a natural process creating something (sand on a beach, erosion exposing more of underlying granite, ad infinitum, ad nauseum).

2) Measure the rate at which the process is proceeding.

3) Measure how much (sand, exposed granite, ad infinitum, ad nauseum).

4) Back calculate how long it's been going on.

Through thousands upon thousands of examples, conclude that the idea that the earth is 6-10,000 years old is errant nonsense.

Your misinformation or willful ignorance on dating methods doesn't even have to enter into the question.

[Westbrook]

> What's wong with inteligent design? It's not intelligent.

How VERY clever!

As a mouth-breathing, pie-eyed, knuckle-dragging Creationist, I could NEVER have thought of such a clever argument with which to crush the world view of my foes!

Parabens, amigo!

.

[rickdylan]

Here's a picture which is fifty times funnier than the picture you posted above:

That's basically soft tissue recovered from inside a trex leg bone a year and a half or so ago. The thing which makes it funny is that the evo-losers are going on trying to claim that tissue is 65,000,000 years old. That's really hilarious.

I mean maybe if the bone had been encased in gold or solid diamond for 65,000,000 years, but they found the bone in sandstone, so that the claim amounts to the same thing as claiming that it hadn't rained in Montana for 65,000,000 years. What could be funnier than that?