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Would fudge work (yum)?

Of course fudge would work! A lot experiments have a fudge factor!

Me: [Y]ou have to admit that ID is not a scientific theory. Every scientific theory must be capable of falsification ... or it isn't a scientific theory. There is no middle ground here. (Random chance is a factor, not the factor, by the way).

In that case the "random chance" underpinnings of classical evolution are also in trouble, because you can't prove that either.

Remember, we're talking about something being capable of being falsified, not being capable of being proved. And "random chance" takes in a lot of territory, including things we don't normally think of as being there.

As far at the flipping the coin example that you used earlier, I can flip a coin and guarantee with a high degree of accuracy what it will be before I even see it. In fact, any magician worth his salt can do that easily. Because we cannot understand all the factors involved in a "fair flip" doesn't mean that it is truly random.

Magician? A magician can manipulate the result, but that's not what I've been talking about. I don't really understand your paragraph. Are you saying that no given sequence of coin flips can possibly be random?

But I think of it less a theory than a theorem. I never said that ID was true. I just stated that it is not false.

And I didn't say it was false; I said it was not scientific.

Another two points: How do you know that random chance is a factor (since all experimentation and inductive logic making conclusions are themselves the product if ID) and just how random is random chance?

Every classical and neo-classical theory on evolution that I've seen assumes random chance at its heart, although many deny this. The core argument is not how life may or may not change, but how life started. If evolutionists admit that the start of life was due to anything other than to total random chance, they are admitting to an ID element. If ID is an element to evolution, then random chance only appears random.

Again, the theory of evolution does not address "how life started."

So if I understand what you are saying, then something can be scientific and false and something else can be non-scientific but true. Silly me, I always thought that science was in search of truth.

In any event, this definition throws out a whole class of mathematical theorems as non-scientific. Since many of these theorems are used by scientists, does that make the ultimate work non-scientific?

Technically you are right about the theory of evolution not addressing the origins of life, but I know of no evolutionist who does not automatically make the unconscious assumption that it does (see the pre-biotic crowd).

I'm not so certain that chaos theory isn't applicable to random chance. IOW, if we knew all the factors involved in the coin flip, we could predict with perfect accuracy the outcome. Just because we don't know all the factors doesn't make the outcome random. Its just that we don't know. We can't prove it false - just like ID (note that I don't treat ID as a be-all that stands on it's own like evolutionism and creationism are supposed to do. Rather I treat it as a small part of a larger picture that explains what random chance cannot).