Falsification is not required or important for ID. Properties is the idea. What properties does this object have?
Silver has certain properties, the same with gold. These properties are specific to each.
Intelligent Design locates devices within the cell that preclude accidental formation. This indicates that a series of accidents did not form them. They have information storage and transmission capacity. It is these identifiable properties that exist. By indicating that these devices exist, it is easy to posit not an apparent but an actual designer.
Of course, those who can’t stand the G word are free to create aliens or other means, but it all stops at describing the properties. If an object resembling a 1957 Ford Thunderbird was found on Mars, I very much believe that scientists who examined it would not discount it as some natural object, even if they could find no clues about who designed it.
Ed, unless I’ve missed it, you still haven’t responded to my request that you specify the process for identifying that things are designed. You talk about properties: Which properties, in isolation or conjunction, are irrefutable indicators of design?
Now you state that falsification is not required. If this is the case, how can you tell what’s designed and what isn’t? Is
everything designed? If so, that begs the question: why rely on observation of properties to infer design? If everything is designed, it just becomes a flat statement and the concept of properties is irrelevant.
Falsification is a key component of any scientific theory, as it helps to describe the boundary of that theory. The famous example in The Theory That Must Not Be Named is the “rabbit fossil in the Pre-Cambrian.” If this were ever found, it would show that the theory is incorrect in part or in whole. Without falsification criteria, you can just say what you like and call it a scientific theory - it becomes utterly meaningless. Falsification is absolutely required, otherwise you’re just stating, “This is true, and nothing you can say or do will prove it otherwise,” which is an
extremely unscientific thing to say.
Predictive power is another key factor in a scientific theory. It enables one to test the theory under various conditions and verify whether the theory holds in each case. In this way the theory can be refined and strengthened.
ID has neither falsificiation criteria nor predictive power. It is not a scientific theory. It is a hypothesis which, like any other, could
become a theory - but the trouble is, nobody seems to be able to define the criteria against which the hypothesis can be tested. Unless and until that happens, ID will continue to be a source of derision amongst the scientific community.
Right, ID is a scientific research program.
Since this same coded information is found (through science) in the earliest known cellular life, then ID can look at the origin of information and ask about how it came about in the origin of life. This obviously affects evolutionary theory since the same information is present in all living things.
Information transmission, reception and decoding are part of an irreducibly complex system.
In the cell, there is a meta-code (controlling code) and sub-codes that transmit instructions through the cell to engage cellular functions.
The only known sources of those kinds of complex, functional information systems are intelligent agents.
You can just about get away with calling ID a scientific “research programme” I suppose - the problem being that no scientific progress seems to be being made, as per my comments above.
ID ‘scientists’ could easily gain much wider acceptance if they just did what real scientists do and define the limits of their hypothesis, and propose experiments to test those limits. Instead, they seem to just be sitting there making claims of CSI this and Irreducible Complexity that, without ever providing scientific evidence of these claims.
No claims of irreducibly complex systems have ever survived scientific scrutiny.
Your last statement is just an assertion. There is no evidence that cell function is a result of an intelligent agent. There’s just, “It sure looks that way to me, and look - I’ve invented an arbitrary unfalsifiable measure to prove it, QED.”
The one good thing about ID is that, unlike ‘pure’ Creationism, it makes claims which are theoretically disprovable by
real science. It will be interesting to see how IDers scramble to ‘clarify’ their claims as proper science starts to dismantle them.
The first prediction is that Darwinian theory is not a sufficient explanation for the development of life on earth.
This isn’t a prediction, it’s a
post hoc assertion - and a “God of the gaps” argument to boot.
ID’s prediction is validated when we discover aspects of nature which Darwinian theory cannot explain.
More “God of the gaps” - not validation by any definition.
Leela – you could consider the book by the atheist, Jerry Fodor:
What Darwin Got Wrong …
Fodor and other scientists reject Darwinian theory in favor of the self-organization of living organisms.
For them, evolutionary theory as we commonly know it has already been falsified.
You
do realise that current evolutionary theory is more than just what Darwin wrote in 1859? Sure, he got things wrong. They’ve since been put right. More errors may be found. The theory will improve. That’s how a proper scientific theory works - by prediction, experiment, and falsification, followed by correction; repeat as necessary.
Compare and contrast to ID which just says “It looks like design to me” and “Evolution can’t explain
X” and concludes, “Therefore intelligent design (aka God although we’d never say it out loud in case the lawyers spotted it).”
