How to Test and Falisfy Intelligent Design
-
Yes, Intelligent Design is both testable and falsifiable. Intelligent Design relies on Newton's First Rule, meaning agencies are only added when REQUIRED. Therefor to refute ID and any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and undirected processes can account for it. IOW all evotards have to do to stop ID cold is to actually step up and A) produce a tyestable hypothesis for their position and B) produce positive, supporting evidence.
However all evotards can do is cry foul and say "blind, undirected processes is a strawman!"- yet it is a given that natural selection, genetic drift and HGT are all blind, purposeless processes and all mutations are undirected-> that is given the current theory of evolution. IOW evotards are so clueless they don't even understand the theory they try to defend!
So there you have it ole ignorant and cowardly evotards- just start supporting your position and ID will go away.
How is ID tested? As in positive evidence?
1- See above as the way to the design inference is THROUGH the blind watchmaker
2- The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ' s Black Box: "Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.”
So if nature, operating freely cannot account for it AND it meets that criteria, some agency is required and we infer design (or at least agency involvement).
Yes, Intelligent Design is both testable and falsifiable. Intelligent Design relies on Newton's First Rule, meaning agencies are only added when REQUIRED. Therefor to refute ID and any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and undirected processes can account for it. IOW all evotards have to do to stop ID cold is to actually step up and A) produce a tyestable hypothesis for their position and B) produce positive, supporting evidence.
However all evotards can do is cry foul and say "blind, undirected processes is a strawman!"- yet it is a given that natural selection, genetic drift and HGT are all blind, purposeless processes and all mutations are undirected-> that is given the current theory of evolution. IOW evotards are so clueless they don't even understand the theory they try to defend!
So there you have it ole ignorant and cowardly evotards- just start supporting your position and ID will go away.
How is ID tested? As in positive evidence?
1- See above as the way to the design inference is THROUGH the blind watchmaker
2- The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ' s Black Box: "Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.”
So if nature, operating freely cannot account for it AND it meets that criteria, some agency is required and we infer design (or at least agency involvement).
posted by Joe G @ 3:33 PM
4 Comments:
At 10:12 PM,
The Reactionary Researcher said…
Though I see your point here, I think the disconnect is between inferring design, and testing for design. One can infer design based on a number of specific known criteria, for example, one can infer that a stone is in fact a designed arrowhead based on an established precedent, that is what do other known arrowheads look like, what techniques have been observed in the construction of arrowheads, etc., though the situation in biological systems isn't quite analogous.
Having pondered the testing of design in particular, from a biology/chemistry perspective, it seems to me that testing for design in general, involves showing that a complicated, specified system cannot evolve on its own, which is a negative result. One can't publish such negative results as they could simply result from poor experimental design.
At 7:03 AM,
Joe G said…
Thanks for the comment but just because a stone may look like an arrowhead does not mean man made it. We still need to see signs of work on that rock.
Also as I said testing for design has 2 components- not only do we have to demonstrate that nature, operating freely couldn't do it but it also has to meet the criteria. And one can publish that as that is how archaeologists and forensic scientists do it- both have to eliminate nature, operating freely AND both need some positive criteria.
Then someone else can come along and attempt to refute or confirm that result.
The design inference, as with ALL scientific inferences, is tentative.
At 4:25 PM,
The Reactionary Researcher said…
I understand your point, and I made an effort to acknowledge that an arrowhead must show signs have having been worked by mentioning 'observed construction techniques.'
Not being overly familiar with architecture myself, this could reflect my ignorance rather than being reality, but I don't get the impression that archaeologists spend much time proving that pottery shards, etc, couldn't have come from natural, non-human processes. That said, I do know something about forensic science, and I know that rather than forensic scientists proving something wasn't an act of nature, they build a positive case for design.
That is the trick though, building a positive case for design in biological systems. While origins biology and forensics are similar in that they both are 'historical' sciences, the latter can be quite easily replicated and tested, for example, bullet trajectories, blood spatters, fibers, hair, etc. are all things that can correlate, be replicated and tested in the lab. In short forensic sciences can reproduce results, whereas origins biology cannot.
Though you can analogize origins biology to designed systems, for example, you can compare the genetic code to computer code, with the former being much more complicated, but you're still only analogizing, which is not the case in forensics. In forensics, you can easily demonstrate that a bullet from a particular trajectory will have typical entry and exit wounds, as well as easily replicated spatter marks.
Even if one were to design a genetic code, that only proves that one can design a genetic code, not that the genetic code is designed.
For the record, I think that biological systems are designed, and further believe that biological systems maintain their own 'adaptive apparatus' and modify their genomes in response to environmental factors, in a somewhat Shapiroesque version of directed mutation, if you know what I mean. I'm just not convinced of the testability of that design in biological systems.
At 3:52 PM,
Joe G said…
TRR,
Making a positive case for design, in forensics, archaeology, SETI and ID, entails eliminating nature, operating freely.
For example in archaeology there was one Abbe' Henri Breuil who set out to refute the premise that eoliths were man-made by demonstrating nature, operating freely culd produce the same effect. His efforts were due to his thinking tat humans did not exist in the Eocene.
The same with forensics. If one scientist can come in and demonstrate to the Court, for example, that something else can cause that splatter pattern then the case is in serious jeopardy. You just do not try a person for a murder if nature took the life.
Post a Comment
<< Home