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Author Topic:   On the difference between Science and ID or Biblical Creationism
Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 10 of 23 (420475)
09-08-2007 1:55 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by jar
09-07-2007 9:22 PM


Predictability...
jar:
Anyone want to show how ID offers any predictive power?
The only thing I can think of in terms of predictability, is that Intelligent design can predict that no coherent material explanation will ever avail itself as to the origin of life in the emperical evidence. And the reason is simple. Design is the coherent explanation for the origin of life as per the emperical evidence.
Design predicts utter frustration of your efforts. It is like trying to find light in the darkness.
Design will also predict that no new life forms or species can come into being without intelligent design. If life is intelligently designed, then it cannot be unintelligently designed. So if artificial life is actually achieved by humanity in the lab, it will prove design...
The upside for you, is that design can be falsified if it can be shown that there is in fact a coherent material explanation. Just find one organism that is different from all others in terms of energy currency and a dependance upon adenine synthesis. But you can't create that life because that would prove design not evolution.
So, design predicts that it is impossible to create life without intelligence. It is like looking for darkness in the light.
As I said beforejar... find one without that code and I'll convert to your religion.
In case you find that answer unappealing or lacking comparison, I will concede to Dr. Dembski.
I do recommend reading the whole article: http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm
Here is an excerpt...
PREDICTABILITY: Another aspect of testability is predictability. A good scientific theory, we are told, is one that predicts things. If it predicts things that don't happen, then it is tested and found wanting. If it predicts things that do happen, then it is tested and regarded as successful. If it doesn't predict things, however, what then? Often with theories that try to account for features of natural history, prediction gets generalized to include retrodiction, in which a theory also specifies what the past should look like. Darwinism is said to apply retrodictively to the fossil record and predictively in experiments that place an organism under selection pressures and attempt to induce some adaptive change.
But in fact Darwinism does not retrodict the fossil record. Natural selection and random variation applied to single-celled organisms offers no insight at all into whether we can expect multi-celled organisms, much less whether evolution will produce the various body-plans of which natural history has left us a record. At best one can say that there is consilience, i.e., that the broad sweep of evolutionary history as displayed in the fossil record is consistent with Darwinian evolution. Design theorists strongly dispute this as well (pointing especially to the Cambrian explosion). But detailed retrodiction and detailed prediction are not virtues of Darwin's theory. Organisms placed under selection pressures either adapt or go extinct. Except in the simplest cases where there is, say, some point mutation that reliably confers antibiotic resistance on a bacterium, Darwin's theory has no way of predicting just what sorts of adaptive changes will occur. "Adapt or go extinct" is not a prediction of Darwin's theory but an axiom that can be reasoned out independently.
Challenging me in _American Outlook_ biologist Alex Duncan remarked: "A scientific theory makes predictions about the world around us, and enables us to ask and answer meaningful questions. For example, we might pose the question 'why do polar bears have fur, while penguins have feathers, given the similar nature of their environments
Evolution provides an answer to this question. The only answer creationism (or intelligent design) provides is 'because God made them that way.'" Actually, evolution, whether Darwinian or otherwise, makes no predictions about there being bears or birds at all or for that matter bears having fur and birds having feathers. Once bears or birds are on the scene, they need to adapt to their environment or die. Intelligent design can accommodate plenty of evolutionary change and allows for natural selection to act as a conservative force to keep organisms adapted to their environments. Contrary to Duncan's remark, intelligent design does not push off all explanation to the inscrutable will of God. On the other hand, intelligent design utterly rejects natural selection as a creative force capable of bringing about the specified complexity we see in organisms.
It's evident, then, that Darwin's theory has virtually no predictive power. Insofar as it offers predictions, they are either extremely general, concerning the broad sweep of natural history and in that respect quite questionable (Why else would Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge need to introduce punctuated equilibria if the fossil record were such an overwhelming vindication of Darwinism?); and when the predictions are not extremely general they are extremely specific and picayune, dealing with small-scale adaptive changes. Newton was able to predict the path that a planet traces out. Darwin's disciples can neither predict nor retrodict the pathways that organisms trace out in the course of natural history.
But what about the predictive power of intelligent design? To require prediction fundamentally misconstrues design. To require prediction of design is to put design in the same boat as natural laws, locating their explanatory power in an extrapolation from past experience. This is to commit a category mistake. To be sure, designers, like natural laws, can behave predictably (designers often institute policies that end up being rigidly obeyed). Yet unlike natural laws, which are universal and uniform, designers are also innovators. Innovation, the emergence to true novelty, eschews predictability. Designers are inventors. We cannot predict what an inventor would do short of becoming that inventor. Intelligent design offers a radically different problematic for science than a mechanistic science wedded solely to undirected natural causes. Yes, intelligent design concedes predictability. But this represents no concession to Darwinism, for which the minimal predictive power that it has can readily be assimilated to a design-theoretic framework.
Edited by Rob, : No reason given.
Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by jar, posted 09-07-2007 9:22 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Percy, posted 09-08-2007 3:58 AM Rob has not replied
 Message 12 by jar, posted 09-08-2007 10:51 AM Rob has replied
 Message 14 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-08-2007 5:26 PM Rob has not replied
 Message 15 by DominionSeraph, posted 09-08-2007 10:07 PM Rob has not replied

  
Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 13 of 23 (420518)
09-08-2007 11:04 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by jar
09-08-2007 10:51 AM


Re: Predictability...
jar:
The question asked in the OP, in case you missed it, is The question is, what predictive qualities of either ID or Biblical Creationism stand out as examples of prediction in the same manner as Mendeleev's Periodic Table allowed predictions of the characteristics of both known and yet to be discovered elements?
I see... I saw your question as stand alone above. My sincere apologies...
I have no idea what you're talking about, so I suppose I'll have to bow out until I get up to speed. Not all of us are so knowledgeable as you are.
Please do be patient with us oh volitile one...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by jar, posted 09-08-2007 10:51 AM jar has not replied

  
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