a poison for anti-evolution ID theorists

quote:

---

"All that's necesssary to form a testable falsifiable ID hypothesis is to have a suspicion that something in nature may have been designed and then follow up this suspicion with an investigation employing teleological reasoning"

---

You're confusing two very different things:
1. Source of inspiration for a hypothesis.
2. The hypothesis itself.The 1st does not need to be falsifiable. It can be a dream. It can be the babblings of a toddler.The second needs to be falsifiable.If the second doesn't invoke a designer, it's not an ID hypothesis.

First problem with Mike Gene's "testable ID hypothesis" :Welcome idthink.net - BlueHost.comIn his general introduction on this page, he starts off on a promising note, then when he gets to the point of showing the "testable predictions", he writes:

quote:

---

At this point, one can begin to phrase the ID hypothesis in testable "if,-then" terms. Put simply, if life owes its origin to intelligent design, then high resolution studies will uncover further phenomena that echo origins through biomolecular engineering at the hands of rational agents.

---

So, his testable prediction is "phenomena that echo origins through biomolecular engineering at the hands of rational agents"???????Oh, of course.But maybe he'll flesh that out a bit...Second problem with Mike Gene's "testable ID hypothesis" :One way he could flesh it out is by differentiating ID predictions from other predictions. He does this:"ID entails that these cellular processes are quite sophisticated (and not the random mess expected by molecular biologists)"OK, talk about a strawman! Molecular biology predicts "a random mess". Rigggghhht.Third problem:This biggest problem is, that despite repeated use of phrases like "seen in the light of my ID perspective", the hypothesis Mike Gene arrives at ("Enolase functions in the degradosome as a prong that plugs the degradosome into the glycolytic pathway so that ATP generated by pyruvate kinase is then quickly channeled to the helicase to fuel its unwinding activity. ") in no way depends on the existence of intelligent designers of the cell.Really. Try this: copy the text of Mike Gene's page, and remove all those phrases like "in the light of my ID perspective". Also remove the strawmen like the one above, that molecular biology predicts "a random mess".Now, given just his listed observations, and no appeals to an intelligent designer, does it make sense to propose the function for enolase that Gene proposes?Yep. I mean, it may or may not be true, but it's plausible and consistent with the observations.So why call this an "ID hypothesis", if it doesn't require an Intelligent Designer?Fourth problem:

quote:

---

from Mike Gene: "I envision the first cells as complex and sophisticated entities. And while the introduction of such cells were probably followed by a long history of evolution, I expect to find traces of such initial states because, as I have explained elsewhere, such a state is front-loaded and would be continually exploited by evolution. "

---

This is placed in an important part of the page, seemingly as the primary driver of predictions. But what are the predictions? What differentitate the "inital states" from the products of "the long history of evolution"? Maybe he spells this out in the "elsewhere" he refers to, but he sure doesn't here.[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 10-16-2003]

quote:

---

"Following this line of thought, Mike was able to produce a testable falsifiable ID hypothesis."

---

My point is that this is exactly what is lacking! Please fill in the steps of reasoning that led from the observation to the prediction that depend on the existence of intelligent designers. I don't see how intelligent design figures in at all.Given the list of observations, it seems that enolase might fit into a previously un-specified system. Period. The existence of an intelligent designer plays absolutely no explanatory role.

quote:

---

"If we posit simple, sloppy, quasi-life forms that were spawned from geochemistry,"

---

As it applies to today's organisms, this is irrelevant, or a strawman, depending on what you mean. We aren't talking about the origin of life. All of Mike Gene's observations AND hypotheses concern current life. Right? His only obsevations are current, his hypothesis concerns current life.I don't see how Mike Gene's ideas about the design of the first cells enters into it.

quote:

---

"I fail to see how this perspective would have lead one to the same hypothesis that Mike arrived at but even if it did that would be irrelevant."

---

Why wouldn't that perspective lead to it? Despite Mike Gene's strawman, mainstream biology does not predict "random messes". If Mike's ideas don't make predictions substantively different from mainstream biology, then the supposed intelligent designer has no empirical consequences.[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 10-16-2003][This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 10-16-2003]