Intelligent design. Philosophy of ignorance.

Just a minor point - Scopes actually lost that trial.

Yet, it was creationists like Darwin and others who came up with evolution; it's American churches who largely oppose watering down science in the classroom with stuff like ID.So clearly it doesn't work as well in reverse, if by "work" you mean "is consistent with the evidence."

Yeah.. actually, NJ, what are they doing? There aren't any ID labs or research institutions or anything. All they seem to do is talk about ID; they don't ever seem to answer any pressing questions with it. Or produce technologies or something.

Not anymore. Just because they have degrees and a few published works, doesn't mean that everything they write or say is science. They stopped doing science when they abandoned the scientific method. That's true of all scientists - the science stops when they're no longer using the method. Science is something you do because you're following the method, not something that is the result because you have a degree. It's difficult to imagine that an adult educated in the United States wouldn't at least have the slightest working knowledge of genetics. Are you really saying that this is the case? That when Percy says "genetics", you have absolutely no idea what he's talking about? I suggest, then, that you begin here: Genetics - Wikipediaand work your way down. I imagine that Percy's reference to "genetics" was as brief as it was because genetics is a very large field constituting a depth of very technical knowledge, and suddenly bestowing upon you a full knowledge of genetics was not something he was able to do in one single sentence. You've never heard of random mutation? You've never heard of natural selection? Mantises that didn't look like twigs starved because their prey spotted them before they could strike, and they were outcompeted by mantises that looked more like twigs and could get more food. The more-twig-like mantises had more offspring than those that were less-twig-like, because they could feed more offspring and live longer.As a result, mantises became, over time, more twig-like.You've never heard any of this? This whole line of reasoning is something you've never encountered before?Honestly? Even the creationists can usually come up with examples of natural selection in action. It's surprising that you've rejected evolution while knowing literally nothing about it. There's nothing coincidental about it. Better-adapted organisms survive to the detriment of lesser-adapted ones. Surely you've heard the term "survival of the fittest"? That's what they're talking about - better-adapted organisms succeed to the detriment of lesser-adapted ones. You've never seen a human climb a tree? Or run? Or use a tool? Or cooperate in groups? For one thing, it's not that effective. The cells don't "update" fast enough to work when the organism is moving, for instance; so camouflage abilities become a lot less useful for predators who have to run down their prey or have a metabolism (like mammals) where they can't simply wait around for the food to walk up to them.Remember too that nature doesn't plan ahead. Just because you can see the potential for future usefulness for an ability doesn't mean that's a positive adaptation. For instance, surely the usefulness of eyes cannot be in doubt. But in total darkness, eyes are useless. Which is why cave fish have no eyes. In total darkness, there's no selection pressure for eyes, because they have no use in that situation. In fact growing eyes represents a waste of resources for an organism, so organisms that had no eyes, because they had a slight advantage over the sighted fish, came to dominate the population.Natural selection depends on environment. That's the basic lesson of all that. Until you're thinking in terms of the interactions of organisms and their environments, you won't really understand how evolution explains things.

That's the confusion. The branches of science don't represent fundamentally different modes of knowledge, or something to be employed. They're just informal domains used to make the paperwork easier. Different institutions draw the boundaries in different places, and they overlap in many situations. For instance, what "branch" of science does biochemistry represent? Biology or chemistry?It's a bit of both, of course. Just like genetic programming, or bioinformatics, or computational metallurgy, or nuclear chemistry, and so on.Science is the body of knowledge derived by the application of the scientific method. Evolution is a part of science because the theory of evolution was derived via the scientific method. ID was not. That's the big difference, really.

I thought I explained this already. When Behe generates popular press books about how to use an unworkable, untested "Design filter", he's not doing science because he's not generating knowledge based on the scientific method.On the other hand, when he sits down at the lab bench and tests hypotheses using experiments and observation, and then communicates his results to his peers for review, then he's doing science.I didn't meant to imply that he had turned his back on science, forever. It's just that when he's publishing popular books about ID or stumping for religious creationists - just like when he's emailing his relatives - at that time, he's not doing science. That's not what he said, though. He explained heredity by genetics, not procryptism. Procryptism is explained by random mutation and natural selection, like every other naturally-evolved trait. How specifically did it happen, as in, step-by-step? I have no idea. Trying to find out would be a monumental effort in phylogenetics, developmental evolution, and biochemistry. You mean, is it a coincidence that an organism's genetics has an effect on its physical form?No, I don't see anything coincidental about that. Why do you? And what we're talking about isn't an ability, it's just a shape. Mantises are shaped like twigs, because, in the mantis's environment, being more twig-looking has a linear benefit over looking less like a twig. It's verified by the fact that we know natural selection occurs, and that many predators hunt by vision, and many prey evade by it. The obvious conclusion from that is that anything that's going to make it less likely for you to be seen by predators or prey is going to be a net benefit. It's always the issue, because it's always there. Competition is always occurring. How many species are there? (Hint: as far as we know, more than 2 million.) How many of them have camouflage characteristics?The odds don't seem that weird to me. Maybe it's unlikely for lightning to strike the same place twice; on the other hand, globally, there's one hundred lightning strikes occurring every single second. No, the exact opposite is true. Natural selection is exactly how this happened. Think about it. Camouflage isn't like having "half a lung". Every little bit helps. Creatures with just a little camouflage are more successful than those with none at all. When all the creatures with no camouflage are gone, only those with a little camouflage are left.Among those, though, the amount of camouflage begins to vary (because of mutations and sexual recombination.) Some have more and some have less. Those that have less die out (they're outcompeted.) Those that have more are more successful.Incrementally, the species becomes more camouflaged. All due to natural selection and random mutation. In what sense is natural selection "moot" in the above example? It's just a body shape. The body shape of organisms are determined by their genetics, so of course it could have developed. Yes, but irrelevant, as natural selection eliminates the detrimental mutations. So all that's left are the neutral or beneficial ones. 1/1, apparently, since it happened. How couldn't they? If you have a source of both negative and positive novelty (mutation), and then you have a filter that eliminates the negative novelty over time, what are you eventually left with?Only the positive novelty. Mutation and selection acting together give rise to new function. As if anybody could doubt something so obvious, we've got decades of simple experiments that prove it. That humans can climb trees, run, use tools, and cooperate in groups, none of which you seemed to believe was possible when Percy said humans could do. Are you telling me that the octopus gets no help at all from the camouflage ability?I mean, wasn't that your point? That the camouflage ability is so useful and beneficial? Now you seem to be backpedaling from that.Well, which is it? Are these abilities useful and beneficial, or aren't they? If they are, why is it so hard for you to imagine that there's a selective advantage for individuals that have these abilities over those individuals that do not?You have two octopuses. One has the camouflage ability, the other does not. Better yet you have two populations of these otherwise-identical octopus species. Which do you think is more likely to be more successful at hunting and evading predators, and thus is more likely to leave more offspring? The observation of natural selection and random mutation happening now proves that they were operating in the past, and that it's reasonable to conclude that common decent could have happened; the fossil record - a record of organisms that were alive in the past - shows us that it did happen.Where's the guesswork? Where's the "making it up as we go along"? I see only models that fit the evidence, have explanatory value, and make testable predictions. No, it doesn't. No, of course not. 10 generations isn't nearly enough, and moreover, there's no way to predict what kind of mutations are going to occur.But they would definitely adapt to the darkness in some way over enough generations. In a world where we can take the genes from bacteria and insert them into corn? In a world where a mouse can grow a human's ear on his back to help a maimed victim? No, there are no limitations on how far an organism can adapt, because there are no limitations on what sequences an organism can have in their DNA. All natural selection and random mutation do are make changes to DNA, and the only difference between any organism and any other is the content of their DNA.Evolution is responsible for all of those differences. Observations of the present tell us that evolution can be responsible; observations of the fossil record tell us that it was responsible. ...wha? You have somewhere between 5 and 50 mutations in your own genetic code. You, personally.Are you dead?