The Importance of Potentially Disconfirming Evidence

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I keep hearing that IC has been rebutted but upon close examination it is really only rhetoric.

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How do we tell the difference between an Intelligently Deigned system and a natural one which we1) don't currently understand but will in the future, or2) don't have the intelligence to ever understand?

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Secondly ID is scientific and its processes are already being used in scientific and other investigative venues.

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Really?Can you cite some papers from a professional Biology or Genetics journal in which Intelligent Design is used?I'd be very interested to read them.

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ID predicts we will see information rich systems and specified complexity along with IC.

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But how do we tell the difference between an Intelligently designed system and a natural one that we1) don't currently understand but will in the furure after investigating it more, sometimes for decades, and2) don't have the intelligence to ever understand?How does the IDists claim of IC ever know for sure that they just haven't thought of a naturalistic explanation for a given IC/ID system yet?Doesn't claiming ID through IC constitute giving up trying to figure stuff out and saying "the IDer didit?"

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And materialism just looks for material/ natural causes and ignores everything else.

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No kidding.Can you please explain how scientific investigation will benefit from including the supernatural?

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Saying we will understand something in the future means nothing. It is what we understand now that drives our inferences now.

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But it means everything to your claim of IC structures being the product of ID.Your claim seems to be that natural mechanisms could not possibly, without any doubt whatsoever produce certain IC systems, and because we do not currently know how they could have come about naturally, it is not possible that we will ever know, so we should just give up investigating possible natural mechanisms and conclude ID.

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And if we never understand something does that put it outside of science?

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No, of course not.My point is, just because we do not have the intelligence to understand something we observe in nature doesn't mean that it didn't come about by completely natural means.Ignorance of the origin of some natural system does not equal "IDer Didit".

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You let the evidence lead you to where it will. That is how it will help us, by not limiting our search to something that didn't happen- ie a natural start to life.

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But ID doesn't deal in evidence, as far as I can tell. It deals in a lack of knowledge (we can't think of how this system could have come about naturally) and then inserting an IDer into the gap of our knowledge.Tell me, does ID predict how many IC systems should be found in nature, and by what meachanism they are produced? For instance, can they take a pure strain of bacteria and predict how many, what kind, and how many generations it will take for IC mechanisms will be produced?Also, how do they know it is IC and not a natural occurence they don't understand?

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That is an ID detractors' misconception. Even if something is designed does not mean that is all there is to do. I know my car is designed but that doesn't help me understand how it functions.

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But if you conclude "We don't see any naturalistic way that this system could have happened, end of story", isn't that basically saying that you are finished investigating? It doesn't seem to make much sense for an IDist to keep on investigating the natural properties of a ID system if they have already decided that a natural mechanism isn't possible.

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John Paul:
What does that have to do with ID being scientific? Oh that's right it has nothing to do with it at all. However "The Design Inference" is peer-reviewed. Also the Discovery Institute and other ID sites have the articles you seek.

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If ID is scientific and useful as an explanitory framework, then papers using it should have no problem being published in a professional science journal. Why aren't they?OK, if you can't cite professional scientific jounal articles that use ID, perhaps you can list off a few general scientific advancements that ID has contributed to our understanding of nature. Technological advancements, or just fulfilled specific predictions or retrodictions would be fine, too.Also, what are the potential falsifications, if found in nature, that would falsify ID?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 06-15-2004 02:11 PM

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In reality it deal with what we do know. IOW in every instance that we observe information-rich systems and/ or specified complexity an intelligent agent is always the cause.

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Can you give a few examples of such systems and explain how you know, with 100% surety, that they will never, ever be found to have natural origins?

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How many times do I have to answer that? ID is an inference. It could be a starting inference. It is also an inference that can be falsified. How many scientific theories have been changed because our knowledge changed?

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...except that you are inferring, especially in the case of IC, that a lack of a naturalistic explanation for a specific system points to ID.What I do not understand is why the fact that Biologists do not have perfect knowledge of the naturalistic origins of every single system known somehow should support ID as opposed to supporting any one of an infinite number of alternate possibilities.

JP, I noticed that you "forgot" to address this rather direct question about ID from a very short post of mine. I know your posting privileges are suspended, but in case you come back to this thread, I thought I'd let you know that I noticed and that I still would appreciate a response.

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Design is the mechanism

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Design is not a mechanism, it is your conclusion after seeing the end product.It doesn't describe what physical forces acted upon a given life form to produce what we see.

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but ID does not predict how many would be found just that IC systems would be found.

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Therefore, based upon everything you have told me so far, if there exists a single system that cannot currently be explained by naturalistic means, then you claim that ID must be true?What happens if a system that IDists claim can only be explained by ID is eventually understood to have a purely naturalistic explanation?Your designer gets smaller and smaller as we learn more and more.

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What's a pure strain of bacteria?

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Clones.They are genetically identical to each other, so they are useful to studying mutation, etc.

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Does such a thing exist?

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Well, sure.

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The designer could most likely make that prediction, just like a computer programmer could tell you when certain features of his/ her program would be enabled.

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Oh, so IDists can't predict anything at all about how ID works in nature? IOW, they do not know anything about the mechanism of how, when, or why, or the rate of IC occurs, even though this is exactly the kind of experiments they would be doing if ID was really a scientific theory.They would want to make predictions such as these and then test them, but they don't, do they?

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Now here is a question for you, seeing you seem to like peer-reviewed rags so much- Where is the peer-reviewed data that shows mutations can accumulate in such a way as to give rise to metazoans from non-metazoans? Or even cetaceans from land anumals...

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Nice try, but you have been told umpteen times by me alone that ID cannot be supported by the gaps in knowledge in science.ID needs to stop pointing to the gaps in our knowledge and start explaining more details about how, when, and how many IC structures should arise in populations if it wants to be taken seriously as science.Otherwise, it ain't science, but philosophy that misuses science.edited to correct my incorrect claim of mice lone use in research.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 06-16-2004 09:29 AM

JP, as long as you are still here...Can you please also support your claim that ID has increased our knowledge of nature?Can you name a couple of specific advancements ID has contributed to our body of knowledge, or any technological developments it has been used for?

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Design IS a mechanism. It is also a conclusion.

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When an architect makes a blueprint of a building, he has designed it, but the blueprint is not a description of the mechanisms that are used by the construction company to build the building.Let's say there is an organism that you point to to having an IC system. How does ID explain how it became IC? Did it happen all at once or gradually, or a combination? Was it caused by mutation or some other way?IDists seem to have a profound lack of curiosity regarding these very basic questions. A lack of curiosity of how a system came to be isn't terribly scientific, but this is exactly what claiming "IDerdidit" does. It closes off curiosity and stops research cold, because you have already decided that a given IC system could not possibly have had a naturalistic explanation, without any doubt, no need to look any further.

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It doesn't have to. ID does not say some force acted on a life form...

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But I thought you said that ID doesn't hinder research. You just told me that ID doesn't require explaining how a change in an organism happened, yet this is a fundamental, utterly basic question in Biology.

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ID can be INFERRED.

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But that is inserting an IDer into the last gap in our knowledge.

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The inference is falsified. Newton was falsified but objects didn't hang in the air until he was.

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So, you are inferring that a system that does not currently have a naturalistic explanation MUST BE ID, unless it is shown to have a naturalistic explanation later, correct?Isn't that making an inference from a gap in our knowledge?Wouldn't it be better, given the poor track record of God of the Gaps in the past, to infer from positive evidence instead of from a lack of knowledge?

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However I NEVER said or implied that ID is supported by the gaps in anyone's knowledge. I have ALWAYS said ID is based on the evidence.

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Except that you just did try to support ID by the lack of naturalistic explanations for certain systems!!

JP, this seems to be the essence of your argument: comments?

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You can NOT stop an inference by what may be found out in the future. The future may also confirm ID. ID is inferred by what we know NOW. IOW ID is based on our current state of knowledge.

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No, it seems to me that you are basing ID on our currrent LACK of knowledge of a naturalistic explanation for certain systems.How can you tell the difference between an ID system and a natural system we will never understand because we do not have the intelligence to understand it?Just because we do not understand a system in nature does not mean it didn't come about by purely natural means.Also, could you please list off a few ways in which ID has advanced our understanding of nature, or some technological advancements it has been used for?