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To: rob777
"Each hypothesis is densely laden with philosophical and religious baggage, and clear thinking is required in order to separate the science from the philosophy, the evidence from the implications, and reality from imagination."

And here is the problem. "Intelligent Design" simply meets none of the criteria for a scientific hypothesis. It is not capable of predicting or explaining new biological facts, which evolution does quite nicely.

Intelligent design is philosophy---NOT science, despite the fact that it uses "scientific-sounding" language.

3 posted on 09/13/2005 4:23:32 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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To: Wonder Warthog
And here is the problem. "Intelligent Design" simply meets none of the criteria for a scientific hypothesis. It is not capable of predicting or explaining new biological facts, which evolution does quite nicely.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of the hypothesis of intelligent design, your statement is demonstrably false.

For example, if your statement were correct, then it would have been impossible for humans to breed plants or animals. But of course humans have been able to breed plants and animals to meet specific "design criteria." In that realm we have literally thousands of examples where a) the explanation is intelligent design, and b) the predictive requirement is met by the fact that the breeders achieved their goals.

Another example is the production of human insulin by recombinant DNA techniques. The end result is bacteria or yeast that produce human insulin -- the predicted result, and again explained by intelligent design.

Thus we see that in specific cases that ID does in fact explain new biological facts. Further, the existence of design criteria (which were met in practice) satisfies the criterion of predictability.

Based on your criteria and actual examples, we must conclude that Intelligent Design is a valid theory. (The relevant sense of "valid" is 2 a : well-grounded or justifiable : being at once relevant and meaningful [a valid theory] b : logically correct [a valid argument] [valid inference]).

Of course, to propose a valid hypothesis is not the same thing as verifying (i.e., to establish the truth, accuracy, or reality of) that hypothesis. A person who puts forth an ID hypothesis is required to provide tests and data to support the claim.

At this point, however, we're faced not with a scientific problem, but rather a philosophical one.

If we apply your criteria more broadly, it seems to be the case that engineering in general does not meet your criteria for a scientific hypothesis. And perhaps that's accurate: engineering makes extensive use of scientific principles, but it is not possible to explain or predict the results of an engineering effort in the manner you're demanding for the development of life -- that is, using testable hypothesis about naturalistic processes. "Predictability" resides in the minds of the engineers, not in any fundamental natural processes. Moreover, the characteristics of an engineered object are often chosen for aesthetic as well as practical reasons.

The philosophical questions center around this disconnect between science and engineering.

20 posted on 09/13/2005 4:59:39 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: Wonder Warthog

Tell or explain to me what and how science proves evolution. Give proof. Examples that will stand screening

If you believe that science proves evolution then you are intellectually dishonest.


22 posted on 09/13/2005 5:06:42 PM PDT by mulligan
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To: Wonder Warthog

"It is not capable of predicting or explaining new biological facts, which evolution does quite nicely."

That's because it's a _measurement_. A thermometer can't predict or explain new biological facts, either. That's because it's doing it's job measuring energy. Likewise, design detection is a measurement -- it measures the design within a system.


59 posted on 09/13/2005 7:13:37 PM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: Wonder Warthog
"Intelligent design is philosophy---NOT science, despite the fact that it uses "scientific-sounding" language."

"Origion of man now proved. -- Metaphysics must flourish. - He who understands baboon would do more toward Metaphysics than Locke." --- Darwin, Notebook M, August 16, 1838

He wrote this kind of stuff in his "private" notebooks - not for public consumption at the time --- He feared "offending" his wife and his family who were professing Christians.

109 posted on 09/14/2005 9:21:04 AM PDT by Matchett-PI ( "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." -- Dwight Eisenhower)
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To: Wonder Warthog
And here is the problem. "Intelligent Design" simply meets none of the criteria for a scientific hypothesis. It is not capable of predicting or explaining new biological facts, which evolution does quite nicely.

The problem with this angle is the presumption that only those things which can be explained or predicted by science are true. Any proposition that some things are, by their very nature, unpredictable or inexplicable is dismissed as religious quackery. Is the study of the operation of independent, intelligent decision definitively not science then?

Are "social sciences" summarily judged to be mislabeled precisely because they study the frequently unpredictable, often inexplicable behaviors of intelligent beings? Are anthropologists to be ejected from the sphere of serious science because they deal with the imprecise analysis of the evidence of historical human activity, deducing the activities and motivations of countless intelligent beings by analyzing the fruits of that intelligence?

Why then is the very notion of science being applied to the study of the fruits of a greater Intelligence so categorically repulsive? Is it so reprehensible to think of biology, astronomy, et al in the same terms as anthropology? Much can be learned while some may only be speculated. That's OK. The mere fact that parts of the puzzle are, by their very nature, unknowable shouldn't be such a crisis-inducing idea to scientists. As with other imprecise sciences, there is still much valuable knowledge to be gained with this approach.

156 posted on 09/15/2005 8:15:56 AM PDT by TChris ("The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail" - Goh Chok Tong)
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