[ALPAPilot]

These questions about ID are as old as philosophy itself and are currently being asked in a different way. Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics" both revolve around the two words nomos and physis is the city man made laws and customs, or is the city the result of the nature of the human being. Now the question is whether things made by intelligent beings can be distinguished scientifically from things that are not. The diamond on my wife's finger is a good example; what about it distinguishes it from a diamond found in nature?

Darwin's Theory, too, is less "scientific" than meets the eye. He has made a theory that explains the "HISTORICAL" record. It cannot be experimentally validated; in other words we cannot create human beings in laboratories using the methods of natural selection. We can only collect historical data and ask if this data fits the theory. If it doesn't perhaps we modify or update the theory. To prove its uniqueness, that it is the only possible theory would be nearly impossible.

Lastly one shouldn't confuse the "True" with the "Provable." Even in mathematics Goedel proved that any system is either incomplete or inconsistent. In other words either there exist truths that are not provable or there are contradiction that are both provable.

[b_sharp]

"These questions about ID are as old as philosophy itself and are currently being asked in a different way. Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics" both revolve around the two words nomos and physis is the city man made laws and customs, or is the city the result of the nature of the human being. Now the question is whether things made by intelligent beings can be distinguished scientifically from things that are not. The diamond on my wife's finger is a good example; what about it distinguishes it from a diamond found in nature?

ID is supposed to be able to differentiate between the intelligently designed and the naturally occurring. If they can't then the conclusion that life is designed is an unfounded conclusion.

"Darwin's Theory, too, is less "scientific" than meets the eye. He has made a theory that explains the "HISTORICAL" record. It cannot be experimentally validated; in other words we cannot create human beings in laboratories using the methods of natural selection.

Where do you get the idea that we would have to replicate the creation of a organism, let alone a specific organism, for the study of evolution to be science?

The 'replicable experiments' done in a lab does not refer to the replication of the phenomenon under study but that the test produced in the lab be replicable and the results be consistent. What is required is that the tests be broadly and specifically applicable to the question being asked.

As far as selection is concerned, all that is necessary is that the tests be formed in such a way that it can be shown that selecting for a specific trait will produce changes in the dominant genotype and phenotype of a population. In other words that selection will maximize the number of organisms with the changes and minimize those without. This has been done many times. We certainly do not have to build a specific organism from scratch.

By the way, Darwin's original theory is just the beginning of what has become a much larger and encompassing set of theories. Restricting the modern study of evolution to Darwin's ideas is to create a straw man.

"We can only collect historical data and ask if this data fits the theory. If it doesn't perhaps we modify or update the theory. To prove its uniqueness, that it is the only possible theory would be nearly impossible.

This is true of all sciences. Science does not try to determine if an explanation is 'true' it determines which of a number of explanations best fits the evidence. Testing of a hypothesis is always done with respect to another hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is simple - it didn't happen that way'. The hypothesis, and the resulting theory are based on the inability to falsify, in the Sober sense, the hypothesis under question. Your statement does not in any way reduce the modern theories of Evolution to anything but science.