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Again, you miss the point. Explain logically please. Why is ID logically invalid? You claim it is a tautological argument, but without giving logical validation. That's a premise, or at the very least, an assertion. Without logical backup, it is also a "trust me" statement. Sorry, I don't buy that.

While your argument about ID having to be discussed within the context of evolution as a whole *may* be logically valid (I don't know, there are some logical holes in your projections of evolutionism vs ID and I haven't looked into this aspect of it very much), it still doesn't address the issue of the validity of ID. Dismissing out of hand is not only logically absurd, it is not very scientific, either.

In your previous post, you implied that it is either a case of evolution or ID, but not both. If that is what you meant, then this post is a non-sequiter. Indeed, it appears that the question has been begged as in this post you admit the design but deny the designer. Forgive me for using biblical terms, but this is equivalent to straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Even though you don't say so, it appears that you have conceded the fact that you can't logically prove that it has to be either ID or evolution. And you do this by recasting the entire question as a meaningless exercise.

This is disappointing, but again, not unexpected. The entire point of this exercise it to be able to logically defend your position. Making logically unsupported assertions and dogmatic "trust me" statements do not logically invalidate ID.

Surely you can do better than that?

Why is ID logically invalid?

ID is not logically invalid. I haven't said it is. I said it is a vacuous idea in the absence of a theory.

The debate is not over whether design exists, but over the forensic hypotheses. What is the history of life? How do changes in populations occur over time?

Mainstream biology has a forensic theory, at least one that goes back to single celled organisms. To the best of my knowledge, ID asserts that some unspecified entity or entities, having unspecified capabilities and limitations, did some unspecified thing or things at unspecified times and places, for unspecified reasons, using unspecified methods.

This is not wrong. It is vacuous.

Science is not about to replace a theory that has successfully guided research for a century and a half, with one that offers no guidance and proposes no research other than what is being done anyway.

Its absolutely untrue that a rational reason must need be offered with respect to disbelief. However, the converse is NOT true, and a rational reason FOR belief in anything must be offered.

In logical debate, the burden of proof is always upon the person making the positive assertion. This principle is rather simple, but also rather deceptive. There exists a standard formation of a question to determine whether or not the proposition is indeed a positive assertion. As a common example, many people claim that those who claim that gods do not exist have the burden of proof, just as much in fact as those who claim that gods do exist. First of all, it should be perfectly clear to all that those who claim that "gods exist" have the burden of proof. However, those who claim that "gods do not exist" are in fact making an assertion, but a negative one. The standard formation of the assertion is Not There Exists gods. From this formation, it becomes clear that although it is indeed an assertion, it is not a positive assertion and does not in argument have the full burden of proof. However, the burden of proof may be properly shifted to such a person however if a prima facie case is established, which brings us to the next point.

Some people do not really understand the why on that last point, so I shall attempt to explain further. The reason that a negative claim does not have the full burden of proof is because of the fact that they are claiming something to be false. To prove that in science is nearly impossible. While that hardly excuses a proposition, it is however a form of default position. If one assumes that things are false until shown otherwise, one is not likely to believe a positive assertion without reason, and that is part of the point of having the burden of proof--to avoid believing something is established when it has not yet been so. However, one is in danger of believing something false that is true, for this reason, there is some burden of proof on the belief in the negative. Again, the burden is to establish a prima facie case in support of ones position. Once one has done that, then one has established at least a reasonable reason for ones position. The phrase Burden of Proof is deceptive, for it doesn't mean rock solid proof, it means establishing of a rational case in defense of the position.

A prima facie case means a case that is sufficiently developed to require a response. This may mean a little or a lot. The claim is established to the point that if no refutation is offered, it stands in debate. As a general rule, it is better to err on the side of granting a prima facie case when one might not exist, than to allow a prima facie case to go unchallenged.

A proof is an argument that establishes that its conclusion must be true. A standard of proof is a formulation identifying the types of facts needed to establish a conclusion on a given subject matter. In general: the burden of proof is on the party claiming to know something (or making a positive assertion). The onus then falls upon the other party to refute either the logical inference of the conclusion to the premises, the validity of the argument, or its soundness.

Scientists who shift the burden of proof onto their critics by claiming they are correct if they haven’t be refuted, are guilty of the fallacy of drawing a conclusion from false assignment of burden of proof.

An arbitrary assertion is a claim devised entirely by the imagination, but asserted in defiance of the need for evidence. Arbitrary assertions of possibility shift "burden of proof" from "burden to provide evidence" to burden to discount imagination. Scientists sometimes say theories must be “falsifiable” to be admissible: really possibilities should be based on evidence to begin with, not arbitrary assertions. Recall that "proof" means ruling out possible conclusions consistent with the evidence.

A rational argument is one in which a reason or evidence is presented for which a reasonable inference can be made concerning a proposition. For a rational deductive argument to be considered valid, it must be impossible for the conclusion to be false given the premises. A sound argument is one which is valid and the premises are in fact true, and so the conclusion necessarily follows.

Inductive arguments on the other hand concern themselves with probabilities, i.e., given certain premises, the infered conclusion is improbable to be false. If the conclusion more likely than not follows the premise, then the inductive argument is considered strong. However, if the conclusion is not more likely to follow the premise, then the inductive argument is considered weak. A further distinction is made with respect to inductive arguments in that if a strong inductive argument's premise is indeed true, then the argument is considered to be cogent. All weak inductive arguments are considered to be uncogent.

Inductive arguments are subject to erosion however. Given that 9:10 Englishmen smoke a pipe, and Bob is an Englishman, then Bob smokes a pipe is a cogent inductive argument. However, if I add the premise that Bob belongs to Englishmen-Against-Smoking Association, then the argument becomes uncogent (in that it went from strong to a weak argument). Deductive arguments on the other hand are erosion proof. For example, if you're pregnant, then you're a woman. You're pregnant. Therefore, you are a woman. If it rains the streets get wet. It rained today. Therefore, the streets are wet today. For unsound or valid deductive arguments erosion is irrelevent. If it rains the streets are wet. The streets are wet. Therefore it rained. This is NOT an erosion issue.

The issue pertaining to the ID/Darwanist debate pertains to causality, i.e., the origin of species. All reasoning with respect to causal conclusions is ultimately inductive. To be fallacious, a causal argument must violate the canons of good reasoning about causation in some common or deceptive way.

Causal conclusions can take one of two forms:

Event-Level: reasoning that establishes cause of a particular event in terms of dependence on other specific events. Mistakes about event-level causation are the result of confusing coincidence with causation.
Type-Level: Here, we are not talking about a causal relation holding between two particular events, but the general causal relation holding between instances of two types of events. Mistakes about type-level causation are the result of confusing correlation with causation. Two types of events may occur simultaneously, or one type always following the other type, without there being a causal relation between them.

It could be argued that proponents of ID aren't refuting Darwanists, but are making their own positive assertion. In philosophy positive assertions are considered false by default, unless compelling evidence or reasons are presented to the affirmative. Any argument FOR ID must be careful in its reasoning with respect to any argument AGAINST evolution (especially any argument predicated on a basis of ignorance), and must stand on its own merits (or not). An appeal to ignorance is an argument for or against a proposition on the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.

It is a logical mistake to assert that because a phenomenon is unpredictable (or inexplicable) by current scientific theories, that a better scientific theory cannot be found that provides an adequate natural explanatory model for the phenomena in question; and that therefore, one must assert that the only viable explanation of the unexplained phenomena is supernatural action. This variant is known as the God-of-the-gaps argument.

It is reasonable to, at least provisionally, reject an improbable proposition for which no adequate evidence has been presented. So, if it can be shown that all of the common arguments for a certain proposition are fallacious, and the burden of proof is on the proposition's proponents, then one does NOT commit a fallacy of Argumentum ad Logicam (Fallacy fallacy) by rejecting the proposition. Rather, the fallacy is committed when one jumps to the conclusion that just because one argument for it is fallacious, then no cogent argument for it can exist.

Statements which begin: "It is hard to see how...," "I cannot understand how...," or "it is obvious that..." (if obvious is being used to introduce a conclusion rather than specific evidence in support of a particular view), are usually the foundations for fallacies of the type Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, and specifically the fallacy of the sub-type "argument from personal incredulity". This is the case if the person making the assertion has solely their particular personal belief in the impossibility of the one scenario as "evidence" that their alternative scenario is true (the proponent lacking relevant evidence specifically for the alternative scenario).

Quite commonly, the argument from personal incredulity is used in combination with some evidence in an attempt to sway opinion towards a preferred conclusion. However, it becomes a logical fallacy to the degree that the personal incredulity is offered as further "evidence." In such an instance, the person making the argument has inserted a personal bias in an attempt to strengthen the argument for acceptance of her or his preferred conclusion.

Intelligent design is the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer. Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, believe the designer to be God. Advocates of intelligent design claim it is a scientific theory, and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations.

However, science is utterly mute with respect to the supernatural; there's nothing that it can say about it. It can't confirm it empirically, and it can't logically deny it. The supernatural is entirely outside of its purvue, and is opposed on two accounts.

the supernatural is contrary to natural law (with which science is exclusively focused upon); the scientific method is concerned exclusively with quantitative qualities used to measure nature, and prediction which is a central tenet of science. Science deals with the stable (that which is unstable is attempted to be stabilized), the repetative, the observable, and unified data by striving to explain as much as possible under general principles.
its limitations; Whatever is genuinely novel or unpredictable is not capable of genuine scientific treatment (genuine novelty science cannot understand). Qualities can be stated in terms of quantities, but the quantity is NOT the quality of a natural phenomenon. A deaf man can learn the physics of sound, and may photograph a pattern of a given note of the scale and see it, and it can be empirically ascertained the number of impulses traveling along the auditory nerves for a given frequency. However, none of these quantifications are qualities. The genuine individuality of the personality can not be comprehended by science. Orderliness of nature is an absolutely central presupposition. Not only are elements and processes constant throughout the universe, they are constant throughout time (why this is so is unexplained but it is considered to be an unshakeable foundation of science). The integrity of the human personality must be presupposed. If a scientist's mind is constantly playing tricks on him, they could not perform experiments, nor reason, and any mistakes that he makes he's certain its assumed that somebody else will have the rationality to detect them. If the scientist is careful enough, they should be able to add up the figures correctly. The scientists memory must be trusted with unabashed confidence. Even so, why the scientist is even able to depend on his rationality and/or memory is not explained. Furthermore, science absolutely depends on a theory of truth, but no experiment can be devised to verify it.

ID is semantically identical to the Clockmaker hypothesis. Some proponents of ID may claim that this is compatible with the theory of evolution (evolution through natural selection might be a process pre-ordained by God in order to carry through his act of creation). However, as the hypothesis is worded, with events that take place outside of the universe, it is not testable and is therefore unfalsifiable. In other words, there is no experiment that can be created to disprove the existence of this "clockmaker" (in that they purportedly exist outside of the universe). Falsifiability is essential in forming a scientific hypothesis, so the Clockmaker hypothesis is not a hypothesis in the scientific sense of the word (and by extension neither can ID be). Without the existance of a "Clockmaker", where does the intelligence for the purported design come from? It would beg the question of where does the clockmaker of ID's proposition live? If the Clockmaker lives within the universe, it can not be responsible for the universe, and this then begs the question of how did the Clockmaker come into existance.

The unscientific aspect of the ID proposition notwithstanding, nothing can be said in an absolute sense regarding the truth value of the propostition. The converse is also true however, in that despite the inherent scientific nature of the theory of evolution, nothing is known whatsoever regarding the truth value of its proposition. Despite a monumental mountain of evidence in support of the inference made for the proposition, its at best inductive logic (and could very well be false regardless of the probabilities). At the same time probabilities have been calculated with respect to processes and events with respect to the mechanics of evolution that have been found to be staggeringly inconceivably improbable. If on the one hand I point to mind boggling quantity of evidence FOR, and yet rational mathematics suggests it to be virtually impossible, am I left with I can't understand how it can be false so therefor it must be true? Isn't that fallacial reasoning?

Its been said that faith is reasonable because there's plenty of evidence for it (even so such evidence can never prove the cause). The converse is however NOT true, in that reason to exist by reason alone does not exist. Quite frankly I accept both propositions to be true in and so far that evolution is limited and constrained in accordance to the tenets of my Christian faith. Scripture is not only literally true, but its Absolutely True. Evolution on the other hand is only provisionally true in so far as the present state of scientific refinement of the model of the hypothesis.