Reply #52: Not sure this does the trick

[Stunster]

But first I will answer the question you got around to in the end. An example of an irreducible aspect of some critter would not be an instant win for ID. It is not a case of Evolution or ID. An irreducibly complex find would merely be refutation for the current theory of Evolution. It doesn't mean instant death for Evolution either. It merely means that our current understanding is flawed and we would have to reconsider the facts with the new evidence in play. What would be the result of that consideration depends on the evidence and not on front loading the question in an either or state.

This exemplifies the type of response which motivated my post. Substitute for 'irreducible complexity' something else, and you could re-type it word for word. But the upshot is that nothing ever gets to count as falsifying the Darwinian theory since you can always claim that it's just the current form of the theory that's wrong, but that with a bit of tweaking it will be able to accomodate the finding. It's like saying, "Well, we don't know how this happened, but we know it wasn't intelligently designed to happen that way. And how do we know? We know because our theory doesn't allow for intelligent design."

As to what would constitute evidence for ID it depends on the theory the IDer's present. It is not our job to define the criteria of a theory we believe to be flawed. Thats your job.

I resent you attributing to me a belief in ID by using the word 'your'. You should have written 'their'. I'm approaching this not as a partisan of ID, but in terms of the philosophy of science. Since the dispute between ID and Darwinian evolution often centers around a demarcation dispute as to what is science and what isn't, it's important to investigate that issue, regardless of whether Darwinian evolution is true or not. After all, the usual cry made against ID is that "it's not science", whereas Darwinian evolution is. But if Darwinian evolution is also saying that ID is not true, which on a common reading is what it does say, then that statement ought to be empirically testable if Darwinian evolution claims scientific status for itself. On the other hand, if Darwinian evolution is not saying that ID isn't true, then what's all the fuss about?

In other words, I am trying to get a more precise handle on what the fuss is all about.

The theory of Evolution in no way mentions or demands anything concerning ID. It has no need to prove ID wrong. Its not a competition. The theory of Evolution only has to defend it's own claims.

I question this. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Darwinian evolutionary theory says that no intelligent design was involved in the emergence of living species, and that it all happened via random genetic mutation, natural selection and genetic drift without any conscious purpose being a causal factor. Isn't that the basic idea--the claim that no conscious design was involved---which people understood Darwin to be implying, and hence made Darwin and Darwinism so controversial?

If that is a genuinely scientific claim, as against a philosophical one, then it ought to be falsifiable and so Darwinian scientists ought to tell us how it would be falsifiable. I suspect that they are reluctant to do so even in principle because that would render ID more scientifically respectable by showing how ID could come to be empirically supported. As standardly taught, Darwinian evolution says 'no intelligent design--it all happened without that.' Ok, well what would tend to falsify that claim?

The relatively recent advent of genetics and the Human Genome project has rather cemented the theory of evolution though. There is just too much evidence in the genetic code to even rationally question the theory of evolution any longer.

How so? The Human Genome project is a project investigating the genes of one species, namely human beings, is it not? How would this mapping of the human genetic code show that these genes were naturally selected, having originated in a different species, and that they were not intelligently designed? What you are calling 'junk DNA' presumably wasn't always junk. You yourself write, "there are huge tracts of DNA that no longer serves any purpose." The implication is that it once 'served a purpose'. That means it once carried an adaptive advantage, and that on its own is quite compatible with it being intelligently designed. Many ID proponents do not deny evolution happened, after all. (E.g. some of them admit there is common descent). They just deny that it happened exclusively through Darwinian or other purely natural mechanisms.

Also, to talk about 'errors' in DNA code ironically suggests design. It is intelligent designers who make errors. Nature, on the other hand, just does whatever it does. So it would be better to say 'non-adaptive'. But given some changes in a species' genetic code and some environmental changes, it's hardly surprising that something that was once adaptive becomes non-adaptive. It doesn't follow that it wasn't intelligently designed in the first place, any more than a ruined castle suggests that it wasn't intelligently designed in the first place. And of course, mutations are presumably governed by the laws of physics, and it's hard to make sense of the idea that those laws have 'errors' in them.