RenegadeOfPhunk wrote:asbestosman wrote:I thought it was interesting at the beginning it was mentioned that scientists not only do not consider Intelligent Design to be a scientific theory, they do not consider it to be a scientific topic.
...can you give us a time reference? (It's not literally at the beginning...)
EAllusion wrote:The history of creationism has involved continual repackaging driven by legal defeat. (See Ronald Numbers extensive history of the movement called The Creationists.) This appears to be the next, pardon the pun, evolutionary step - the new line in the sand.
asbestosman wrote:12:40-12:50.
Sethbag wrote:The irreducible complexity idea is probably the closest they come to a rigorous model, but it falls well short when it becomes merely a cataloguing of things they claim couldn't have evolved. These are "intuitive" attempts at disproving evolution. The problem is that intuition isn't acceptable as a standard of proof in science. That's why their ID arguments aren't properly even a scientific topic. If they want to move their claims into the realm of a proper scientific topic, they need to get rigorous and then define and prove a mathematical model that can disprove evolution as a possibility.
RenegadeOfPhunk wrote:As I mentioned before, the trouble isn't with many of the literal arguments put forward. It's with the 'title' of ID, and it's unwarranted 'conclusion' from those ideas - even if they had managed to go somewhere with them.
...if he means in that sense, then he's perfectly correct (in my opinion). But that would have to be something to be clarified...
EAllusion wrote:Intelligent Design isn't a scientific topic because it isn't testable. It is generally believed that explanations, in order to be in the domain of science, need to be testable. If you hold this perspective, then ID is non-science.
RenegadeOfPhunk wrote:EAllusion wrote:Intelligent Design isn't a scientific topic because it isn't testable. It is generally believed that explanations, in order to be in the domain of science, need to be testable. If you hold this perspective, then ID is non-science.
But in the case of Irreducible Complexity (and the examples that the ID-ers pushed, like the bacterial flagellum, and blood clotting), Ken Miller did consider that testable and approached it as such.
Again - 39:30 in the presentation for the bits about Irreducible Complexity...
I think the 'real' question here is, would potentially knocking over the ToE as it stands (ANY scientific theory can be potentially knocked over, otherwise it isn't real science...) have lent even ONE iota of evidence towards the notion of an ID-er?
...I say no. And that's why I say ID isn't legitimate science. Not because any of the literal arguments weren't valid, but because the conclusion they were reaching for wouldn't be determined even if they turned out to be right...!
Behe's argument offers both factual claims and a theoretical or explanatory claim. It goes like this:
Factual claim: Some biochemical systems are irreducibly complex, meaning that if you took out any single component of the system, the system would fail to function.
Factual claim: Irreducibly complex systems could not have evolved step by step because the intermediate or precursor systems would not have been functional.
Explanatory claim: Therefore, when we find an irreducibly complex system, we know that it must have been designed from scratch and came into existence all in one step.
Only the explanatory claim is an explicit statement in support of ID, but one can still falsify the argument if one shows that either of the two factual claims it is based upon is false. For instance, when we look at Behe's example of the blood clotting cascade, we can falsify it simply by looking at the first factual claim. Is the blood clotting cascade irreducibly complex? The answer is no. There are animals who lack one of the components of the system, yet their blood clots just fine. Dolphins, for example, lack Hageman factor (or Factor 12). By Behe's definition of irreducible complexity, this should be impossible. The fact that it's not shows that this is not, in fact, an irreducibly complex system.
Likewise on the bacterial flagellum, Behe's favorite example of irreducible complexity, the fact that one subset of the system works well for another function shows that the second factual claim in Behe's argument is not necessarily true. We have lots of examples in molecular biology of components for one system being adapted or co-opted for use in a different system. Even Behe would admit as much. Lots of examples, for instance, of a given gene duplication resulting in the production of two proteins, one of which is then coopted for a different function in a system it was not originally involved with inside the organism. So when we see that the flagellum includes a subset that functions well in a different type of system, we can reasonably infer that perhaps it was coopted in exactly the same way. Add this to the fact that we in fact have multiple different types of flagella at work in the bacterial world, suggesting that rather than being irreducibly complex there are multiple different ways to get to the same result, and you have good reason to think that Behe's second example fails because the second factual claim may well not be true.
So Miller is in fact correct when he says that ID is not falsifiable, while specific arguments for ID have been falsified.
...when we talk about the 'legitimacy' of ID as 'science', we have to differentiate between those that:
1. Put forward ID as a competing theory
2. Put forward ID as a grouping of 'criticisms' against 'natural' evolution being the 'full' answer to the diversity of life on Earth.
Explanatory claim: Therefore, when we find an irreducibly complex system, we know that it must have been designed from scratch and came into existence all in one step.