EAllusion wrote:I do, however, think it has to meet some minimum standard of cogency and be able to achieve a healthy debate among relevant experts.
You don't think the concept of 'Irreducible Complexity'
achieve[d] a healthy debate among relevant experts? You're not willing to even give it even that much credit?
Can't such examples as 'the mousetrap', the disassembly of the baterial flagellum and the blood clotting mechanism be fairly strongly linked with 'prodding' from the ID camp?
The line between legitimate and crakpotastic fringe isn't bright...
Agreed. And that's what makes this an interesting discussion :)
I often find some of the 'conclusions' of Quantum Mechanics fairly 'ridiculous' to my 'common sense' understanding of the world.
Einstein had some trouble with it too I recall. He was tempted to 'wave it away', regardless of it's validity as a scientific theory - on ideological grounds. (
"God doesn't play dice")
But it's proposal is 'scientifically valid', and it has stood the test of time against the evidence, so it makes no difference what I - or anybody else - thinks of it's conclusions...
Creationist anti-evolutionism is to legitimate science what holocaust denial is to legitimate WW II history.
Hmmm. Interesting analogy.
Have holocaust deniers ever said that a given (reasonable) piece of evidence, or set of evidences, could prove them wrong, like the ID-ers did with Irreducible Complexity?
Sethbag wrote:I actually don't agree, and that disagreement would extend to Darwin himself, if he actually were to believe it in light of what we know today.
Point taken. And you're right - one instance of an 'irreducibly complex' organ or system wouldn't suddenly make all other organisms on Earth evolutionarily 'invalid'.
But it would be a clear contradiction. It would be a
potential falsification of the theory. It only takes one...
Newtonian physics was replaced by General Relativity, even when there was barely an example of Newtonian physics going 'wrong' -
anywhere. And anywhere where it was, there were 'explanations' you could come up with to try and justify them.
One example was the slightly wrong orbit of Mercury, which was put down to a mysterious unknown object called 'Vulcan', which 'must have been messing with the orbit'.
Would you bet on Newtonian physics getting replaced, given that the evidence for it was
overwhelming? And yet it was...
We need to be wary of such sure-mindedness in science. History teaches us we can't be so sure, and it is what separates US from the fundamentalists.
On the contrary, if you had a million species which apparently came about through evolution and one which came about by some mysterious, non-evolutionary means, what would be the strongest conclusion? That the same mechanism behind that one specie must explain them all? Or that the mechanism (evolution) which explains the other million is still likely to be correct because there are a million examples of it? I'd say the weight of evidence still supports evolution
Oh - for sure. When I meant 'devastating' to the ToE, I didn't mean that the ToE would die over it in practice. Even evidence that should - technically - be 'devastating' to a theory doesn't end up killing it, not with so much overwhelming counter-evidence AND without a theory that can compete with it.
The Mercury orbit was a definite anomaly against Newtonian physics at the time. Everybody knew about it, but everybody still explained it away. Because -
in exactly the same way - of the ridiculous amount of positive evidence we had for it.
Even though it was shown to be a technically incorrect model - proven to be so by General relativity.
Finding an irreducibly complex part or system in nature WOULD oppose our understanding of evolution. But you're right - it wouldn't 'kill' the theory until an effective competing theory came along. I would find it beyond imagination that evolution could be shown to be utter nonsense. That didn't happen to Newtonian gravity either. But it can be shown to be very much 'incomplete', or not seeing really anywhere near the 'full picture'.
It's honestly quite hard to imagine even that in relation to the ToE, but we have to remember that we've had these kinds of upsets before...
To say they simply
couldn't happen in relation to the ToE would be distinctly unscientific. in my opinion.
To disprove evolution, you'd have to show by rigorous and provable methods that evolution either couldn't have been behind their development, of demonstrate a better-supported theory that explains them all.
Yes, in practice this is what would need to happen. I completely agree, and I've said so many times before.
Hardly. Laugh now, but this scenario makes as much sense as falling back on "God must have done it!" as the explanation for anything.
I don't disagree with this at all.
I think everybody should read my comments a bit more carefully. I'm obviously not getting myself across very well here:
Even if an ID-er - or anybody else - were to make a dent in the ToE,
that would not lend ONE IOTA OF SUPPORT to the idea of an Intelligent Designer.
Even if an ID-er - or anybody else - were to
completely destroy the ToE (however beyond imagination to both of us that possibility may appear - treat it as a pure hypothetical if you wish)
even that would not lend ONE IOTA OF SUPPORT to the idea of an Intelligent Designer.
I hope I was clear enough that time :)
Knocking down the ToE (and this must be at least
logically possible, or the ToE is not legitimate science) would not add ANY support to the idea of ID. I've been saying that
over and over - all the time. Check back in this thread - you'll see where I say it over and over...