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wrote:

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Bruce Barnett wrote:

writes:

There is NO way to use ID to predict any results.

I don't think that's true. For example, presuming an omnipetant
intelligent designer one hypothesis might be that there would be
no evolutionary 'dead ends'.

But there are evolutionary dead ends. e.g. Dodo birds.
So does that mean the predictive ability of ID fails?
I'll let Tim answer that.

Why do you presume that an intelligent designer is required
to produce an *optimal* design? Talk about a leap of faith.
The assertion that there is design supposes nothing about
the elegance, parsimony, or beauty of said design, merely
that there is *intention* in the design rather than purely
random/chaotic/probablistic mechanisms (and these may also
exist in a "designed" environment).

Does that answer it for you?

I'm far more interested in what testable hypothesis you find
or propose that can be used to discriminate between ID and
slow mutation and natural selection.

Absent a testable hypothesis, there is no _scientific_
difference between ID and slow mutation and natural selection.

I agree, and I further stipulate that a test such as you
describe may well not exist. However, the issue *still*
matters (to science). What we accept as propositions for
knowing things (propositions are not provable one way or the other)
profoundly influences the general manner in which we approach
things. For example, if science were ever move away from
materialist/mechanical propositions and just admit the
*possibility* that a non-material reality exists which is
reflected in the observable world, a whole lot of people
would go try to construct experiments to validate it.

I'm not saying science should promptly go out and do this.
I've said all the way though this thread that existing
science should be engaged in a civil and throughtful
debate with people like the IDers rather than running from
them. The very fact that we have never observed "something
springing from nothing" coupled with the fact that the
Universe is a "something" should be triggering really deep
questions about existing methods of science and how they
might be improved.

ID would then be a philosophic ocnstruct combining a scientific
theory with somethign else that is not a cientific theory.

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Tim Daneliuk
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