"In science, an idea does not rise to the level of a theory
until it can be used to make a prediction. People who use
language to communicate, rather than to obfuscate, understand
that "This theory predicts" means "One may use this theory to
predict". " --FF

You've gone back and forth about predictive power and the like a bit in
this thread. It is ironic to bring up with respect to "evolution"
because that term has been applied to predict everything and given the
systematic thought typical to science that means it predicts nothing in
an unfalsifiable way. It is like the old scientific notion of
phlogiston, the hypothesizing is so adaptive that it has no predictive
power. For example, if some organisms have long necks then it is said
that they gradually developed a different bone structure as well as the
circulation system, type of heart and so on necessary, by random
mutations acted on by natural selection. If some organisms do not have
long necks then it is said that they gradually developed their type of
neck in the same way. What prediction about adaptations was actually
based on the "law" of natural selection and how can it be falsified?
Another example, gender is said to have originated by the same laws and
processes and men are said to be heterosexual as the result. Is that a
prediction? It cannot be, as the opposite is also said to result from
the same processes and laws because they are said to explain men being
gay too. The question seems to be, what adaptations or patterns in
Nature can be found empirically that would actually falsify Darwinism
according to Darwinists? It is like the phogiston theorists, there is
always another hypothesis as the "theory"/hypothesizing just goes on to
support the paradigm.

Compare Darwinism to hard science, which evolutionists tend to try to
merge into and associate their myths with. For instance, if Darwinism
is "just like" physics and gravity (ironic, since the more radical
Darwinian biologists tend to attack physicists now) then what is the
equation that represents the main tenet of Darwinism, i.e. "natural
selection"? Is it like gravity? Why didn't the hard scientists of
his day tend to accept Darwin's theory? How have equations making use
of the law of "natural selection" been used to track the adaptations of
organisms, as certainly as one would track the trajectory of an object
using physics? What adaptations have been predicted using the equation
and then verified empirically, time and again? Proponents of ID are
not the people arguing that the State must support ID in the name of
education or that all of science and perhaps Western civilization too
will just crumble away if their opponents are allowed a voice. It is
the Darwinists making specious and absurd claims about what is
"scientific" and "just like the theory of gravity" which they cannot
back up on the least.

"Theories are all answers to the question what would the world
be like if these laws are true?"

Well, what would the world be like if "natural selection" were true?
Is natural selection falsified by unnatural selections, naturally
enough? Or is it falsified by natural deselections? How does Nature
make a "selection" for intelligence, anyway? Are you selecting the
text that you write here or should it be reduced to nothing more than
an artifact of the biochemical state of your brain in a moment? It
would seem that you are arguing against the capacity to study an
artifact of the work of intelligence, typically known by its use of
symbols and signs of design to encode information.

This is not a rhetorical question. What is it that you think that
Darwinian "random" mutation and a supposed law of natural selection
predict?

"Neither of the two fundamental axioms of Darwin's macroevolutionary
theory-the concept of the continuity of nature. . . and the belief
that all the adaptive design of life has resulted from a blind random
process-have been validated by one single empirical discovery or
scientific advance since 1859." --Michael Denton
(Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design
By Thomas Woodward :47)
http://mynym.blogspot.com/2005/05/zingers.html

--MN