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wrote:
"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.

I daresay that human fossils found in the same strata as dinosaur
fossils would go a long ways toward that falsification.

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?

I seem to recall something about moths.

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.

"They are said" by whom? The presence of a handful of crackpots
ostensibly within a field does not discredit the field.

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.

Phlogisten theory died out because thermodynamics did a better
job for pwople working with heat engines. A model that works
better for people breeding animals or studying natural populations
would ein out too.

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)

I haven't run accross biologists attacking physicists.
Care to enlighten us?

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?

I daresay if you peruse the journals in biology you will see how
mathematics is applied in biology. IMHO, not as elegantly
as in Physics or even Chemistry, but it is there.

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.

That seems rhetorical.

"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.

That seems rhetorical.

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

That's question that would be better posed to someone who has
true expertise in the field but I'll take a crack at it.

I would say those predictions include that there
was a time in the past when mammals were uncommon and a time
before that when there were no mammals at all. The same
would be predicted for all the phyla of vertebrates, and
also a time before which there were no vertebrates at all.

In 1859 Paleontology was in its infancy and geology was
just beginning to work out ways to date rock strata. But
over the next century, as fossils were discovered and
dating methods developed, those predictions were validated.

Now, I don't know if the predictions I suggested were
made in Darwin's time. I do see how they follow logically
from the theory. As Bohr noted, prediction about the future
is especially difficult. It takes longer to test them too.

--

FF