Unguided Evolution - Can it be falsified?
Steve Reuland over on Panda’s Thumb is babbling about whether some ID strawman du jour can be falsified. Let’s examine the real issue.
First of all, we’ll use this definition of evolution given to the Kansas Board of Education in a letter from 38 (count ‘em) Nobel laureates better known as the Weisel 38.
“Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.”
an unguided, unplanned process
As all of us who don’t cling to strawman versions of ID know, the only bone we have to pick with that definition is the unguided, unplanned part. We are of the position that evolution, in part or in whole, was a guided or planned process.
So how does one go about falsifying unguided evolution? By demonstrating that the process was guided, of course.
ID is the means by which this theory of unguided evolution can be falsified. If ID cannot be falsified and is itself just religion disguised as science, where does that leave unguided evolution? Why it leaves unguided evolution as unfalsifiable pseudo-science.
Sorry Steve Reuland, but you don’t get to have your cake and eat it to. Either ID is science [possibly false, but not merely 'religion'] or unguided evolution is pseudo-science. Takes yo pick and let me know when you have a final answer.
Friday, January 20, 2006
I Got Your 'Unfalsifiable' Right Here
Another good one from Dave Scot:
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If you are going to find heroes in the IDC movement, you should pick ones better informed and more skilled at argument than DaveScot. He takes that long to state one obvious thing and make one non-argument.
The obvious thing: IDC believes it can demonstrate that evolution was guided. That belief is part of IDC's definition.
The non-argument: if IDC is unfalsifiable non-science, one particular other explanation for the relationships between living things must also be non-science. DaveScot totally fails to support this claim. Pick your favorite analogy, but one explanation being nonsense does not establish that other explanations are nonsense.
What "unguided, unplanned process" means is that we do not need to specially plead the process of historical process of evolution versus what we can experimentally observe today. IDC is a claim that there was some relevant difference in the process, and that the difference is due to an intelligent creator. IDC's statistical arguments are an attempt to show that; the fact that the statistics actually do not support IDC's claims is part of why IDC is not science.
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