Re: Dover Case Questions

[Ed Brayton]

Brad M Pardee wrote: I think Chris reveals something significant here.  Among the evolution supporters I have heard (and I'm not presuming that they speak for all evolutionists everywhere), it does not seem to be enough to say that intelligent design is outside the realm of science.  They seem to think it's necessary to go further and say that ID is not true.  But if the evolutionists who say ID is outside the realm of science because it's untestable really believe that it's untestable, then they have absolutely no basis for saying it's false because, by their own definition, they can't test it.  The absolute best that they should be able to say is, "In the absence of some external force which is not bound by the laws of science, the evidence that we CAN test tells us that evolution is what happened.  If there was a supernatural actor in the process, however, then all bets are off because science cannot test the supernatural."  But that's not what they say.  They say a) ID is not testable, but b) even though we can't test it, we will still draw conclusions about it and call it false.  I'm sorry, but if you can't test it, then you can't draw conclusions about it.  After all, aren't responsible scientific conclusions the result of testing?  That's why people like me often view the scientific community's test-less rejection of ID as more of an attempt to protect their hallowed turf instead of actually describe what did or didn't happen. I think you're missing critical distinction here. When scientists say that ID is not testable, they primarily mean two things - that supernatural causes are not testable in science, even in principle (which is a true statement) and that ID does not lead to any hypotheses that could either confirm or disconfirm the existence of such a supernatural designer (which is also a true statement). But there are arguments offered to defend ID that are, in fact, falsifiable and some of them have been falsified. Those arguments are not positive statements or hypotheses that are derived from an ID model (no such model exists), but are rather negative arguments against the ability to explain certain things as being produced by evolution. Thus, for example, many of Michael Behe's arguments concerning irreducible complexity may be tested. When he claims that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex - that if you take away any component of the system it would fail to function and therefore cannot have developed through an evolutionary process - this claim can be tested, and it has been tested. And it turns out not to be true - there are animals with perfectly functional blood clotting systems that lack some of the components of the allegedly irreducibly complex system (dolphins, for example, lack factor VII or Hagemann factor yet their blood clots just fine). There is a difference between a negative argument such as this, which can be tested, and a vague model relying on supernatural causation (ID), which cannot. Ed Brayton

_______________________________________________
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see 
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw

Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.  
Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can 
read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the 
messages to others.