Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

It is a truth universally ancknowledged (by evolution-philes anyway) that ID isn't testable, so its pretty unhelpful at explaining anything very much.Okay. But what could be done to make it testable? How could it be bent, broken, chopped or augmented to make it testable?Perhaps the changes would have to be novel - perhaps even as mad as a mongoose - but I imagine there might be something that could be done to make it testable.Perhaps though, I'm wrong, and there is something inherent to ID that makes testing it logically impossible, unless it is distorted out of all recognition.Any thoughts?

Okay, thanks for that. I suspected that it wasn't logically impossible to disprove ID. I was interested in the shape that a test might take. It might not be possible to come up with one that is satisfactory, for many reasons. I just wondered if some ground could be tentatively explored, and speculations as to the nature of the test be put forward.

That's funny - I've always thought it would be really cool if common DNA was found in all animals that was encoded in morse saying "Odin Was 'Ere!" or something. That would be great.You've just got me thinking, and I may be going off at a tangent, but the assumptions underlying ID are quite interesting. ID seems to assume that God would not build a creation that could appear to have arisen by chance. For instance, if he was to make genuinely irreducably complex structures (assuming that's possible), then that's a blatant neon sign saying God was here. Let me put it another way - if God does exist, and in his infinite wisdom he had decided to engineer everything in a way that made it look as though it could have arisen by chance, then ID would be useless.

I was intrigued by your idea of "looking for the beneficiary of design". Could you elaborate a little on this, because I don't think I quite understand.Thanks!

Some satanic force, eh? Nice!It was notable the amount of old and dodgy ID arguments he was using. He could at least come up with some new ones, couldn't he? The mousetrap analogy has always been pretty poor.

I don't know what n! abstractions are, but you said that you thought that irreducably complex things might be reductable. I think I agree with that. Im uncertain about how one can be sure that DNA (for instance) wasn't iteslf the product of some primeval natural selection.

Thanks for your post.As someone else has already noted, it would be inaccurate to consider that the modern microchip was designed and lo! it sprang into being. The modern microchip is instead the product of decades of refinements that have allowed for ever greater efficiency and processing power. Evolutionists contend that it is equally misleading to point to a human cell and claim that its complexity is somehow "impossible" or "miraculous". Rather, they contend that the human cell is the product of billions of years of slight modifications that have enabled something nothing more complex than a bunch of chemicals to become something as convoluted as a human cell.I'm also wholeheartedly in agreement with the person (perhaps the same person) who said that if disagreement within a belief is an indication of its weakness, then Christianity with its, Coptics, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Mormons, etc... is looking decidedly shaky.

Yes, I agree - irreducable complexity isn't a good example. But I wasn't focussing on that side of things, merely on the assumption that God wouldn't have made an ambiguous creation. It seems like a significant assumption, though I'm not really sure why. I think maybe it indicates that a YEC IDer might have difficulty invisaging a "tricksy" God who might leave apparent evidence that the world is millions of years old and so forth.

Okay - that makes a lot of sense. The evidence for a mouse creator does indeed seem to point to Mum and Dad of Mouse. That's a very neat little thing.

I guess that was the point of this topic. Is there a way of making ID falsifiable? The simple answer is probably no, but then, that would have been a pretty short topic.I wasn't necessarily asking for something that would be practical, rather to see whether there was something inherent in ID DISPITE THE ABSENCE OF A FALSIFICATION that made it unscientific. If that's the only stumbling block, is it possible to manipulate ID to make it falsifiable? How much would have to be changed? Would it in fact just look like standard scientific theory, devoid of deities, or would there be room for a god or gods if specific conditions were met? (Like if there was suddenly massive proof that the Hindu pantheon existed for example.)Cheers

Hello,The perception of science that you critique in this post doesn't really accord with mine. I don't think there is anything magical about the scientific method - far from it.As far as i can see, science is useful precisely because it isn't offering the final word: merely the current best guess that explains the available evidence. Although it doesn't offer a certainty set in stone, surely a flexible model like science is the best way to try to explain the world around us if we are to believe our senses at all?

Okay. As you have probably guessed, I'm almost certain that TheMystic is a human. It hadn't been a question that had even entered my mind when I read your responses. I'm interested to see how you think this supports your point.If your post had been scrapped by some spam filter somewhere because the spam filter considered it to be spam, how would this constitute an indictment (damning or otherwise) or the scientific method?If you want to start a thread about some of the obviously false conclusions of science, then I'm sure you are welcome - though as you are probably already aware there are quite a few topics already in existence that might be pertinent.In response to your point about the potential unreliability of our senses, I have two things to say. Firstly, there is always the possibility that one's senses are being clouded or mislead by a medical condition or demonic interference. That's why sciences insistence on the importance that experiments must be repeated for their results to be taken seriously. That's why I think science is best understood as being the product of a community and not an individual.Secondly, if you fear that we are as a community (or you as an individual, if you want to get solopsistic about it) might be being systematically mislead by some mysterious force (and I don't think this can be discounted out of hand), then why believe anything at all?

I accept that science might not be a particularly reliable way of accessing "correctness". But surely its the least bad? I'd be very interested if you could outline a better method for trying to understand our environment than some kind of scientific investigation.How do you determine whether data is valuable or not? It seems questionable to me to reject any problematic data out of hand simply because it doesn't fit with your understanding of how the world works.If you keep getting a strange result and you rule out all errors you and everyone else can see in your methodology, it seems sensible to propose another hypothesis and further tests to interrogate that hypothesis. Does that sound reasonable?I'm not sure if I understand your distinction between truth and being right. Personally I'm not overly interested in either; they both sound rather inflexible. On the one hand I'm not sure if it's ever going to be possible to have access to an absolute truth, and on the other seeking to be right at all costs isn't a realistic way to live your life because you are bound to be disappointed.

I agree with you when you say that life is capable of reproduction and adaptation - though I'd have to add that it is even better at not reproducing and failing to adapt. Its the first part of this quote, however, that I have the major problem with. The judgement that life seems very well ordered and that it works extremely well can surely only be comparative - and to what are you comparing life? Is life more ordered than diamond? Does it work better than a volcano? If you don't know what the purpose of things are - if you can't even be entirely sure that they have a purpose - how can you make these judgements? I agree that the feeling of consciousness and self-consciousness are pretty amazing (and at the same time are utterly mundane). However, I don't find your argument that this amazingness translates into a convincing argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. I could for example make an analogous argument about the sun. After all, the sun burns at a temperature of 5 Mega Kelvin at the corona. How on earth do you expect me to believe that something that burns so hot can be the product of natural causes? I suppose if we all had an unshakable conviction that an ID had to exist then this might be significant. However, I for one don't, and I know a lot of other people who don't either. To me this makes the belief in ID look more like software than firmware.Edited by Tusko, : Spulleng