Review: The Rocks were there
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3217-review-the-rocks-were-there
pg 32:
Claim: Tiktaalik, transitional fossil
As vividly recounted in Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, Tiktaalik straddled that transition zone quite nicely, with weight-bearing fins that could flex (allowing it to hold to the bottom against fast currents), primitive lungs (attested 28 mins left in chapter 1% where tetrapods are a subset of lobe-finned fish, then they should expect to find a fish with tetrapod characteristics in Devonian strata. Not Cambrian (150 million years earlier), or Jurassic (200 million years later), but specifically Devonian, the window in time in which their evolution needed to have occurred. And not in deep marine or inland terrestrial deposits, either, but in shallow marine and coastal zones, the habitat in which this transition was taking place. This animal would necessarily have the gills, scales, and fins of a fish (they’d be aquatic animals, after all), but would also show features that would make sense in animals undergoing a change to a more terrestrial habitat (where the eventual forms have distinctive rib and limb bones, a mobile neck with separate pectoral girdle, the full lungs of a tetrapod, as well changes in the joints and ear regions). As vividly recounted in Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, Tiktaalik straddled that transition zone quite nicely, with weight-bearing fins that could flex (allowing it to hold to the bottom against fast currents), primitive lungs (attested 28 ruins left in chapter 1% to by the spiracle openings atop its head), and the pectoral girdle separate from the skull, the first fish with the makings of a flexible neck. Time and place, specified on evolutionary predictive lines, and a set of morphological features that ring true vertebrate in transition. Their very existence weighs on the scale of evidence as supporting the model that uniquely anticipated such a form of life would exist back then, so many millions of years ago.
Response:
" Tetrapods evolved " . Really ?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2219-tetrapods-evolved-really
Casey Luskin The Rise and Fall of Tiktaalik? Darwinists Admit “Quality” of Evolutionary Icon is “Poor” in Retroactive Confession of Ignorance (Updated) September 26, 2008
https://evolutionnews.org/2008/09/the_rise_and_fall_of_tiktaalik/
Casey Luskin Tiktaalik Blown “Out of the Water” by Earlier Tetrapod Fossil Footprints January 7, 2010
https://evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tiktaalik_blown_out_of_the_wat/
Claim: Tiktaalik is not the only example of successful fossil prediction. The feathered dinosaurians Archaeopteryx and Microraptor, the mammal-like reptiles Diarthrognathus and Probainognathus, and the wasp-like ant Sphecomyrma all had characteristics anticipated by evolutionary biologists.
Response: There is no evidence, that feathers evolved from scales. Rather that God created feathered dinosaurs, and birds. Separately.
Can the origin of feathers be explained through evolution ?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3184-can-the-origin-of-feathers-be-explained-through-evolution
The Dinosaur/Bird Connection: Dapper Dino & Otangelo Grasso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOXDm55LdSE&t=2435s
No evidence for the evolution of birds, feathers, and flight
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1694-no-evidence-for-the-evolution-of-birds-feathers-and-flight
Claim: Anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, have no examples of this. They have never successfully predicted any fossils with certain characteristics.
Response: Predicting things, and than having a confirmation of it, is not the measure of all things, and certainly not the measure of truth, when it comes to origins. But if seen from a more global viewpoint, predicting transitional fossils, as Darwin hoped, has actually been a huge failure.
Fossils - Evidence AGAINST evolution
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1701-fossils-evidence-against-evolution
Question to Sy Garte: If you know that evolution does not explain the major transistions, why do you still think that evolution tops special creation?
Do We have Reasons to Doubt the Evolutionary Paradigm?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFS8b-9Z0Ko
His response after 1h12m50s: Science has no explanation in regards of the Cambrian explosion, and the transition from unicellular, to multicellular life.
Claim: Indeed, creationists have never successfully predicted any phenomena that should exist if the Earth were only around 6,000 years old and if a global Flood had occurred. In science, this is not to say some antievolutionists don’t try to contribute to the scientific technical literature. Intelligent Design advocate Jonathan Wells authored a 1985 paper proposing “Inertial force as a possible factor in mitosis” and coauthored with Brian 27 mins left in chapter 1% found and interpreted as transitional Anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, have no examples of this. They have never successfully predicted any fossils with certain characteristics. Part of this is due to how few of them do paleontology, and still fewer lay out the characteristics that would need to be changing or not, then seek out the evidence in the way the regular science does so successfully. Indeed, creationists have never succes
Response: The relevant question is not, if the earth is 6000 years old ( i believe actually, 7500 years ), but if intelligence was involved to create the world, which entails a creator, or not. If someone after believing in God, in particular, the Christian God, holds to the view that the earth is young, or old, is a secondary question.
Comparing worldviews - there are basically just two
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2793-worldviews-there-are-basically-just-two-in-regards-of-origins
The model of intelligent design makes predictions, and is testable
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-predictions-does-intelligent-design-make-predictions-is-it-testable
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against production of a feature by undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Observation: Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, constructing functional irreducibly complex multipart-machines, and make exquisitely integrated circuits that require a blueprint to build the object. Furthermore, Computers integrate software/hardware and store high levels of instructional complex coded information. In our experience, systems that either a)require or b)store large amounts of specified instructional complex information through codes and languages, and which are constructed in interdependence of hard and software invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.
Hypothesis (Prediction): Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, and irreducible structures that perform specific functions -- indicating high levels of Information, irreducible complexity, and interdependence, like hard/software.
Experiment: Experimental investigations of DNA, epigenetic codes, and metabolic circuits indicate that biological molecular machines and factories ( Cells ) are full of information-rich, language-based codes and code/blueprint-based structures. Biologists have performed mutational sensitivity tests in proteins and determined that their amino acid sequences, in order to provide function, require highly instructional complex coded information stored in the Genome. Additionally, it has been found, that cells require and use various epigenetic codes, namely Splicing Codes, Metabolic Codes, Signal Transduction Codes, Signal Integration Codes Histone Codes, Tubulin Codes, Sugar Codes, and The Glycomic Code. Furthermore, all kinds of irreducibly complex molecular machines and biosynthesis performing and metabolic pathways have been found, which could not keep their basic functions without a minimum number of parts and complex inter-wined and interdependent structures. That indicates these biological machines and pathways had to emerge fully operational, all at once. A stepwise evolutionary manner is not possible. Furthermore, knockout experiments of all components of the flagellum have shown that the flagellum is irreducibly complex.
Conclusion: Unless someone can falsify the prediction, and point out a non-intelligent source of Information as found in the cell, the high levels of instructional complex coded information, irreducible complex and interdependent molecular systems and complex metabolic circuits and biosynthesis pathways, their origin is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent. We do not need direct observed empirical evidence to infer design. Origins of reality cannot be explained through testing experiments of operational science, but one can extrapolate what we see today back to times that we cannot see today, and therefore these extrapolations cannot be confirmed via the empirical method. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes, not an accident, in other words, but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator. But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprints or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.
Claim: But it’s worse than that. Strictly anti-evolutionist articles have yet to survive the peer-review process in standard journals, and since so many of their articles published in their own journals (such as the Answers Research Journal for Young Earth creationism, or BIO-Complexity for Intelligent Design) ignore so much of the technical data, neither of the authors of this book. are holding our breath for a successful anti-evolutionist piece to ever come down the slide.
Response: If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2247-if-intelligent-design-theorists-do-manage-to-publish-in-a-peer-reviewed-science-journal-darwinists-will-make-sure-the-editor-suffers-grievously-for-it
"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition. Either you accept the rules and attitudes and beliefs promulgated by the 'papacy' (for which read, perhaps, the Royal Society or the Royal College of Physicians), or face a dreadful retribution. We will not actually burn you at the stake, because that sanction, unhappily, is now no longer available under our milksop laws. But we will make damned sure that you are a dead duck in our trade."
(Gould, Donald [former editor of New Scientist], "Letting poetry loose in the laboratory," New Scientist, 29 August 1992, p.51)
Why isn't intelligent design found published in mainstream [b]peer-reviewed science journals? Darwinists use a similar rule—I call it “Catch-23”—to exclude intelligent design from science: [/b]intelligent design is not scientific, so it can’t be published in [b]peer-reviewed scientific journals. How [/b]do we know it’s not scientific? Because it isn’t published in [b]peer[/b]-reviewed scientific journals. Catch-23! 4
From Jonathan Wells Phd., A politically incorrect guide to Darwinism and intelligent design, page 111
Why isn't intelligent design found published in peer-reviewed science journals?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1700-why-isn-t-intelligent-design-found-published-in-peer-reviewed-science-journals?highlight=peer
Claim: Finally, on this quote, we can agree with the author on one thing: what is causing the anti-evolutionist to stall up is not a matter of evidence. Theirs is a theological imperative, but it is a branch of evangelical apologetics, not science.
Response: Theism versus atheism: What is it really about?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2956-theism-versus-atheism-what-is-it-really-about
The theism versus atheism debate is not about anyone providing empirical proofs or demonstrations in regards to ultimate reality. Theists do not need to provide empirical proof of God's existence. Our senses are limited and can observe only a small fraction of reality. One needs to use the best epistemological framework, and intellectual tools, that is science, philosophy, and theology, to conclude the most case-adequate explanation of origins.
The investigator has to be honest, rigorous, and permit the evidence to lead wherever it is. The quest is not about
- Faith and religion versus Science and reason
- Theological dogma versus scientific investigation
- Religion versus science
- Bronze age books versus peer-reviewed papers
- Preaching of supernatural mythology versus the natural
- Facts versus faith
- Magical thinking versus reality
- Magic versus a scientific theory
- Holy Bible versus peer review
It's about
- Good inferences versus bad inferences.
- Good reasons versus bad reasons.
- Reasonable faith versus irrational or blind faith
Either all physical existence, all being, the universe, was caused, created, and fine-tuned, the laws of physics and constants, life, consciousness, and objective moral values were instantiated
by
random,
irregular,
undetermined,
unguided
undirected
stochastic
unpredictable
accidental
spontaneous
uncaused
emergent
happenstance
unintended
unforeseen
events by no mechanism by luck and chance
or
designed
created
foreseen
planned
intended
purposeful
will-based
decision-based
thoughtful
imagined
implemented
invented
generated
by an intelligent mind, a powerful eternal conscious creator
Either biological systems, ecosystems, and biodiversity originated by unguided evolutionary pressures, and long periods of time, or an acting intelligent agency, either using creation or evolutionary mechanisms.
It is commonly claimed that the alternative to intelligent design is chance. But the chance is not a mechanism. Chance is an occasion that allows something to be done. It is the statistical probability that a random, unguided event occurred naturally. Something that happens unpredictably without discernible intelligent intention or causal agency. Either all-natural, physical things, the universe, stars, galaxies, the earth, life, and biodiversity emerged by a lucky accident, spontaneously through self-organization by unguided natural events in an orderly manner without external direction, purely physico-dynamic processes, and reactions, or through the direct intervention and creative force of an intelligent agency, a powerful creator.
Claim: Well, by that definition, evolution qualifies as an operational science. Evolution is definitely observable and (as we showed) testable. All of its mechanisms—whether natural selection (differential reproductive success) or sexual selection (mate preferences affecting the allele mix), genetic drift (genes mutating in ways that don’t immediately show up as good or bad), gene flow (how specific alleles move though population segments), or the founder effect (small populations establishing a base from which all de— scendants build on)—are observable and testable. In fact, these mechanisms are completely accepted even by many 24 mins left in chapter 1% have been used to solve cases that are years and even decades old. Is that not historical science? And doesn’t it still work? So, what then is this strictly operational/observational science the creationists want as the only permissible one? Patterson defines it as “a systematic approach to understanding that uses observable, testable, repeatable, and falsifiable experimentation to understand how nature commonly behaves.” Well, by that definition, evolution qualifies as an operational science. Evolution is definitely observable and (as we showed) testable. All of its mechanisms—whether natural selection (differential reproductive success) or sexual selection (mate preferences affecting the allele mix), genetic drift (genes mutating in ways that don’t immediately show up as good or bad), gene flow (how specific alleles move though population segments), or the founder effect (small populations establishing a base from which all descendants build on)—are observable and testable. In fact, these mechanisms are completely accepted even by many 24 mins left in chapter 1% anti-evolutionists, if you look carefully at their own literature for the fine print; they just avoid drawing the bigger implications of them.
Reply: Historical sciences, and methodological naturalism
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1692-historical-sciences-and-methodological-naturalism
Operational science asks a fundamentally different question: How do things work/operate in the natural world. Historical science asks: How did things come to be/emerge/develop in the past? These are distinct and different questions.
Evolution science belongs to BOTH faculties.
Claim: Evolution is most certainly falsifiable. Never mind the paleontological cliché of finding a rabbit in the Precambrian (there simply should be no highly derived terrestrial vertebrates back then). If allele frequency did not change from generation to generation, then the underlying mutation stockpile for the process would be missing, and evolution would be falsified. That hasn’t happened, and we can’t pretend that it has just to please the dogmatic needs of creationists who take Roger Patterson’s stunted definition of “science” as gospel. Lastly, evolution is repeatable, but we have to understand what this means. Let’s return to our forensic science example. Can a single murder be repeated? No, once the person is dead, then (tautologically) they’re dead. Forensic scientists do not have to completely redo the murder to figure 23 mins left in chapter 1% anti-evolutionists, if you look carefully at their own literature for the fine print; they just avoid drawing the bigger implications of them. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to notice. Evolution is most certainly falsifiable. Never mind the paleontological cliché of finding a rabbit in the Precambrian (there simply should be no highly derived terrestrial vertebrates back then). If allele frequency did not change from generation to generation, then the underlying mutation stock— pile for the process would be missing, and evolution would be falsified. That hasn’t happened, and we can’t pretend that it has just to please the dogmatic needs of creationists who take Roger Patterson’s stunted definition of “science" as gospel.
Reply: Failed and falsified evolutionary predictions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1666-failed-evolutionary-predictions
Falsification of evolution is impossible
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1713-the-theory-of-evolution-cannot-be-falsified
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1713-the-theory-of-evolution-cannot-be-falsified
The great problem with evolution theory, as many writers have pointed out, is that it cannot be falsified. Nothing can falsify it, and that makes it an article of faith. It also puts it on a par with faith in God. Now that I regard as serious.
I say that it cannot be falsified for the following reasons:
1 If it has been seen to occur (it never has, as far as I know) that's proof of evolution(see, it happened!)
2 If it has not been seen to occur, that's proof too. (Never mind, we know it did, pat pat).
3 If it can account for the origin of anything, that's proof. (see, that's proof!)
4 If it can't, then that's proof too. (Ah the evidence hasn't emerged as yet).
It simply cannot be falsified and therefore it is not a scientific theory. Popper says so.
One patronising criticism one hears is 'that's found on a creationist site' as if that invalidates a fact! If one were to say, it's found on talkorigins, and is therefore invalidated, then who knows what wrath will descend? There's a double standard here.
Claim: In a very real sense, no amount of evidence can persuade them. The same cannot be said of any scientific proposition, whether evolution, the Big Bang, or abiogenesis (not strictly a concern of natural evolution anyway, however insistently anti-evolutionists play the Origins or Bust card in their apologetic game, which we’ll have more to say on in Chapter 3).
Reply: As stated previously, what is on stake here, is not, if evolution is true or not, but if God exists, and if he was involved to create the world, or not. Answering that question, has real implications in the life of anyone of us.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3217-review-the-rocks-were-there
pg 32:
Claim: Tiktaalik, transitional fossil
As vividly recounted in Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, Tiktaalik straddled that transition zone quite nicely, with weight-bearing fins that could flex (allowing it to hold to the bottom against fast currents), primitive lungs (attested 28 mins left in chapter 1% where tetrapods are a subset of lobe-finned fish, then they should expect to find a fish with tetrapod characteristics in Devonian strata. Not Cambrian (150 million years earlier), or Jurassic (200 million years later), but specifically Devonian, the window in time in which their evolution needed to have occurred. And not in deep marine or inland terrestrial deposits, either, but in shallow marine and coastal zones, the habitat in which this transition was taking place. This animal would necessarily have the gills, scales, and fins of a fish (they’d be aquatic animals, after all), but would also show features that would make sense in animals undergoing a change to a more terrestrial habitat (where the eventual forms have distinctive rib and limb bones, a mobile neck with separate pectoral girdle, the full lungs of a tetrapod, as well changes in the joints and ear regions). As vividly recounted in Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, Tiktaalik straddled that transition zone quite nicely, with weight-bearing fins that could flex (allowing it to hold to the bottom against fast currents), primitive lungs (attested 28 ruins left in chapter 1% to by the spiracle openings atop its head), and the pectoral girdle separate from the skull, the first fish with the makings of a flexible neck. Time and place, specified on evolutionary predictive lines, and a set of morphological features that ring true vertebrate in transition. Their very existence weighs on the scale of evidence as supporting the model that uniquely anticipated such a form of life would exist back then, so many millions of years ago.
Response:
" Tetrapods evolved " . Really ?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2219-tetrapods-evolved-really
Casey Luskin The Rise and Fall of Tiktaalik? Darwinists Admit “Quality” of Evolutionary Icon is “Poor” in Retroactive Confession of Ignorance (Updated) September 26, 2008
https://evolutionnews.org/2008/09/the_rise_and_fall_of_tiktaalik/
Casey Luskin Tiktaalik Blown “Out of the Water” by Earlier Tetrapod Fossil Footprints January 7, 2010
https://evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tiktaalik_blown_out_of_the_wat/
Claim: Tiktaalik is not the only example of successful fossil prediction. The feathered dinosaurians Archaeopteryx and Microraptor, the mammal-like reptiles Diarthrognathus and Probainognathus, and the wasp-like ant Sphecomyrma all had characteristics anticipated by evolutionary biologists.
Response: There is no evidence, that feathers evolved from scales. Rather that God created feathered dinosaurs, and birds. Separately.
Can the origin of feathers be explained through evolution ?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3184-can-the-origin-of-feathers-be-explained-through-evolution
The Dinosaur/Bird Connection: Dapper Dino & Otangelo Grasso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOXDm55LdSE&t=2435s
No evidence for the evolution of birds, feathers, and flight
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1694-no-evidence-for-the-evolution-of-birds-feathers-and-flight
Claim: Anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, have no examples of this. They have never successfully predicted any fossils with certain characteristics.
Response: Predicting things, and than having a confirmation of it, is not the measure of all things, and certainly not the measure of truth, when it comes to origins. But if seen from a more global viewpoint, predicting transitional fossils, as Darwin hoped, has actually been a huge failure.
Fossils - Evidence AGAINST evolution
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1701-fossils-evidence-against-evolution
Question to Sy Garte: If you know that evolution does not explain the major transistions, why do you still think that evolution tops special creation?
Do We have Reasons to Doubt the Evolutionary Paradigm?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFS8b-9Z0Ko
His response after 1h12m50s: Science has no explanation in regards of the Cambrian explosion, and the transition from unicellular, to multicellular life.
Claim: Indeed, creationists have never successfully predicted any phenomena that should exist if the Earth were only around 6,000 years old and if a global Flood had occurred. In science, this is not to say some antievolutionists don’t try to contribute to the scientific technical literature. Intelligent Design advocate Jonathan Wells authored a 1985 paper proposing “Inertial force as a possible factor in mitosis” and coauthored with Brian 27 mins left in chapter 1% found and interpreted as transitional Anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, have no examples of this. They have never successfully predicted any fossils with certain characteristics. Part of this is due to how few of them do paleontology, and still fewer lay out the characteristics that would need to be changing or not, then seek out the evidence in the way the regular science does so successfully. Indeed, creationists have never succes
Response: The relevant question is not, if the earth is 6000 years old ( i believe actually, 7500 years ), but if intelligence was involved to create the world, which entails a creator, or not. If someone after believing in God, in particular, the Christian God, holds to the view that the earth is young, or old, is a secondary question.
Comparing worldviews - there are basically just two
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2793-worldviews-there-are-basically-just-two-in-regards-of-origins
The model of intelligent design makes predictions, and is testable
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-predictions-does-intelligent-design-make-predictions-is-it-testable
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against production of a feature by undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Observation: Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, constructing functional irreducibly complex multipart-machines, and make exquisitely integrated circuits that require a blueprint to build the object. Furthermore, Computers integrate software/hardware and store high levels of instructional complex coded information. In our experience, systems that either a)require or b)store large amounts of specified instructional complex information through codes and languages, and which are constructed in interdependence of hard and software invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.
Hypothesis (Prediction): Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, and irreducible structures that perform specific functions -- indicating high levels of Information, irreducible complexity, and interdependence, like hard/software.
Experiment: Experimental investigations of DNA, epigenetic codes, and metabolic circuits indicate that biological molecular machines and factories ( Cells ) are full of information-rich, language-based codes and code/blueprint-based structures. Biologists have performed mutational sensitivity tests in proteins and determined that their amino acid sequences, in order to provide function, require highly instructional complex coded information stored in the Genome. Additionally, it has been found, that cells require and use various epigenetic codes, namely Splicing Codes, Metabolic Codes, Signal Transduction Codes, Signal Integration Codes Histone Codes, Tubulin Codes, Sugar Codes, and The Glycomic Code. Furthermore, all kinds of irreducibly complex molecular machines and biosynthesis performing and metabolic pathways have been found, which could not keep their basic functions without a minimum number of parts and complex inter-wined and interdependent structures. That indicates these biological machines and pathways had to emerge fully operational, all at once. A stepwise evolutionary manner is not possible. Furthermore, knockout experiments of all components of the flagellum have shown that the flagellum is irreducibly complex.
Conclusion: Unless someone can falsify the prediction, and point out a non-intelligent source of Information as found in the cell, the high levels of instructional complex coded information, irreducible complex and interdependent molecular systems and complex metabolic circuits and biosynthesis pathways, their origin is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent. We do not need direct observed empirical evidence to infer design. Origins of reality cannot be explained through testing experiments of operational science, but one can extrapolate what we see today back to times that we cannot see today, and therefore these extrapolations cannot be confirmed via the empirical method. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes, not an accident, in other words, but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator. But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprints or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.
Claim: But it’s worse than that. Strictly anti-evolutionist articles have yet to survive the peer-review process in standard journals, and since so many of their articles published in their own journals (such as the Answers Research Journal for Young Earth creationism, or BIO-Complexity for Intelligent Design) ignore so much of the technical data, neither of the authors of this book. are holding our breath for a successful anti-evolutionist piece to ever come down the slide.
Response: If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2247-if-intelligent-design-theorists-do-manage-to-publish-in-a-peer-reviewed-science-journal-darwinists-will-make-sure-the-editor-suffers-grievously-for-it
"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition. Either you accept the rules and attitudes and beliefs promulgated by the 'papacy' (for which read, perhaps, the Royal Society or the Royal College of Physicians), or face a dreadful retribution. We will not actually burn you at the stake, because that sanction, unhappily, is now no longer available under our milksop laws. But we will make damned sure that you are a dead duck in our trade."
(Gould, Donald [former editor of New Scientist], "Letting poetry loose in the laboratory," New Scientist, 29 August 1992, p.51)
Why isn't intelligent design found published in mainstream [b]peer-reviewed science journals? Darwinists use a similar rule—I call it “Catch-23”—to exclude intelligent design from science: [/b]intelligent design is not scientific, so it can’t be published in [b]peer-reviewed scientific journals. How [/b]do we know it’s not scientific? Because it isn’t published in [b]peer[/b]-reviewed scientific journals. Catch-23! 4
From Jonathan Wells Phd., A politically incorrect guide to Darwinism and intelligent design, page 111
Why isn't intelligent design found published in peer-reviewed science journals?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1700-why-isn-t-intelligent-design-found-published-in-peer-reviewed-science-journals?highlight=peer
Claim: Finally, on this quote, we can agree with the author on one thing: what is causing the anti-evolutionist to stall up is not a matter of evidence. Theirs is a theological imperative, but it is a branch of evangelical apologetics, not science.
Response: Theism versus atheism: What is it really about?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2956-theism-versus-atheism-what-is-it-really-about
The theism versus atheism debate is not about anyone providing empirical proofs or demonstrations in regards to ultimate reality. Theists do not need to provide empirical proof of God's existence. Our senses are limited and can observe only a small fraction of reality. One needs to use the best epistemological framework, and intellectual tools, that is science, philosophy, and theology, to conclude the most case-adequate explanation of origins.
The investigator has to be honest, rigorous, and permit the evidence to lead wherever it is. The quest is not about
- Faith and religion versus Science and reason
- Theological dogma versus scientific investigation
- Religion versus science
- Bronze age books versus peer-reviewed papers
- Preaching of supernatural mythology versus the natural
- Facts versus faith
- Magical thinking versus reality
- Magic versus a scientific theory
- Holy Bible versus peer review
It's about
- Good inferences versus bad inferences.
- Good reasons versus bad reasons.
- Reasonable faith versus irrational or blind faith
Either all physical existence, all being, the universe, was caused, created, and fine-tuned, the laws of physics and constants, life, consciousness, and objective moral values were instantiated
by
random,
irregular,
undetermined,
unguided
undirected
stochastic
unpredictable
accidental
spontaneous
uncaused
emergent
happenstance
unintended
unforeseen
events by no mechanism by luck and chance
or
designed
created
foreseen
planned
intended
purposeful
will-based
decision-based
thoughtful
imagined
implemented
invented
generated
by an intelligent mind, a powerful eternal conscious creator
Either biological systems, ecosystems, and biodiversity originated by unguided evolutionary pressures, and long periods of time, or an acting intelligent agency, either using creation or evolutionary mechanisms.
It is commonly claimed that the alternative to intelligent design is chance. But the chance is not a mechanism. Chance is an occasion that allows something to be done. It is the statistical probability that a random, unguided event occurred naturally. Something that happens unpredictably without discernible intelligent intention or causal agency. Either all-natural, physical things, the universe, stars, galaxies, the earth, life, and biodiversity emerged by a lucky accident, spontaneously through self-organization by unguided natural events in an orderly manner without external direction, purely physico-dynamic processes, and reactions, or through the direct intervention and creative force of an intelligent agency, a powerful creator.
Claim: Well, by that definition, evolution qualifies as an operational science. Evolution is definitely observable and (as we showed) testable. All of its mechanisms—whether natural selection (differential reproductive success) or sexual selection (mate preferences affecting the allele mix), genetic drift (genes mutating in ways that don’t immediately show up as good or bad), gene flow (how specific alleles move though population segments), or the founder effect (small populations establishing a base from which all de— scendants build on)—are observable and testable. In fact, these mechanisms are completely accepted even by many 24 mins left in chapter 1% have been used to solve cases that are years and even decades old. Is that not historical science? And doesn’t it still work? So, what then is this strictly operational/observational science the creationists want as the only permissible one? Patterson defines it as “a systematic approach to understanding that uses observable, testable, repeatable, and falsifiable experimentation to understand how nature commonly behaves.” Well, by that definition, evolution qualifies as an operational science. Evolution is definitely observable and (as we showed) testable. All of its mechanisms—whether natural selection (differential reproductive success) or sexual selection (mate preferences affecting the allele mix), genetic drift (genes mutating in ways that don’t immediately show up as good or bad), gene flow (how specific alleles move though population segments), or the founder effect (small populations establishing a base from which all descendants build on)—are observable and testable. In fact, these mechanisms are completely accepted even by many 24 mins left in chapter 1% anti-evolutionists, if you look carefully at their own literature for the fine print; they just avoid drawing the bigger implications of them.
Reply: Historical sciences, and methodological naturalism
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1692-historical-sciences-and-methodological-naturalism
Operational science asks a fundamentally different question: How do things work/operate in the natural world. Historical science asks: How did things come to be/emerge/develop in the past? These are distinct and different questions.
Evolution science belongs to BOTH faculties.
Claim: Evolution is most certainly falsifiable. Never mind the paleontological cliché of finding a rabbit in the Precambrian (there simply should be no highly derived terrestrial vertebrates back then). If allele frequency did not change from generation to generation, then the underlying mutation stockpile for the process would be missing, and evolution would be falsified. That hasn’t happened, and we can’t pretend that it has just to please the dogmatic needs of creationists who take Roger Patterson’s stunted definition of “science” as gospel. Lastly, evolution is repeatable, but we have to understand what this means. Let’s return to our forensic science example. Can a single murder be repeated? No, once the person is dead, then (tautologically) they’re dead. Forensic scientists do not have to completely redo the murder to figure 23 mins left in chapter 1% anti-evolutionists, if you look carefully at their own literature for the fine print; they just avoid drawing the bigger implications of them. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to notice. Evolution is most certainly falsifiable. Never mind the paleontological cliché of finding a rabbit in the Precambrian (there simply should be no highly derived terrestrial vertebrates back then). If allele frequency did not change from generation to generation, then the underlying mutation stock— pile for the process would be missing, and evolution would be falsified. That hasn’t happened, and we can’t pretend that it has just to please the dogmatic needs of creationists who take Roger Patterson’s stunted definition of “science" as gospel.
Reply: Failed and falsified evolutionary predictions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1666-failed-evolutionary-predictions
Falsification of evolution is impossible
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1713-the-theory-of-evolution-cannot-be-falsified
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1713-the-theory-of-evolution-cannot-be-falsified
The great problem with evolution theory, as many writers have pointed out, is that it cannot be falsified. Nothing can falsify it, and that makes it an article of faith. It also puts it on a par with faith in God. Now that I regard as serious.
I say that it cannot be falsified for the following reasons:
1 If it has been seen to occur (it never has, as far as I know) that's proof of evolution(see, it happened!)
2 If it has not been seen to occur, that's proof too. (Never mind, we know it did, pat pat).
3 If it can account for the origin of anything, that's proof. (see, that's proof!)
4 If it can't, then that's proof too. (Ah the evidence hasn't emerged as yet).
It simply cannot be falsified and therefore it is not a scientific theory. Popper says so.
One patronising criticism one hears is 'that's found on a creationist site' as if that invalidates a fact! If one were to say, it's found on talkorigins, and is therefore invalidated, then who knows what wrath will descend? There's a double standard here.
Claim: In a very real sense, no amount of evidence can persuade them. The same cannot be said of any scientific proposition, whether evolution, the Big Bang, or abiogenesis (not strictly a concern of natural evolution anyway, however insistently anti-evolutionists play the Origins or Bust card in their apologetic game, which we’ll have more to say on in Chapter 3).
Reply: As stated previously, what is on stake here, is not, if evolution is true or not, but if God exists, and if he was involved to create the world, or not. Answering that question, has real implications in the life of anyone of us.
