Stop With This "ID isn't Science" Crap

[David Sklansky]

I don't know if it is because I am a professional poker player or a college dropout that I think this way, but I get very irritated when evolutionists say that ID should be taught only in philosphy courses because if "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science". Nonsense. The only good reason it shouldn't be taught is if it is very unlikely to be true. Which is apparently the case.

But if evidence suggested otherwise, (for instance a group of super intelligent beings made up only of gold and argon who spoke their own language came spewing out of Mt. Helens with the story that they were created by Andy Fox), it would be mathematically and probablistically wrong to claim that these beings were more likely to have been evolved than created by AF. Science has no right to choose the less likely explanation even if probability, rather than experimental evidence is the basis for the other answer.

[bocablkr]

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I don't know if it is because I am a professional poker player or a college dropout that I think this way, but I get very irritated when evolutionists say that ID should be taught only in philosphy courses because if "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science". Nonsense. The only good reason it shouldn't be taught is if it is very unlikely to be true. Which is apparently the case.

But if evidence suggested otherwise, (for instance a group of super intelligent beings made up only of gold and argon who spoke their own language came spewing out of Mt. Helens with the story that they were created by Andy Fox), it would be mathematically and probablistically wrong to claim that these beings were more likely to have been evolved than created by AF. Science has no right to choose the less likely explanation even if probability, rather than experimental evidence is the basis for the other answer.

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Even if this post is tongue-in-cheek why give more ammo to the ID'ers? This statement is all you need - "if it isn't falsifiable it isn't science - PERIOD"

[benkahuna]

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I don't know if it is because I am a professional poker player or a college dropout that I think this way, but I get very irritated when evolutionists say that ID should be taught only in philosphy courses because if "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science". Nonsense. The only good reason it shouldn't be taught is if it is very unlikely to be true. Which is apparently the case.

But if evidence suggested otherwise, (for instance a group of super intelligent beings made up only of gold and argon who spoke their own language came spewing out of Mt. Helens with the story that they were created by Andy Fox), it would be mathematically and probablistically wrong to claim that these beings were more likely to have been evolved than created by AF. Science has no right to choose the less likely explanation even if probability, rather than experimental evidence is the basis for the other answer.

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You tell em. I agree with you that the reasoning you mention doesn't make ID NOT science. I think even scientific theories require some evidence that comes from scientific or mathematical reasoning (like thermodynamics or string theory).

If your funky Ar-Au creatures came out of Mt. St. Helens, we would have some evidence that ID was science. That not being the case and further not having any scientific reasoning backing the notion of ID puts ID firmly in the realm of philosophy for me. Considering myself a responsible scientist requires that I am willing to change my opinion in response to evidence suggesting ID is anything other than insecure, tautological reasoning designed to insert G-d into modern scientific thinking. I think G-d and evolution ought to be able to peacefully coexist, but not through ID.

[Maddog121]

It's because you're a professional poker player and a college drop out. /images/graemlins/grin.gif
The problem with ID isn't its truth or falseness. It is because it is a scientific dead end. It stops the questioning, because if there is a question, it just plugs in the answer - outside intelligent force. How boring and useless can one be?

[gumpzilla]

You can have truth that has nothing to do with science. An example that comes to mind is the kind of vacuous truth by definition of a statement such as "There are no married bachelors."

Falsifiability is an important criterion for talking about science because without it, any kind of experimental approach incapable of saying anything, and so puts it outside the reach of science. To take your example, one can easily view your gold-argon constructions as being a falsification of evolution. This doesn't mean that ID has suddenly become a scientific way of viewing things; it just means that we are currently lacking a scientific explanation for that phenomenon.

I'm not well versed in the philosophy of science, and I'm sure that we can come up with reasonable arguments about Popper's falsifiability stance, but I think it does capture a lot of what's essential about real science.

[Trantor]

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I don't know if it is because I am a professional poker player or a college dropout that I think this way, but I get very irritated when evolutionists say that ID should be taught only in philosphy courses because if "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science". Nonsense.

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Could you perhaps clarify what youu think is nonsense: that evolutionist say ID is not a science because "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science" (because you disagree with this statement about science) and/or you agree ID is not a science but you think it is nonsense to say that it should not therefore be taught in a science class?

[Zygote]

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Science has no right to choose the less likely explanation even if probability, rather than experimental evidence is the basis for the other answer.


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What are you talking about? Experimental evidence is what makes an event probably true. Your andyfox story would have to be observed, thereby rendering it experimental evidence, for this to be considered probably true. Without experimental evidence, the story is as good as the old testament and can't be probably true. Science relies on experimental evidence to tell what is probably true. I think you are confused.



Further, evolution is about as unlikely to be false as the earth not being flat. when theory and observation meet, science takes a leap forward. i'm still waiting for my observation of ID. If ID advocates want this to be taught in the science class, they must postulate theories and find observations to progress science. The fact is that ID sort of started in the science class, but, ironically, has evolved out. This is because science preserves theories that meet and agree with observations, and (science) throws everything else away (unless they have reasonable experimental promise to merge theory and observation). ID was thrown away long ago and no theories or observations, old or new, have suggested that we should preserve this theory in the science room. Thats why it stays out

[goofball]

What is science then David?

[David Sklansky]

Forget my Andy Fox example. The question "were human beings designed rather than evolved" is a scientific/probability question, NOT a philosophy question. If there is a one in a quadrillion chance that a designer exists and the probability that humans could have evolved this quickly is one in two quadrillion, than there is a a two thirds chance that we were designed. But don't forget that the designer need not be God.

[chezlaw]

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Forget my Andy Fox example. The question "were human beings designed rather than evolved" is a scientific/probability question, NOT a philosophy question. If there is a one in a quadrillion chance that a designer exists and the probability that humans could have evolved this quickly is one in two quadrillion, than there is a a two thirds chance that we were designed. But don't forget that the designer need not be God.

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If ID is just a case of querying how evolution could do the job in the time then its its evolutionary theory which is perfectly respectable science. That is why evolution is science, in principle it could be shown to fail.

but ID is not restricted to humanity and the designer does have to be god, otherwise ID is applied to the designer. This is not a scientific/probability question unless there is some method of deciding the question of whether the infinite regress ends with god.

chez

[superleeds]

Why one in a quadrillion, real IDer's say I in a 100. It's got nothing to do with science and nothing to do with probability and everything to do with 'oh please Lord, don't let my existence mean jack chit'.

[maurile]

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The question "were human beings designed rather than evolved" is a scientific/probability question, NOT a philosophy question.

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Whether humans were designed is not a scientific question until somebody can come up with some way to empirically distinguish between designed entities and non-designed entities. So far, nobody has done this. The idea that humans were designed does not rule out any possible observation we might make -- whatever we observe, it's possible that things were just designed that way. So the idea that humans were designed is untestable. There's no experiment we can do to rule it out. So it's not science.

(The idea that humans have evolved, on the other hand, is inconsistent with plenty of possible observations. Just to pick an easy one, if you find human fossils that predate the earliest non-human mammalian lineage, then humans couldn't have evolved from non-human mammals.)

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If there is a one in a quadrillion chance that a designer exists and the probability that humans could have evolved this quickly is one in two quadrillion, than there is a a two thirds chance that we were designed. But don't forget that the designer need not be God.

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Fine, but that's not science.

[maurile]

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I don't know if it is because I am a professional poker player or a college dropout that I think this way, but I get very irritated when evolutionists say that ID should be taught only in philosphy courses because if "it isn't falsifiable it isn't science". Nonsense. The only good reason it shouldn't be taught is if it is very unlikely to be true. Which is apparently the case.

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Do you think the notion that a flush beats a straight should be taught in science class? It is very likely to be true.

Here's the thing. Highschool science textbooks (and therefore classes) present a summary of the ideas well-supported in the primary literature (i.e., peer-reviewed articles in science journals).

Biology classes teach about how animals and plants have different cell structures, about how photosynthesis works, and about the common ancestry of separate species because all of these things have been reported in the science journals.

You will not find anything about "intelligent design" in the science journals, however. There's no research program associated with it. There are no experimental results to report because IDers don't do any experiments. There's nothing to write up in a journal article. It isn't science. Writings on ID will be found only in newspaper op-ed pieces, blogs, and books intended for a popular audience -- not in the professional scientific literature. But highschool science textbooks aren't supposed to summarize what's in some ignoramus's blog -- they are supposed to summarize what's in the professional scientific literature.

That's why ID isn't (and shouldn't be) taught in biology classes.

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But if evidence suggested otherwise, (for instance a group of super intelligent beings made up only of gold and argon who spoke their own language came spewing out of Mt. Helens with the story that they were created by Andy Fox), it would be mathematically and probablistically wrong to claim that these beings were more likely to have been evolved than created by AF.

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So nobody would claim that.

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Science has no right to choose the less likely explanation even if probability, rather than experimental evidence is the basis for the other answer.

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Science doesn't choose the less likely explanation.

nh