How does intelligent design explain vestigial organs

[arahant]

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I'm not a big fan of diplomacy in these matters.

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However, I am.
Let's be sure to keep it civil.

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In fairness, I think both my posts were entirely civil. There were no ad hominem attacks. I'm really not even sure what 'tone' was causing the problem; I merely apologized reflexively.

By diplomacy, btw, I was referring to the practise of circumlocution one often sees in such debates. I see nothing uncivil about speaking in a straight-forward manner. If you think I wrote something out of turn, please let me know what it was via PM or post.

[arahant]

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I'm sorry you don't think my tone is appropriate to this discussion. I'm not a big fan of diplomacy in these matters. ID is manipulative propaganda. It isn't science, it isn't philosophy, it's nothing more than a few moderately well-educated people attempting to mislead others into believing something that I believe isn't true.

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FYP

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Yeah...but no.

[Duke]

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I'm sorry you don't think my tone is appropriate to this discussion. I'm not a big fan of diplomacy in these matters. ID is manipulative propaganda. It isn't science, it isn't philosophy, it's nothing more than a few moderately well-educated people attempting to mislead others into believing something that I believe isn't true.

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FYP

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One thing that's true but rarely stated is that it's a hell of a lot easier to demonstrate why a certain belief is dead wrong, than to create a new idea that is consistent with reality and have it be useful enough to explain things. Misapplying the belief label to put scientific rejection of ideas that run contrary to reality on the same playing field as constructive and lazily fathomed speculation is just an attempt to lend veracity to a concept that can't stand on its own.

[Rduke55]

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[ QUOTE ]
I'm not a big fan of diplomacy in these matters.

[/ QUOTE ]

However, I am.
Let's be sure to keep it civil.

[/ QUOTE ]

In fairness, I think both my posts were entirely civil. There were no ad hominem attacks. I'm really not even sure what 'tone' was causing the problem; I merely apologized reflexively.

By diplomacy, btw, I was referring to the practise of circumlocution one often sees in such debates. I see nothing uncivil about speaking in a straight-forward manner. If you think I wrote something out of turn, please let me know what it was via PM or post.

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I thought you were fine. Just nipping things in the bud. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ChrisV]

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The thesis of ID is that God (or whoever) created cells, then things pretty much progressed as the fossil record indicates.

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This is wrong. If this were correct, ID would not be a theory in opposition to evolution. ID posits irreducibly complex features in organisms which could not be evolved. Since it would be impossible for the rest of the organism to evolve and then God to tack the relevant bits on, the argument is that God designed and created the entire organism, at the appropriate points in history.

[Guyute]

There is a difference between theory and facts. Biologists who accept ID (Behe) accept that evolution is a fact, but deny that natural selection is the best way to explain the facts. It looks to objects and processes that are irreducibly complex (blood clotting, etc.) as facts that cannot be explained by natural selection. The problem, say IDers, is that these are things are complex in a way that they could not have evolved. Eyes are complex. But take away an important part of the eye (color cones) and you have a less good, but still functioning eye. It makes sense to think that eyes evolved. But blood clotting requires about 20 factors to occur. Take away any one, no blood clotting. So it makes sense that someone 'designed' blood to clot the way it does. The problem with this argument is that there don't seem to be any irreducibly complex phenomena. Moreover, other facts (e.g., vestigial organs) seems accounted for by natural selection, but not ID.

ID is a scientific theory, and before Darwin, it was the dominant scientific theory. Aristotle's physics is also a scientific theory, and before Newton it was the dominant scientific theory. The reason we don't teach ID or Aristotle's physics is not because they fail to be scientific, but that they are not good science. Attacking ID for being non-scientific is an anachronistic and ill-informed objection, but that does not mean that ID is viable theory.

[kurto]

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ID is a scientific theory, and before Darwin, it was the dominant scientific theory.

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I don't agree. It was a theory but there was nothing scientific about it.

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Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of objective knowledge. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research.

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There was no research or empirical evidence that led people to determine ID. People started with the idea of God and tried to fit the Universe into their premise. That's not science. ID is an attempt to make the world fit a religion.

[m_the0ry]

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There is a difference between theory and facts. Biologists who accept ID (Behe) accept that evolution is a fact, but deny that natural selection is the best way to explain the facts. It looks to objects and processes that are irreducibly complex (blood clotting, etc.) as facts that cannot be explained by natural selection. The problem, say IDers, is that these are things are complex in a way that they could not have evolved. Eyes are complex. But take away an important part of the eye (color cones) and you have a less good, but still functioning eye. It makes sense to think that eyes evolved. But blood clotting requires about 20 factors to occur. Take away any one, no blood clotting. So it makes sense that someone 'designed' blood to clot the way it does. The problem with this argument is that there don't seem to be any irreducibly complex phenomena. Moreover, other facts (e.g., vestigial organs) seems accounted for by natural selection, but not ID.

ID is a scientific theory, and before Darwin, it was the dominant scientific theory. Aristotle's physics is also a scientific theory, and before Newton it was the dominant scientific theory. The reason we don't teach ID or Aristotle's physics is not because they fail to be scientific, but that they are not good science. Attacking ID for being non-scientific is an anachronistic and ill-informed objection, but that does not mean that ID is viable theory.

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ID is a re-emergent theory right now conviniently used to explain, as you said, phenomena that cannot be explained right now. As soon as it is explicable as an emergent phenomena of some known force of nature, then it is no longer a facet of ID and a part of true science. Using your analogy of aristotlian physics, this is like taking any current problem in quantum physics and claiming that, "because we can't explain this right now, it must be an emergent phenomena of the fact that all elements are made of earth air fire and water, and time is not reletavistic".

The whole idea of the scientific process is modularity. A theory is adopted when it more successfully predicts behavior than its predecessor, at which point it supplants the older theory and is plugged into the scientific network. ID is just the module that encompasses all of the elements in biological science we can't understand, and elements LEAVE the ID set as soon as they are explicable.

Using ID in modern science is a devolution of scientific theory - it refuses to accept that the current theory comes as close as is _scientifically_ feasible (explicable with logical thought) and gives an encompassing and sweeping generalization about things the current theory cannot explain. Modern use of ID is therefore not only not scientific but in fact anti-scientific.

[Guyute]

m_theory. Thanks for the comments, I do not really disagree with your reply. The modern use of ID is anti-scientific, and is advocated now only because the courts have banned the teaching of creationism in schools. I was only responding to those who claim that ID is not a scientific theory. It is, just a really really bad one. It has re-emerged for utterly non-scientific reasons and this is unfortunate to say the least.

Kurto. In pre-Darwin, ID was a scientific theory in the sense that it was the only way people could understand how a complex world could be the way that it is. They were in awe at how the complex body worked and sought an explanation. So they looked at other complex things (watches is always the example) and noted they they were designed that way. Thus, using an inference to the best explanation, it seemed to those smart 18th century scientists that it was likely that the world had a designer as well. Problem for ID now, though, is that the best explanation is no longer God, but natural selection.

[m_the0ry]

I feel silly for making that post as long as it is because I can see now we agree.

Its inception was very scientific, its practice in modern times is anti scientific.