“Proved” is a word I thought evolutionists never used. It’s all theories, I was led to believe.

When you say “it’s all theories”, I suspect you’re using a faulty definition of “theory”.

A theory is not a guess or a hunch. A theory is a model intended to explain large bundles of facts. Newton’s theory of gravity was intended to explain a huge number of phenomena which had previously been explained using a whole bunch of separate models.

Evolutionary theory is intended to explain the diversity of life, the similarities living things share, the geographic distribution of life forms that appear closely related, and the distribution in time and space of fossilized life.

Now, here’s what people seem to have a hard time getting about science.

No model can ever be proved right.

Any model can be proved wrong.

As this article states, this theory is tested every time a biologist carries out research in his field, and the results of the test appear in the journals. Every research paper is a chance for evolutionary theory to be proved wrong.

The Intelligent Design Movement makes a few predictions, mostly along the lines of “no one will ever come up with a way to make biological system X through a series of small, evolutionary changes.” These predictions are proven false every time someone comes up with a way of evolving such a system.

None of these investigations can prove that evolution is right. For all we know, there’s a Creator working magic behind the scenes, in such a way that it looks like natural laws at work. But when someone predicts X and instead we observe Y, well, then it’s very easy to say the prediction has been proved wrong.

A good example, and something I think I can safely say we would agree on, is the track record of psychics.

Jeanne Dixon used to claim a high rate of accurate predictions – something like 70 or 80 percent.

Every winter, one or another tabloid would publish a bunch of predictions for the coming year. It was a very simple exercise to keep these predictions and compare them with subsequent events, and see how many of them came to pass. You might have the janitor make a similar number of predictions as a control.

Typically, Jeanne Dixon’s record was pretty terrible, and in no event, any better than the record of the janitor.

In essence, the argument is made, “If Jeanne Dixon is psychic, a large number of her predictions will be correct.” We count up the correct predictions, and find that only a small number are correct. This disproves the contention that a large number of predictions are correct, which – by operation of the rules of logic – disproves the claim that Jeanne Dixon is psychic.

If her predictions were accurate, would this prove she’s really psychic?

No.

All we’d have, given a large number of correct predictions, is that it’s consistent with psychic ability.

But it’s also consistent with cheating, lucky guessing, inside information, or even having been fed the answers by an Intelligent Designer. It’s even consistent with the existence of an Intelligent Designer who has a crush on her, and redesigns events to make them match her predictions.

Science can never prove a theory true. All it can do is make an inductive case, showing that test after test fails to disprove it. Science is perfectly capable of proving a theory false, by producing observed facts that contradict it.

“Proved” is a word I thought evolutionists never used. It’s all theories, I was led to believe. If you people didn’t want to believe this malarky so fervently, you wouldn’t likely be so easily fooled.

The reason why I still insist on the claim that design is more likley is based on the simple fact that to bring together hundreds of reactions that appear to have no function in any subgrouping, has such an implausaibly low probability as to be farcical.

I’ll repeat what I wrote in the main post: No one believes hundreds of reactions had to come together all at once! (Maybe you should repeat that back to me, so I know you read it.)

Here, for example, is a link to a detailed description of how the blood clotting system could have come together, piece by piece, with no requirement that the entire system come together in one hugely improbable scrunch.

When ID advocates say that some system is irreducibly complex, they’re probably right. When they say it can’t have been formed by the mechanisms known to evolutionary biology, they have this nasty habit of being proved wrong.

Now, there’s no proof that the blood clotting system had to come about the way this document describes. But to rebut the ID claim that evolving the clotting mechanism is impossible, all that is needed is to show one way that it is possible.

Isn’t it just possible that a “designer”… created a set of basic rules which include, amongst other things, the possibility of variation and chaos that can allow for subsequent change and evolution.

It sure is. In fact, when scientists set out to design artificial life forms, they use a process of inducing random variation and selecting among the variant forms for the “fittest”, based on whatever criteria they have in mind.
The crux of the debate lies in what the basic rules are, and what they cover. Evolutionists believe the basic rules cover everything, and the Intelligent Design movement believes they don’t. In effect, they believe the Designer was not capable of designing a system that worked without constant tinkering.

Isn’t it just possible that a “designer” [Note: I am not claiming any devine nature to this designer] created a set of basic rules which include, amongst other things, the possibility of variation and chaos that can allow for subsequent change and evolution.

You are right to point out that there are a number of blood clotting cascades but it is very plausible that these variations
are just a “tweeking” of the orginal design.

The reason why I still insist on the claim that design is more likley is based on the simple fact that to bring together hundreds of reactions that appear to have no function in any subgrouping, has such an implausaibly low probability as to be farcical. Even if you allow the hundereds of time the age of the universe, the probability is infinitesimally small.

Why do you insist on believing that something that has the same probability as the toot fairy being real, is a proven scientific fact.

Evidence of evolution exists all around us both in its macro and
micro forms, however, just because evolution exists, does not mean that it successfully describes all of the observations and phenomenon in the biological Universe.

You have only to look at Physics to see that theories which were once regarded as rock solid and firmly backed by hundreds of years of scientific consensus are now known to be inperfect or incomplete descriptions of reality. Many of these changes in physics have not involved the complete abandoning of old ideas but a realization that these theories were limited. For example, Newtonion mechanism is perfectly useful as long as you don’t approach the speed of light or try to investigate things on very small scales.

I feel that biologist have not yet learned the lesson that physicists learned long ago. Evolution, does appear to describe many
of the biological phenomenon that we see in the world around us. However, at the biochemical level, there are claring examples of irreducable complexity that are extrenely difficult to explain.

To try and dismiss these examples by adhering to a blind faith
that somehow a little more reasearch and understanding will make them go away is missing the point completely. Just as the lack of ether lead Einstein rethink the way we look at the physical Universe, the case of irreducable complexity that are popping up
at the biochemical level, will force us to rethink the way we look at the biological world.

As to your notion that scientific consensus does not allow people to investigate anything outside the box of evolution, I could not disagree with you more.

Of course we have to use the tool of “scientific concensus” to guide us in our investigation of the Universe. But any good scientist should know that it is a tool that we use to conduct our science. However, it is not a rule of natural law. We should be constantly aware of the fact that sometimes the consensus view [no matter how ell established] blinds us to alternative but scientifically reasonable ways of seeing the Universe