Why Intelligent Design Isn't a Scientific Theory

[Jacurutu]

Intelligent design is not a scientific theory for several reasons.

1) Any scientific theory must falsifiable. This means that it has to be something that can be tested and proven wrong if it is indeed wrong. There is no means of doing this with the "theory" of intelligent design.
2) Any scientific theory must be parsimonious, in the sense that it must be the simplest and most realistic explanation. Now, I know that many people might say that it doesn't get more simple than saying "God created everything." However, based on scientific observation, does it seem more probable that the universe and all living things were spontaneously generated at once or that modern life is the result of the processes of natural selection and random mutation over the last three billion years? We can rule out the first simply by the chemical law that mass and energy are neither created nor destroyed (although they may be interchanged). The second possibility is supported by mounds of empirical evidence.
3) Any scientific theory should allow you to make predictions. With evolution, you can do this; with intelligent design, you cannot.
4) Any evidence must be reproduceable. There are countless experiments testing the tenets of evolutionary theory; for example, you could test random mutation by inducing mutation in yeast with UV radiation (the same radiation that comes from our sun) and observing the phenotypic variation after plating these samples and allowing colonies to grow. Likewise, you can induce mutation in more advanced animals and observing the phenotypic effects of those mutations. The results of these tests will be consistent over time. The other bases of evolution are quite testable and reproducable as well.

Anyway, I've seen plenty of people claim that evolution and intelligent design are equally viable scientific theories, but intelligent design does not meet the qualifications to be considered a scientific theory.

My question is: how do people still want to call ID a scientific theory and teach it alongside evolution when one is faith and the other is a true scientific theory?

[island]

Confused, be careful, as I am not saying that it isn't valid to use the multiverse against equally non-evidenced entities, like supernatural forces.

My beef is with the principle that says that the observed low-entropy anthopic constraint on the forces defines an energy conservation law that scientists have thrown their hands up to.

[Confused]

Confused, be careful, as I am not saying that it isn't valid to use the multiverse against equally non-evidenced entities, like supernatural forces.

My beef is with the principle that says that the observed low-entropy anthopic constraint on the forces defines an energy conservation law that scientists have thrown their hands up to.

Sorry, my misinterpretation. But as I am one who is always overly curious, any links you could give to help my understanding of it would be appreciated. Not in any attempt to refute, but for personal learning.

[QED]

when so many well-understood principles of self-organization

QED, you're off your rocker if you think that anthropic selection effects define a "self organizing principle".

The paragraph of mine that you took your partial quote from went like this

Why postulate a difficult concept like an intelligent designer when so many well-understood principles of self-organization are known about today? Surely the excuse was only valid prior to the physics of the 20th century?

Why zero-in on half a sentence and force it into a restricted context that it was never intended to be in -- except to raise the preposterous spectre of me "being off my rocker"? In my appreciation, the Weak Anthropic Principle serves to raise awareness of the potential for self-selection effects to distort apparent probabilities. A blend of anthropic reasoning with principles for self organization (e.g. natural selection) can provide scientifically satisfying explanations for otherwise seemingly improbable outcomes. That strikes me as a very important thing to bear in mind when contemplating things that have the appearance of Intelligent Design about them.

A cosmological principle would say that this is a stupid idea anyway, because universes would *not* tend to be different from each other... to the contrary they would tend toward uniformity... duh.

I'm having a little difficulty parsing your sentence. Do you mean that a Cosmologist would say this is a stupid idea? Cosmologists frequently and rightly employ the WAP to introduce the potential for a probabilistic state-space greater than that artificially imposed by our particular event horizon. To deny access to this device is to make an unsupportable assumption that our arbitrary horizon represents all that exists. I'm fully aware of the limitations of the WAP, as John Barrow points out we could use it to argue a natural cause for everything even if we found "Hand made by God" stamped on everything.

The multiverse is the single biggest cop-out on first principles and causality that science has ever assumed without proof.

I know that you can barely contain your rage at this proposal. I agree that it invokes something pretty hard to swallow when we've only just got our heads around the size of our bit of universe -- but please tell me why it is to be given any less consideration than any of the alternative hypotheses on the table.

Vic Stenger, the ideologically pre-motivated, said:
The so-called "anthropic coincidences," in which the particles and forces of physics seem to be "fine-tuned" for the production of Carbon-based life are explained by the fact that the spacetime foam has an infinite number of universes popping off, each different. We just happen to be in the one where the forces and particles lent themselves to the generation of carbon and other atoms with the complexity necessary to evolve living and thinking organisms.

But that doesn't explain how the observed configuration satisfies the least action principle.

Rather, it is a cop-out on the fact that science has failed to derive the configuration of the observed universe from first principles, so don't *pretend* that "selection effects" are a Cosmological Structure Principle, or you're in denial of the facts.

Oh no, selection effects being a Cosmological Structure Principle are more like Lee Smolin's cup of tea.

[QED]

While I'm at it, QED, I noticed the other day in the "Book Review Forum", that you quoted Stenger as promoting silicon based life as an alternative life form to carbon based life, but you should know that his ideological predispositioning means he isn't going to know that the observed universe is 10:1 carbon-rich, but carbon chains and molocules also form more readily when those conditions are reversed, (10:1 in favor of silicon)... like it is ON EARTH!

So there is absolutely no reason to say what ole Vic said, per the known physics.

Vic Stenger has repeatedly demonstrated that he is not an honest scientific source for refutation... which is not to say that refutation can't be done.

I only see Stenger talking about silicon and boron based life as possibilities -- not certainties. Are you suggesting that we can be certain they don't constitute a base for life elsewhere? If liquid ammonia is the ideal solvent for boron then it's hardly surprising we don't see that base for life on this planet.