Intelligent Reasoning

Promoting, advancing and defending Intelligent Design via data, logic and Intelligent Reasoning and exposing the alleged theory of evolution as the nonsense it is. I also educate evotards about ID and the alleged theory of evolution one tard at a time and sometimes in groups

Friday, April 27, 2007

Can Evolutionism be tested? Can it be falsified?

First, by evolutionism I am referring to evolution #6:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature
2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population
3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

Take the bacterial flagellum-

1) How could we test the preimise that it arose via #6?
2) How could we falsify that premise?

Oh, that's right! Dr. Behe has proposed such a test. However there doesn't appear to be anyone who wants to even try.

When Dr Behe brought this up during his testimony in the Dover fiasco, the point went right over the head of the judge. The following is the judge's ruling followed by Dr Behe's response:

As a further example, the test for ID proposed by both Professors Behe and Minnich is to grow the bacterial flagellum in the laboratory; however, no-one inside or outside of the IDM, including those who propose the test, has conducted it. (P-718; 18:125-27 (Behe); 22:102-06 (Behe)).- Judge Jones III


If I conducted such an experiment and no flagellum were evolved, what Darwinist would believe me? What Darwinist would take that as evidence for my claims that Darwinism is wrong and ID is right? As I testified to the Court, Kenneth Miller claimed there was experimental evidence showing that complex biochemical systems could evolve by random mutation and natural selection, and he pointed to the work of Barry Hall on the lac operon. I explained in great detail to the Court why Miller was exaggerating, was incorrect, and made claims that Barry Hall himself never did. However, no Darwinist I am aware of subsequently took Hall’s experiments as evidence against Darwinism. Neither did the Court mention it in its opinion.

The flagellum experiment the Court described above is one that, if successful, would strongly affirm Darwinian claims, and so should have been attempted long ago by one or more of the many, many adherents of Darwinism in the scientific community. That none of them has tried such an experiment, and that similar experiments that were tried on other molecular systems have failed, should count heavily against their theory.
- Dr Behe


Is their any valid research program that could falsify evolutionism?

I say "No". And I will leave it to any readers to demonstrate otherwise.

2 Comments:

  • At 8:39 PM, Blogger Matthew Tan Yew Hock said…

    Good point! Now I have a ready answer for those who says that (1) there is overwhelming evidence for Darwinism (2) ID is not science (3) ID is not testable, makes no prediction, etc.

     
  • At 7:52 AM, Blogger Joe G said…

    Matthew-

    That "overwhelming evidence" for Darwinism resides only in the imagination of Darwinists...

     

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