Evolution without accidents and also no intelligence?

As for "genetic knockout experiments" showing that some molecular machines are irreducibly complex, these experiments typically involve disabling genes to see the effect on the organism. While it's true that disabling certain genes can cause a system to stop functioning, this does not necessarily imply irreducible complexity. It may simply mean that the system has evolved to rely on all its components for optimal function, but it doesn't rule out that the system could have evolved incrementally.

[Ninshub]

This thread has been moved to this sub-forum, per the guidelines on posting about science and scientific controversies in the forum.

Obviously proponents of ID will claim their theories are ‘science’ - but here’s the thing:

1. Lack of Empirical Evidence:

A key component of a scientific theory is its ability to make predictions that can be tested and potentially falsified with empirical data. ID doesn't provide concrete, testable predictions. There are no experiments or observations that could potentially disprove the notion of an intelligent designer.

False. One testable Darwinistic prediction would be that at the origination of the major transitions of evolution like the classes and the phyla, very many slightly changed intermediate forms will be found covering millions of years of the fossil record, for at least the phylum and class originations. This investigative observation has been done through fossil digging over 150 years, with exactly opposite results to what Darwinism predicts: invariably very abrupt fossil transitions are found reflecting large innovative jumps in complexity and adaptation. A finding of many gradual transitions would have confirmed Darwinism and falsified ID. By the way, studies have confirmed that this observed pattern of fossil forms is not an artifact of poor fossil formation or preservation, as hoped originally by Darwin himself.

2. Falsifiability:
According to philosopher Karl Popper, for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. That means there should be a potential observation or experiment that could show the theory to be false.

False. See the responses to claim 1 and to claim 3. One of the major predictions of ID is that there will be major abrupt transitions (reflecting design events) at the origination of the major classifications of life such as the phyla and the classes. This pattern has in fact been found through very much fossil digging over the years, confirming ID and falsifying Darwinism, since Darwinism predicts a long gradual transition of forms. ID would easily have been falsified if actually, long gradual transitions in the fossil record at origination of new classes and phyla had actually been found. The biggest example of this is the Cambrian Explosion. 

Because ID involves a supernatural intelligent designer, it falls outside the realm of falsifiable hypotheses, and thus is not considered scientific.

See the answer to claim 3.

3. Not a Product of Methodological Naturalism:
Science operates under a paradigm known as methodological naturalism, which seeks explanations for observed phenomena based on natural causes and laws. It deliberately does not consider supernatural explanations, as they cannot be reliably tested or examined using the scientific method. ID, on the other hand, postulates a supernatural designer, placing it outside the bounds of methodological naturalism.

False. ID, contrary to this claim, does not claim anything for the nature or identity of the designer or designers. It's goal is to establish rigorously that the origin of living organisms was by some form of intelligence, whether it be alien beings or whatever, and was not by some sort of undirected mechanical semi-random walk process like Darwinism. Secondly, the limited scope of methodological naturalism is not followed much in practice by orthodox Darwinian evolutionary biologists, who conform more to scientism which is a development of philosophical materialism, which claims that absolutely all things are material/energy organizations - there is absolutely nothing in our reality corresponding to ideas of the supernatural. This intolerant attitude followed by both methodological and philosophical naturalism obviously is a drastic limitation to any human investigation of the nature of our reality.

4. No Predictive Power:
Theories in science don't just explain current observations; they also provide predictions about future observations. ID doesn't offer specific predictions about what we should expect to see in the natural world, whereas theories like evolution do.

False. See the response to claim 1.

5. Lack of Peer-Reviewed Research: Most theories considered scientific have significant support from the academic community, often demonstrated through peer-reviewed research and articles. ID lacks significant backing in scientific literature.

False. This is a self-serving self-caused sociopolitical claim, since the lack of a large amount of peer-reviewed papers published in leading journals is merely the expected result of the closed-minded refusal to fund and publish in the major scientific journals any research related to ID. So, ID research having little funding, and there being a policy of denial by most journals to publish papers, effectively throttles ID in the scientific community and correspondingly in the public media.
 
When it comes to the realm of scientific discourse, theories must meet certain criteria to be considered science. 

And ID does.

Even the catholic church rejects ID!

So what. As shown, ID is a scientific pursuit.

My responses in bolded - nb

As for "genetic knockout experiments" showing that some molecular machines are irreducibly complex, these experiments typically involve disabling genes to see the effect on the organism. While it's true that disabling certain genes can cause a system to stop functioning, this does not necessarily imply irreducible complexity. It may simply mean that the system has evolved to rely on all its components for optimal function, but it doesn't rule out that the system could have evolved incrementally.

Pure speculation. If the biological system has arrived at optimal functioning, according to Darwinism it had to have gone through many slightly changed intermediate stages. Typically, including in the case of the bacterial flagellum, there has been no fossil evidence of any of these imagined intermediate stages, whether they were direct or temporarily simplifying for efficiency. Both should be in the fossil record or still around as living fossils, if this imagined process had actually happened.

The fossil record is, by nature, incomplete. The processes that create fossils are rare events, and many organisms decompose before they can be fossilized. Consequently, not every generation of every species will fossilize. Gaps are expected, and just because we have not found every transitional form does not mean they did not exist. Despite the incompleteness of the fossil record, scientists have discovered numerous transitional fossils. These fossils exhibit characteristics of both ancestral and derived groups. Examples include Tiktaalik (transition between fish and amphibians), Archaeopteryx (transition between reptiles and birds), and numerous fossils that chronicle the evolution of modern whales from land-dwelling ancestors.  "Abrupt" in geological terms can still span thousands to millions of years, which is plenty of time for evolutionary processes to occur. Additionally, the sudden appearance of various forms in the fossil record, such as during the Cambrian explosion, does not necessarily mean those forms appeared instantaneously. Many evolutionary biologists believe that soft-bodied precursors existed long before they left evidence in the fossil record. While Darwin proposed a model of slow, continuous change (phyletic gradualism), this is not the only way species can evolve. Punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, posits that species can remain unchanged for long periods, interrupted by relatively brief episodes of rapid change. This concept explains why we might see "sudden" changes in the fossil record. Through techniques like radiometric dating, we have developed a robust timeline of Earth's history. The sequencing of fossils aligns with this timeline and evolutionary expectations, further corroborating the evolutionary narrative. The evidence for evolution is not based solely on fossils. Genetics, embryology, biogeography, and morphology provide convergent lines of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. It's important to note that while Darwin made pioneering contributions to the field, modern evolutionary biology has advanced considerably since his time. We now understand much more about genetics, populations, and evolutionary mechanisms than in Darwin's era.

Lastly, a crucial point about scientific theories is that they are supported by positive evidence, not just gaps or uncertainties in alternative explanations. Even if there were unexplained gaps in the evolutionary record, that wouldn't automatically provide evidence in favor of an alternative hypothesis, like Intelligent Design, unless that hypothesis could offer positive, testable, and falsifiable predictions that are borne out by data.

The fossil record is, by nature, incomplete. The processes that create fossils are rare events, and many organisms decompose before they can be fossilized. Consequently, not every generation of every species will fossilize. Gaps are expected, and just because we have not found every transitional form does not mean they did not exist. Despite the incompleteness of the fossil record, scientists have discovered numerous transitional fossils. These fossils exhibit characteristics of both ancestral and derived groups. Examples include Tiktaalik (transition between fish and amphibians), Archaeopteryx (transition between reptiles and birds), and numerous fossils that chronicle the evolution of modern whales from land-dwelling ancestors.  "Abrupt" in geological terms can still span thousands to millions of years, which is plenty of time for evolutionary processes to occur. Additionally, the sudden appearance of various forms in the fossil record, such as during the Cambrian explosion, does not necessarily mean those forms appeared instantaneously. Many evolutionary biologists believe that soft-bodied precursors existed long before they left evidence in the fossil record. While Darwin proposed a model of slow, continuous change (phyletic gradualism), this is not the only way species can evolve. Punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, posits that species can remain unchanged for long periods, interrupted by relatively brief episodes of rapid change. This concept explains why we might see "sudden" changes in the fossil record. Through techniques like radiometric dating, we have developed a robust timeline of Earth's history. The sequencing of fossils aligns with this timeline and evolutionary expectations, further corroborating the evolutionary narrative. The evidence for evolution is not based solely on fossils. Genetics, embryology, biogeography, and morphology provide convergent lines of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. It's important to note that while Darwin made pioneering contributions to the field, modern evolutionary biology has advanced considerably since his time. We now understand much more about genetics, populations, and evolutionary mechanisms than in Darwin's era.

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Thanks to Jim Smith, I have become acquainted with an outstanding video talk on the flaws of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, by professional paleontologist, fossil expert and museum curator Gunter Bechly, at https://youtu.be/V15sjy7gtVM .

In this video, he explains how the fossil record drastically differs from what Darwinistic evolution by natural selection would produce, and he explains how we know that enough fossils have been found to rule out incompleteness as an explanation for that deviation.

Excerpts from the video, and Jim Smith's comments (which I fully endorse), at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-i...1#pid53221 :

Differences between the fossil record and what evolution by natural selection would produce:

Bechly: "Darwinism predicts slow changes but the fossil record shows rapid changes"

"The theory predicts gradual changes with small steps but the fossil record shows sudden changes with big steps"

"There is no evidence for gradations of one form of one species into another."

"The fossils are distributed mostly on the terminal branches of the phylogenetic trees but they lack mostly for the internal branches and for the nodes where they should be found according to the theory."

"Even though there are some transitional fossils what we lack is this plethora of transitional fossils that would be predicted by the theory where you would have thousands of small steps that show the transition from one form to another form."

"There is conflicting evidence between the fossil record and between the predictions from the theory. For example between molecular data molecular clock datings between the pattern of appearance that is predicted by the philogenetic reconstruction and the pattern of appearance in the stratigraphical column.

"There are often fossils that are out of place that are found at the wrong place and at the wrong time and conflicting evidence that does not support Darwin's theory can no longer be explained away as an artifact of undersampling or as caused by the incompleteness of the fossil record."


How we know the fossils that have been found represent an accurate portrayal of the history of life:

"Charles Darwin was quite aware that his theory does not agree with the fossil record and so he hoped that this can be explained away with the incompleteness of the fossil record with our insufficient knowledge of geology. And he hoped that over time the gaps would be filled and ultimately the theory would be confirmed by the fossil record but this didn't happen. Now we know a lot more than Darwin did and over time with growing knowledge about the fossil record the problem didn't disappear it even became more acute."

Bechly continues: "Darwin's attempt to explain the evidence from the fossil record away as lack of knowledge about the fossil record and the incompleteness of the fossil record is no longer tenable. And here's why, let me first give a metaphor and this example was coined by my colleague Paul Nelson. Imagine you have a new hobby and you walk along the beach and you collect what the flood washes in. You collect starfish and shells and snails every day you find something new. But over time repetition sets in and ultimately you reach a day where you only find over and over again what you already found. And then you know that you have sampled enough to know what is out there."

"Exactly this method is applied in paleontology to statistically test the completeness of the fossil record and in paleontology it's called the collector's curve. In most groups of organisms we know that the fossil record is sufficiently complete to be sure that the gaps that we see and the discontinuities we see are not artifacts of undersampling or of an incomplete fossil record but actually data to be explained."

"But there is another reason why this phenomenon cannot be an artifact and that is if it would be an artifact we should expect that over time the gaps get smaller and the apparent non-gradual transitions become more gradual but what we actually find is that with growing knowledge of the fossil record the problems don't disappear but they get even bigger and bigger and this shows us that nature wants to tell us something."


"The phenomenon of sudden appearances in the fossil record is not just an exceptional case say as in the Cambrian explosion but actually is a pattern that is found everywhere. It is beginning with the very origin of life. It goes up to the origin of human culture. It is found in all periods of earth history. It is found in all geographical regions. And it's found over all taxonomical categories from plants and protists to invertebrate and vertebrate animals. So it's a clear pattern that cries out for an explanation."

"We have no transitional fossils for all the animal body plans and the Cambrian explosion. We have no or nearly no transitional fossils for the origin of the different insect orders, for the different mammal orders. And this for example includes bats. And imagine that the oldest fossil bats that we know are already totally modern hardly distinguishable from a modern bat with completely developed wings already with evidence in the ears for echolocation. They are just there and there's no fossil record showing the many steps that were necessary to build up these body plans by incremental changes."


"Douglas Erwin who is one of the world's foremost specialists on the Cambrian explosion and Douglas Erwin said that it looks like the great taxonomic categories, the classes, came first and that the lower taxonomic categories came later and that it doesn't look like that the large differences were built up by the smaller differences."

Rapid evolution cannot be explained by alteration of regulatory networks. Bechly says, "Recent studies have shown that this is not true every major transition in the history of life required new genes and new proteins."

And various environmental changes that might require rapid evolution do not explain the mechanism for producing new genes.


Microevolution (small changes in existing species) cannot be used to explain macroevolution (large changes resulting in new types of species) because,  Bechly explains, it is known, based on the time it would take for a single mutation to become established in a population, that there is insufficient time for new types of species to have evolved by natural processes. Bechly says,

"The geologically established windows of time that are available for different transitions in the history of life are orders of magnitude too short to allow for the necessary genetic changes to arise and to spread in an ancestral population and this basically shows that Darwin's theory the neo-Darwinian mechanism is not mathematically feasible."

Bechly explains how it is known that there is insufficient time for new types of species to evolve by natural processes. He says the the time it takes for new species to appear in the fossil record is often similar to the average life span of a single species when there should be many intermediate species needed to produce, for example, a new organ or a new body plan.

Bechly:
The problem for the Darwinian mechanism that is posed by the fact that for many transitions we only have time available that equals the lifespan of just one or two species that come successive after each other is the following: To make a major re-engineering you usually think you would require many successive species which are slightly different from each other and then ultimately after a long time and many different species you get a major new body plan or a new organ. But here you see that you would have to make a jump either with one or two species or even within a species to a totally new reconstruction and so even if common ancestry should be correct this shows that this cannot be explained with an unguided process there you need some kind of intelligence be infused from outside the system to make such a big jump within a single species

There should be many intermediate species between a quadrupedal swimming mammal and a whale, yet the transition happened in a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species.

Quote:
"What we found is that to make the transition between the so-called protocetus which were still quadrupedal swimming animals which were propelling in the water with their hind legs to make this transition to fully marine fish-like whales which swim with reduced legs and driven by the tail fluke for this transition there's only one and a half million years of time available that is according to mainstream evolutionaries knowledge.

Just a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species to make this re-engineering from a land animal to a fish-like whale that's unbelievable and shows that there is a major theoretical problem for the unguided process postulated by Darwin.

Bechly goes on to explain that naturalistic alternatives to neo-Darwinism do not solve the problem of the origin of genetic information needed for those mechanism to evolve.

And he says intelligent design is the best explanation for the scientific evidence based on logical inference:

Bechly:
In my view the fossil evidence clearly points towards intelligent design because the observed changes happened much too quickly to be explained by an unguided naturalistic process. They have to be explained with an intelligent agent. And for me personally, really a light bulb went on when i discovered that this is not based on an argument from ignorance, not based on a kind of god of the gaps argument, but it's just based on a rational inference to the best explanation. We know that only intelligent causes can cause this effect we look at the evidence and we see that this evidence clearly points to this cause. So ignoring the evidence from the fossil record that points to intelligent design actually is some kind of science denial

At the end of the video Bechly explains that scientists are not free to express belief in intelligent design because doing so would end their careers and that there are probably many more scientists who believe in intelligent design than those who publicly acknowledge it.

Bechly:
At the natural history museum in Stuttgart as soon as i came out as an intelligent design proponent collaborations were stopped, I didn't get funding anymore, my website was deleted, I was removed as head of an exhibition that i had designed, and ultimately I was told that I was no longer welcome and that i was considered to be a risk for the credibility of the institution. So it's not a big surprise that many scientists even if they are secretly doubting Darwinism are not outspoken about it and stay undercover and after my coming out as an ID proponent I was contacted by two famous colleagues who are famous scientists and world-renowned experts in their fields and they told me very confidentially that they have come to doubt the neo-Darwinian process themselves so probably there are more out there than we think.

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Lastly, a crucial point about scientific theories is that they are supported by positive evidence, not just gaps or uncertainties in alternative explanations. Even if there were unexplained gaps in the evolutionary record, that wouldn't automatically provide evidence in favor of an alternative hypothesis, like Intelligent Design, unless that hypothesis could offer positive, testable, and falsifiable predictions that are borne out by data.

Answered in posts #23 and #26.

Pure speculation. If the biological system has arrived at optimal functioning, according to Darwinism it had to have gone through many slightly changed intermediate stages. Typically, including in the case of the bacterial flagellum, there has been no fossil evidence of any of these imagined intermediate stages, whether they were direct or temporarily simplifying for efficiency. Both should be in the fossil record or still around as living fossils, if this imagined process had actually happened.

The bacterial flagellum, as a molecular machine, isn't something you would see in the fossil record directly. What you'd find is evidence of bacterial colonies, not the molecular machines that allow them to function. Our understanding of the evolution of complex cellular structures like the flagellum comes primarily from molecular biology and genetics, not paleontology.

The bacterial flagellum, as a molecular machine, isn't something you would see in the fossil record directly. What you'd find is evidence of bacterial colonies, not the molecular machines that allow them to function. Our understanding of the evolution of complex cellular structures like the flagellum comes primarily from molecular biology and genetics, not paleontology.

Good point. I was thinking of relatively large multicellular animals and plants, that leave most of the fossils.