MWI vs ID?

Post Empirical Science is an Oxymoron

Theoretical physicists who say the multiverse exists set a dangerous precedent: science based on zero empirical evidence

Jim Baggot

The ‘mirrorverse’ is just one more in a long line of so-called multiverse theories. These theories are based on the notion that our Universe is not unique, that there exists a large number of other universes that somehow sit alongside or parallel to our own. For example, in the so-called Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are universes containing our parallel selves, identical to us but for their different experiences of quantum physics. These theories are attractive to some few theoretical physicists and philosophers, but there is absolutely no empirical evidence for them. And, as it seems we can’t ever experience these other universes, there will never be any evidence for them. As Broussard explained, these theories are sufficiently slippery to duck any kind of challenge that experimentalists might try to throw at them, and there’s always someone happy to keep the idea alive.

And, no matter how much we might want to believe that God designed all life on Earth, we must accept that intelligent design makes no testable predictions of its own. It is simply a conceptual alternative to evolution as the cause of life’s incredible complexity. Intelligent design cannot be falsified, just as nobody can prove the existence or non-existence of a philosopher’s metaphysical God, or a God of religion that ‘moves in mysterious ways’. Intelligent design is not science: as a theory, it is simply overwhelmed by its metaphysical content.

There's some stuff about astrology and homeopathy as well but this contrast seemed the most relevant. Curious to see comments from those more familiar with ID.

(From the article):

"And, no matter how much we might want to believe that God designed all life on Earth, we must accept that intelligent design makes no testable predictions of its own. It is simply a conceptual alternative to evolution as the cause of life’s incredible complexity. Intelligent design cannot be falsified, just as nobody can prove the existence or non-existence of a philosopher’s metaphysical God, or a God of religion that ‘moves in mysterious ways’. Intelligent design is not science: as a theory, it is simply overwhelmed by its metaphysical content."

I'm not impressed with this writer. You have to be willfully ignorant or very hostile to ID to say that ID is not falsifiable and not science. 

The core concepts of ID:

1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.

To falsify Intelligent Design all one has to do is demonstrate that random with respect to fitness mutations or other genetic variations plus natural selection can produce irreducibly complex biological systems and/ or high information content (CSI). To falsify ID all one has to do is demonstrate that blind and mindless processes are capable of producing what ID says was intelligently designed. If you could unequivocally demonstrate that natural selection- which includes heritable random variation/ mutation- could produce the genetic toolkit required for developmental biology, ID as we know it, would be falsified.

Michael Behe combed the scientific literature trying to falsify the claims of ID, especially with regard to the irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum and blood clotting cascade. He failed to find any such evidence. 

Dr. Behe was asked, How would you respond to the claim that intelligent design theory is not falsifiable?

His response:

"Intelligent design is very open to falsification. I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.

Now let’s turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis.

I think the very opposite is true. I think intelligent design is easily testable, easily falsifiable, although it has not been falsified, and Darwinism is very resistant to being falsified. They can always claim something was not right.

And since my claim for intelligent design requires that no unintelligent process be sufficient to produce such irreducibly complex systems, then the plausibility of ID would
suffer enormously."

More from Behe:

"My argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin's Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can't be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum–or any equally complex system–was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.

How about Professor Coyne's concern that, if one system were shown to be the result of natural selection, proponents of ID could just claim that some other system was designed? I think the objection has little force. If natural selection were shown to be capable of producing a system of a certain degree of complexity, then the assumption would be that it could produce any other system of an equal or lesser degree of complexity. If Coyne demonstrated that the flagellum (which requires approximately forty gene products) could be produced by selection, I would be rather foolish to then assert that the blood clotting system (which consists of about twenty proteins) required intelligent design."

What about the falsifiability of Darwinism? It simply can't be. There is always another convenient and ingenious "just-so" story, or not enough time or not enough resources, something just isn't right,. Consequently it isn't a science. In fact, Darwinism is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscientific religion for materialists.

What about the falsifiability of Darwinism? It simply can't be.

 Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

First, let me say - I have no beef with Mike Behe and his position - as his claim is specific.

 And since my claim for intelligent design requires that no unintelligent process be sufficient to produce such irreducibly complex systems, then the plausibility of ID would suffer enormously."

Behe is addressing bio-evolution as a mindless neoDarwinian process, the predominate philosophical stance of most of those devoted to Physicalism.  However, Darwin's actual stance included mental evolution and defined a major part of the process to be the mind of an organism creating inheritable aspects of behavior that could become embedded in the species.  These Lamarckian "variations" have only become accepted in the last decades!  Non-random behavior from mental adaptations to changing environments are now standard fair!

Yet - they they are rarely attributed to mind.   Mind evolving according to information science pathways has yet to become the focus.  I think it a cruel joke - that Darwin's and Romane's model of evolution was overwritten with crap from Weismann - yet Darwin still gets the blame.

Mind is at the root of bio-functional information processing not the wiring and chemistry.