CeilingCat
Posts: 2363
Joined: Dec. 2007
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Until he started his own blog, Mike Gene was one of the more obnoxious posters on the ARN site. He supposedly has some knowledge of science, but you would never know it from reading his posts which tend to favor poorly thought out gotchas. One of his favaorite gotchas, in particular, is so bad yet impresses him so much that he included a version of it in his recent book and, of course, it impressed Denyse O'Leary so much that she reprinted it on UD: | Quote | From Mike Gene’s book, The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues:
Sometime around 1860, Asa Gray, a professor of botany from Harvard, apparently asked Darwin what it would take to convince him of design. Darwin replied:
“Your question what would convince me of design is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing him that I was not mad, I should believe in design. If I could be convinced thoroughly that life and mind was in an unknown way a function of other imponderable force, I should be convinced. If man was made of brass or iron and no way connected with any other organism which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced. But this is childish writing.”
Darwin is effectively stumped by the question and offers answers that he concedes as “childish.” Darwin clearly states that he needs to see an angel to be convinced of design. Apparently, this would prove the existence of the supernatural and Darwin can only view design as a supernatural phenomenon. (pp. 34-35)
Denyse: Right. Lots of science and religion profs are Darwin’s heirs, it would seem. Their world divides neatly into (1) stuff that all just conveniently happens by chance and (2) ruddy miracles. |
Denyse and Mike, listen closely:
Mike and Asa Gray are asking essentially, "What kind of evidence would convince you that Darwinian evolution is wrong and an Intelligent Designer is responsible for life as we see it. To answer this question, let's look at another great revolution in science: What kind of evidence did Einstein present to convince scientists that Newtonian Physics was wrong and that his theory provided a better explanation for how the world works?
Well, to begin with, Einstein had a theory. That is, he had a body of interconnected ideas that collectively accounted for everything that Newton's theory explained and much more.
Secondly, Einstein's theory gave the same answers that Newton's theory gave and did it more accurately. This is called "saving the appearances". A rival theory must explain everything the old theory explained.
Thirdly, Einstein's theory could be used to make predictions that could be compared to actual observations to see if they agreed.
So the answer to Mike's question is: First, ID must present an actual body of theory. Goddidit is not a theory. Second, this body of theory must explain the same things that Newton's theories explained and, preferrably, do it better. Third, the new theory must make predictions that can be tested and they must pass the test.
Now please tell us, Mike or Denyse: What is the body of theories that make up ID? Show us how they can be used to correctly predict life as we see it. And finally, show us how to use the non-existent ID theory to make predictions that can be tested against observations to see if the theory is correct.
This is why Darwin couldn't answer this question to Mike and Denyse's satisfaction. He had just published a very thick book crammed full of theory (variation and natural selection) and data demonstrating his theory. When asked what other theory could account for life as we know it, he couldn't think of any and was reduced to supernatural speculations. And as he said, this was "childish writing".
Things haven't gotten any better for rival theories since 1860. To Darwin's data, we now add copius data from the fossil record, with it's thousands of intermediate species, genetic patterns from interrelated species, molecular biology and tons of additional data.
Creationism hasn't stood still, either. They've changed their name a couple of times.
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