Design Paradigm, the weblog of the Cornell Creationist Awareness IDEA Club, has a post for the first time in months. Where do they start off? With the standard creationist fare, they start off with a question:
We’ve heard over and over again from the Darwinist side of this debate that ID offers no novel predictions. Intelligent design actually offers many intriguing and novel predictions (you can head over to ResearchID.org to see some of them), but what about Darwinism?
I would love it if some of our commentators or readers would offer what they think are predictions of Darwinism. The definiton of Darwinism that we’ll use is the following proposition:
“The origin and diversity of life has occured solely by undirected processes such as natural selection.”
How about the changes in selective pressures and gene frequencies in any of thousands and thousands of species that have been studied just since the advent of genetic sequencing, for starters?
So the questions that are more interesting to me are: Has ‘Wulfgar’ ever bothered to crack open a biology textbook? How profound is his ignorance of biology? Or, is he being willfully ignorant – that is, is he intentionally being deceiptful?
The jury is out on that one.
PS – Why lie and pretend that ResearchID.org has testable predictions? Where is the molecular ‘footprints’ of the creator? We’ve certainly found molecular evidence for selection, which they would know, if they ever bothered to learn anything about biology.
PPS – Why should any biologist feel the need to address such ignorance? Is addressing it at all worth our time, as biologists, when there are more interesting (not to mention real) questions that deserve our attention?
I simply have zero patience for such profound ignorance. Grrr…
PPPS – And one more – Allen MacNeill has also been dousing the Cornell Creationist Awareness IDEA Club:
Useful Reference:
Sean B. Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution.
Dan,
I know we can empirically see natural selection. I’m not questioning the existance of natural selection. I’m asking whether the postulate: “The origin and diversity of life has occured solely by undirected processes such as natural selection.” leads to any new conclusions that a more modest postulate doesn’t.
By: Wulfgar on February 17, 2007
at 5:11 pm
Origin of life – that’s an extrapolation from “Darwinism”, not Darwinism itself. You should clear up your definitions before asking for examples of predictions, at the very least.
Diversity of life – does selection account for this – unequivocably yes.
Also, you really need to stop equivocating philosophical postulates and testable scientific hypotheses.
By: Dan on February 17, 2007
at 5:26 pm
I know we can empirically see natural selection. I’m not questioning the existance of natural selection. I’m asking whether the postulate: “The origin and diversity of life has occured solely by undirected processes such as natural selection.” leads to any new conclusions that a more modest postulate doesn’t.
“More modest postulate”? What did you have in mind, something that involves an intelligent being with an existence spanning billions of years, and the technology to alter the genome of organisms without leaving any traces? I wouldn’t consider that to be modest, although the evidence for it certainly is.
By: ivy privy on February 17, 2007
at 7:34 pm
Hey, I found that list of ID predictions Wulfgar must have been talking about. Don’t read them while eating anything granular; you could break out laughing, get something stuck in your windpipe and choke to death.
And how would natural selection be unable to account for that?
I see a stumbling block for this one: where are they going to find any unrelated organisms to work on?
Hmmm, we only know of one planet where life exists. Everything we discover will be discoverable from that planet. Do you see any problems with that?
By: ivy privy on February 17, 2007
at 7:48 pm
Interestingly, Wulfgar has an update:
I think DaveScot said something like that on Uncommon Descent last year, resulting in his temporary leave of absence from UD. In any case, most IDers clearly DO have bones with common descent.
And Ivy – nice find on the “predictions.” I think those are grounds enough for suggesting that Wulfgar is extremely naive (at best) when it comes to actually making testable hypotheses and carrying them out.
By: Dan on February 18, 2007
at 12:00 pm
Larry Moran has two takedowns of the Creationist Awareness club IDiocy:
IDiot predictions, and Does Darwinism (sic) Predict Anything.
By: Dan on February 18, 2007
at 12:51 pm
That ResearchID page left out one of the key predictions of ID: black obelisks.
By: ivy privy on February 20, 2007
at 12:12 pm
Hmm, my black obelisks comments over at DP are not showing up. I also made a prediction about cats not giving birth to puppies.
By: ivy privy on February 20, 2007
at 3:40 pm
I’ve made additional contributions to that thread, none of which are showing up. What a way to not run a blog.
By: ivy privy on February 26, 2007
at 11:32 am
You expect more from religious apologetics with an amateurish understanding of science??
By: Dan on February 26, 2007
at 11:37 am