This argument isn’t about attacking (or defending) the existence of random mutation, or the demonstrated fact that such mutations do introduce new characteristics (i.e., “how life diversifies”). I specifically denied that I was objecting to such “microevolution”.

But that’s the easy argument: I don’t accept all of it without question, therefore I must be attacking the bits that I’ve actually done experiments myself that confirm. It does take a bit of study to sort out the various “levels” of what the umbrella term “evolution theory” covers, although I’d hoped that I’d made it plain enough exactly which scope I’ve been objecting to the AAAS for defending, and which I’ve been willing to assume, at least for the sake of argument, as defensible.

Certainly the AAAS objects to students being urged to think about the evidence for “evolution theory”. (Hard to put much weight in your earlier assertion that “AAAS invites careful and hard examination of evolution theory” when you haven’t offered specifics of how they do encourage schoolchildren to think about whether the evidence makes sense or not.)

Such objection is sort of silly — granted, the stickers themselves may be silly; the parents who suggested them may even have been religiously motivated. One may well say that it’d be more reasonable to warn students that our understanding of gravity is incomplete. But if “evolution theory” is correct, then it’s not going to be dismantled by a bunch of 10th-graders, and the AAAS has nothing to worry about if students do “consider carefully”.

In the meantime, and since we can’t seem to agree on what “we” actually mean by “evolution” today…. there doesn’t seem to be much point in continuing to shed more heat than light on each other. If you’re determined to keep critiquing slipshod thinking among scientists wooly-headed enough to doubt Dawkins, I’m sure there’s plenty of other sites to amuse you. This one’s closed.

No, evolution theory makes no claim at all about abiogenesis. Evolution deals with how lifen diversifies, once it got started. How life got started makes no difference to the theory: Whether life started from a supernatural entity “breathing” life into forms, as Darwin posited, or whether it was seeded by aliens, as the Discovery Institute argues it may have been, or whether it rose spontaneously, as much evidence suggests. Evolution isn’t about the origins of life.

Can ideas about abiogenesis be tested? Yes, and the results have been spectacular. Stanley Miller’s experiments got complex hydrocarbons, and a few amino acids. Sidney Fox’s experiments got cells that do everything any living thing does.

Evolution theory is a whole lot of “here’s the concrete stuff.” Evolution theory is more solid than gravity theory at the moment, and has been for 100 years. We can even manipulate evolution, and we’re still just figuring exactly how gravitons work, with no hope yet of ever manipulating them.

But of course, one would have to have studied a bit of evolution and accurately describe it, to make such a statement.

Evolution theory today heals people and feeds people. Claims that it has serious problems are greatly exaggerated.

“Evolution theory” claims that simple life evolved from inorganic chemicals billions of years ago. This is not something that science is able to test. Science *can* test whether some combination of inorganic chemicals can, in the right environment, react to form simple organic compounds, and whether, given time, those simple organic compounds can organize into structures resembling some sort of life. Science has, in fact, already done experiments along these lines. Even supposing that the conditions of these experiments are actually the same as those which would (in the establishment model) have existed on Earth at that time, demonstrating that something *can* happen does not mean that it *did* happen.

For instance, it’s entirely possible that I went out and killed someone last night. Science can demonstrate that I’d be physically able to, or point to examples of cases in which adult humans have killed other people. That’s pretty shaky evidence to present in court, though, because the law — unlike far too many “rational and honest” scientists — recognizes the difference between “can”, “might have”, and “did”.

“Evolution theory” (in the broad sense — “capital E evolution”, the sense that ID criticizes) offers a whole lot of “might have”, a tiny bit of “can”, and no hope of “did”.

AAAS warns against ID because it is not backed by data — not by lab experiments, not by field observations. It makes claims against observations that do exist, but it presents no contrary data of its own.

It’s as if someone claimed that Einstein’s religious bias makes the Special Theory of Relativity false — but then offers no experimental suggestion and no data to suggest any error. Should such a claim be taught in high schools?

Or should it be put in the trashcan?

Rational and honest people vote for the trashcan on such ideas. And so it should be with ID, unless and until ID is backed in some way by real observations.

My purpose in all this isn’t really to defend ID, and you’ve already found other sites to argue with those who do that.

The basic problem, in this particular discussion and in general, with those criticizing ID (from “without”… i.e., defending “evolution”) is that they confuse experimental support for the (testable) hypothesis that random mutations happen, with experimental support for the (untestable) hypothesis that billions of years of random mutations are sufficient to explain life today. (I’ll call the second part of this “Evolution”, to distinguish.)

It’s Evolution-as-scientific-fact that the AAAS (etc.) defend as dogma, while pretending that the parents, teachers, and scientists who suggested that students be urged to “carefully consider” Evolution are really attacking evolution (small ‘e’). It’s Evolution that is described as “theory, not fact”; it’s evolution that is defended as supported by facts.

ID doesn’t (necessarily) deny the first, but does object to the second. It presents a hypothesis that random mutations were not sufficient, and that some sort of design was required to produce the complexity of life today. Some have proposed experiments that could be done to prove design: for instance, looking for some sort of message, in the form of complex specified information; or looking for examples of structures or organisms which arose suddenly and without continuity with previous forms. (MikeGene has a nice summary of such testing, including examples of tests proposed by scientists skeptical of ID.)

In slightly different terms, both Evolution and ID are explanations of origins, which are past events… history or pre-history, if you will… and therefore outside of (or perhaps just barely within) the limits of experimental science.

So that’s the difference between astrology and ID, to clear that up — one is a hypothesis that the stars currently have some effect on individual people (testable, at least in theory) and the other is a hypothesis about how life came into being (not currently testable, any more so than other hypotheses about how life came into being). Cold fusion makes no attempt whatsoever to explain events that happened a billion years ago.

And yes, I’d be equally concerned if the AAAS starts warning against astrology, *if* that warning is done simply on the grounds that “this doesn’t fit into the way that we, the establishment, believe the universe works”. Debunking it as experimentally disproven? that’s perfectly fine.

So, go ahead…. let those who defend Evolution do an experiment in which chemicals spontaneously and randomly develop into organisms which uninvolved biologists can agree are cells. Is there a single lab working this stuff anywhere in the world? I sure hope so, ’cause clearly it’s Not Science without that.

The attitude of ID apologists, that ID should be considered science though there is not a single lab working the stuff anywhere in the world, is simply arrogant and wrong. There is no royal road to geometry, some wag warned a pharoah once. There is no royal road to biology, either, and ID isn’t the science of the pharoahs, either.

I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the science of the pharisees, however.

Would you be as concerned were the AAAS to warn against astrology in physics classes? What’s the difference between astrology and intelligent design, other than the fact that astrology has a lot more research to back it up?

I’ve often observed that there is no lobby to teach cold fusion. Why is that relevant? Cold fusion has hard lab results to back it up, about 100 times more stuff than ID. If ID is meritorious, cold fusion is the wave of the future and the hope of our civilization.

The problem isn’t that the AAAS and NAS are recommending that evolution be examined. Rather, they’re urging the opposite — saying that it’s “bad science” to examine the basics of evolutionary thought. Sure, they’ll support work, and the NSF/NIH will fund work, that refines the details, or seeks to explain some new discovery in evolutionary terms. But they very definitely don’t want schools to teach students to question that evolution happened. And this isn’t just opposition to the straw-man spectacle of a school teaching only young-earth creationism, either: They object to stickers being placed on textbooks that urge students to think critically about evolution. The NAS doesn’t want students to think critically about evolution.

This is an attitude that seems more characteristic of the popular stereotype of religious dogmatism — “how dare you question our beliefs? you’ll never publish in this journal again!” (Which, after all, is worse than burning at the stake.)

I can understand that individuals may get bored with people saying “are you really *really* sure? what about…?” — but to make stamping out dissent and critical thought a national priority seems decidedly *anti* science.

This attitude is a problem regardless of whether or not evolution is true, or whether intelligent design is “good science” or not because it turns scientific discussion into what the NAS purports to try to avoid — religious debate.

“Intelligent design” offers no such examination. That’s the problem.

Here’s one way to tell: In good science, a solid answer produces more questions, not fewer. Darwin’s observation of evolution produced thousands of questions (Why don’t the new attributes “blend” away? How can a unique attribute stay in a population if most of the members don’t have it? What prompts mutations? to mention a few).

What question is suggested by ID, other than “Who is the designer, and where is she?”