Demonstrated to produce it? Well, I suppose if you begin with the epistemic standard typical to Darwinists of: "If I can imagine a way of this coming to be, which I call natural, then that counts as evidence that it happened that way." then there have been many demonstrations. It's all so overwhelming!

Yet anyone with a minimal amount of intelligence can see that some half-wits have just overwhelmed their minds with their own imaginations.

…apart from ID, means that it isn't IC by definition. So then you jjust find another more complicated system and ask for a mechanism for that.

It is true that anyone who plays a game in which the epistemic standards are set so that hypothetical goo and imaginary myths can be counted as evidence will surely lose it. There will always be something else that can be imagined.

Pure God of the Gaps stuff.

There is no gap that some cannot stuff. That is certain. Yet perhaps they ought to stuff their own gaps first. Perhaps your own mind of the synaptic gaps is merged with your imagination, as it seems it is easily overwhelmed by the charlatanism typical to evolutionary biologists.

At any rate, I think you are correct to note that there will never be a gap in formation demonstrating specific information that those with the urge to merge cannot fill in with their own mentally retarded imaginations.

It's all a case of "we have arguments, and if you disprove them we have other arguments."

That's the way a dialectic usually is. All of what you have written about the epistemic failures of IDists is quite ironic given the hypothetical goo and degenerate epistemic standards that have been typical to Darwinists and evolutionary biologists.

What was it, IDists supposedly need to produce medicine, technology, etc.? Yes, here it is:But I for one would call ID's bluff and and give Behe and Dembski 1 million dollars each as a seed grant and ask them to produce something. Also, I'd ask them to produce an actual textbook on ID that is concrete and which demonstrates how ID is useful, e.g., in devleoping long term strategies for medicine, technology development, etc.

Are you one of those who feels that technology does not rely on creativity, intelligence, design, invention, admitting to essential and necessary teleological forms, etc.etc.? To listen to the half-wits intent on denying about half of all wit one would think that Darwinism has somehow led to vast amounts of technology or that sitting around and murmuring about how "natural" things are has something to do with progress. It seems that they believe that just because they have generally included the notion of progress in their mythological narratives of naturalism that Darwinism therefore has something to do with all "progress." Yet why is it that engineers, the very people who actually apply technology and ideas in the real world trying to make some progress, are the same people that tend to reject the hypothetical goo typical to evolutionary biologists?

My sincere view is that Dembski and some others are charaltans who are getting much publicity for themselves by exploiting the perception that science is treating them unfairly.

Science does not treat anyone fairly or unfairly, nor does "science" speak in a little whispered voice of ultimate reason, truth and light. To read those who believe in scientism these days one would think that science actually can whisper in their ear.

Science does not do anything, people do, and if things were left up to proto-Nazis like PZ Myers then people would be discrminated against in a step by step manner. If history is any measure when the general Herd of an atheistic "scientific community" gets away with the little things then they begin trying to deny medical treatment to those do not agree with their hypothetical goo and the like. It's because they are ignorant and stupid enough to believe that the adherence to their type philosophy has resulted in virtually all of modern medicine. They become half-witted and believe in some form of philosophic naturalism. Yet ironically, their type of philosophy is not linked to "virtually all of modern medicine" but is linked to the eugenics movement, the medicalization of things that are not medical, scientific racism, Nazism and the perverted medicine of the Holocaust.

Medicine originally flowed from the ideas of those who believed in transcendence, hospitals often came about as the result of Christian notions of hospitality, etc.etc. It is impossible to give the perspective necessary in a comment. It will have to suffice to note that the opposite of the Christian hospitality undergirding most hospitals as we know them is the Darwinian survival of the fittest combined with the practical and violent resistance to any notion of transcendence that is typical to proto-Nazis.

This gives pause to ask whether statements we often hear affirming some hypothesis about human evolution are based upon clear evidence.

The official party line in the ID camp seems very much to have consolidated around the consensus that humans, and most likely other species or at least larger taxonomic groups, did NOT evolve.

No, it isn't falsifiable because any system for which a mechanism can be demonstrated to produce it, apart from ID, means that it isn't IC by definition. So then you jjust find another more complicated system and ask for a mechanism for that. Pure God of the Gaps stuff. Otherwise the spectacular demise of Behe's shorlived mousetrap would already have falsified ID. It's all a case of "we have arguments, and if you disprove them we have other arguments."

As for Dembski - first you have to find your pulsar don't you - do you know of any talking pulsars? But what if that pulsar announced in a deep baritonic burst of Morse code - "Darwin was right" I do agree that would falsify ID.

Ethel

Yes, Ethel, ID is falsifiable. One simply has to either evolve an IC system, or provide a scenario of how an IC system could have evolved by Darwinian means. The scenario needs to be detailed enough so that probability calculations can be made of it.

And are you not understanding Dembski's pulsar thought experiment, or do you think receiving long, detailed messages in morse code from a pulsar does not necessarily mean the messages were intelligently designed?

What should a university do with a teacher who insists on teaching cold fusion as the way to go, now?

How much do you know about cold fusion, Ed? Have you ever researched the subject? There is an extraordinarly large amount of research indicating that there is something very interesting going on there, research that continues today in labs across the world. Of course knee-jerk dismissal of the subject is to be expected from dogmatists who rely on a "consensus" to tell them what is real instead of investigating for themselves.

Of course it is primarily religious - but they have always stressed that it is also sensible medical science and that blood transfusions (and various other medical practices for which there is not the least bit of scriptural evidence against) are wrong ***scientifcally***. For example:

These facts render completely untenable the claim by any physician that a patient absolutely must have blood transfused in order to live.
- Blood, Medicine and the Law of God, 1961, pp. 51, 52, 53

There is no denying that in Bible times God's law had particular application to consuming blood as food. Intravenous administration of blood was not then practiced. But, even though the Bible did not directly discuss modern medical techniques involving blood, it did in fact anticipate and cover these in principle. Note, for example, the command that Christians "keep abstaining…from blood." (Acts 15:29) Nothing is there stated that would justify making a distinction between taking blood into the mouth and taking it into the blood vessels. And, really, is there in principle any basic difference?
- Jehovah's Witnesses and the Question of Blood, 1977, p. 18

Are idolatry and fornication damaging to the Christian personality? Disastrously so! So too is the taking in of blood, whether through blood foods or blood transfusions…Transfusing blood, then, may amount to transfusing tainted personality traits.
- The Watchtower 05/15/1962 p. 302

"The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood."…"Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes - these often follow in the wake of blood transfusions."
- The Watchtower 09/15/1961 p. 564

"Criminals in jail are given the opportunity to donate their blood. For example, the New York Times of April 6, 1961, reported: "Inmates of Sing Sing Prison at Ossining will give blood to the Red Cross today." A commendable act? Perhaps not as beneficial to their fellow men as the community is led to believe. . . . in his book Who Is Your Doctor and Why? Doctor Alonzo Jay Shadman says: "The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. It contains all the peculiarities of the individual from whence it comes. This includes hereditary taints, disease susceptibilities, poisons due to personal living, eating and drinking habits. . . . The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood." And Dr. Américo Valério, Brazilian doctor and surgeon for over forty years, agrees. "Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes "“ these often follow in the wake of blood transfusion," he says. Yet it is acknowledged in the public press that organizations whose blood supply is considered reliable obtain blood for transfusion from criminals who are known to have such characteristics." (The Watchtower, Sept. 15, 1961, p. 564)

also take a look at these cartoons

http://www.ajwrb.org/watchtowe...

There seems to be a strange synergy between religion and crank science which is now most apparent in ID and its followers.

Thats a step forward.

My mistake. What I should have said was that ID theory is compatible with large-scale evolution and common descent.

That is true. ID is equally compatible with full-fledged CD, or with special creation of every life form, as proposed by "Of Pandas and People" and Genesis.

Hmm, Dembski has said that he favors common descent (I can't remember where the exact quote is), though I guess that's not unqualified.

Dembski on human origins. As I said, he is quite explicitly skeptical of the paleoanthropological and molecular evidence for human evolution. The very same objections Dembski raises here could be made for any evolutionary transition (and thus would lead one to believe that he is unconvinced of CD in toto), but to my knowledge he has specifically addressed only human origins in this respect.