Friday, May 8, 2009

Turnabout's fair play

Quoting from a letter to Scientific American by Oscar Estévez about Creationism, Intelligent Design (ID) and the theory of evolution:

The questions they [students] should ask are, Does ID make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, they themselves can conclude that ID is "only a nonscientific theory."


I'll ask the same in return:

Does the theory of evolution make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, you can conclude that the theory of evolution is "only a nonscientific theory."

I challenge Mr. Estévez to point to point to a predictions made by the theory of evolution that can be tested and where the test will show it to be either true or false.

Note that there are a number of predictions made by the theory of evolution than can be show to be true but can't be show to be false. For example, failing to demonstrate the creation of new species can always be discounted on the grounds of "We just didn't run the experiment long enough" or "we haven't found the right fossil yet".

No comments:

Post a Comment