Evolution is a legit scientific theory, whereas Intelligent Design is not

Ok, I guess for this round I'll spend more going point-by-point with Jon. First, Jon claims that "if the theory of evolution actually is scientific, then does it not follow that our answer to the question of "whether life evolved" is, well, "yes"? The answer actually is "no", but I guess Jon didn't mean to be as technical as I read him, so I'll spend a little more time addressing the actual issues.But I have to address another technical debate point with his third paragraph: If the problems with evolution apply equally to ID and vice versa, then I have won the debate. Jon's challenge is to show that evolution is science in ways that ID is not. If both are defective, his premise fails. And ID is not the theory of the creator, it is the theory that there was/is a creator. Big difference - the identity of the creator is not specified. ID is an attempt to deal only with the scientific aspects of creationism - no religious considerations are necessary.Alright, then, on to some real substance with paragraph four. This is a common complaint, but it is really an emotional one, not a logical one and certainly not a scientific objection. I'm amused that the same naturalists who readily accept multiverses or an infinitely expanding big bang will present this objection. But first, another clarification: By his own definition, ID is the claim that life must have been designed, by an unspecified intelligent designer. There is nothing in there about "life can only spring from life". I guess that's a reasonable corollary, but it's a completely unnecessary one, and it's bad thinking to muddy the waters unnecessarily. So, Jon says that if life was designed, then the designer was designed. Well, what if that's true, how does that negate the premise that life must be designed? If the only door out of a room just leads to another room with door(s), that's still the way you must exit your room. I can hook a Camcorder to my TV, point it at the TV, and get what appears to be an infinite series of images. The images do not cease to be images just because they are images of images. So this is an emotional objection, not a logical one. And it's really just bad logic anyway: The scientific basis of ID is that, because we know the laws of nature, we can infer how natural things might have gotten to a given state. If we find a house made out of stacked playing cards we can infer that someone built it, because it is extremely unlikely to have occurred at random. We cannot therefore infer that the person who stacked the cards must himself have been stacked. A human isn't comprised of 52 flat cards.So, the thing to understand here is that we can infer the causes of natural things because of our understanding of natural laws. We can make guesses as to unseen causes, and rule out things that could not have resulted in what we observe, because of what we do know, not because of what we don't know. We IDers are not proposing some general law of created things, we are just making an inference from the form of life, so this is really a straw man that Jon has set up.Ok, on to my "behavior", under "definitions". First, I did address two 'single things' Jon posted, but hey, anybody wants to spank me... ok, never mind. Jon says I did nothing to prove my position of ID being correct. I don't have to, Jon, it's your job to prove evolution is valid AND id is not. If you fail to prove the former, the latter is irrelevant to this debate. Again, as I said, I'm glad to have the generic evolution vs ID debate, but you specifically and adamantly rejected that option. (ok, I'll try to not bring that up again)But I'm going to consider that by providing a definition for "Common Descent" you have provided a testable hypothesis. "all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor" - that's the kind of claim that can (in principle) be falsified. It's not vague, it's not merely observed, it's a claim that may be true or false.So, we're going to move on talk about how we might test the specific claims of this hypothesis, right? Oh, no, no, no. Jon moves on to the blatant sophistry of claiming that because we have observed his original general observation of 'Biological Evolution' we have therefore observed the specific claim that all extant organisms are descended from a common ancestor.So, Jon, here's the question: How do we test that all extant species did in fact descend from one common ancestor? If there was one common ancestor, might there be two similar ones? Ten? A million? How do we test this? We must answer this question, then do the experiments if we want this to fit the definition you provided: "a falsifiable model describing an aspect of the world based on a particular hypothesis, checked against the results of multiple carefully controlled tests" (emphasis mine) If you can provide all this, then it's time to move on see if ID fails these same requirements. As a reminder, the purpose of predictions in this case is not to win some sort of contest, it's to provide well defined consequences of the hypothesis that can be tested.On to your first paragraph under "Predictions" - I honestly don't understand what you're saying there, just can't quite get your point.But then in the next paragraph, you didn't understand me. I didn't say a hypothesis can't be formed from things already observed - that's exactly how they're formed. To quote myself "Based on observations someone makes a guess...". What I said is that you can't use those same observations as the testable predictions of your hypothesis. So, you cannot, for instance, say "notice how similar the features in various species are, maybe they all descended from the same parent" and then offer as proof of this hypothesis "I predict that any two species you show me will show similar features". What you must do is find a way to falsifiably test the specific claim that they all indeed have the same parent.I probably won't get back to this until after the weekend, so let me make a few positive points about why I think ID is largely equivalent to evolution as a scientific hypothesis:1) Both are based on the same data, it's just interpreted differently. Both see the similarity in species and propose a different cause for that similarity.2) Both must engage in a sort of forensics to make their case. Neither creationists nor evolutionists can observe the actual events they claim.And here are two ways I believe ID is superior:1) ID does not rule out Jon's too-broad-to-be-testable definition of Biological Evolution as "the gradual change of organisms through genetic variation". ID does not argue that life was created exactly as it is today, just that it could not have formed and flourished spontaneously.2) ID is based on a proven method, evolution is not. Design is a well-known concept. Though hard to quantify, the ability of design to produce sophisticated systems and machines is beyond dispute. Evolutionists, on the other hand, after much work, have failed to demonstrate that any significant new features, much less species, can emerge from unguided environmental noise. They will complain that our timeframes are too short, but the fact remains that the hypothesis is based on a speculative method.I suppose the evolutionist may claim that I cannot falsify his hypothesis, and I suppose he may be right. His hypothesis probably is simply not falsifiable - the mutations of the past have come and gone without permanent record. We cannot falsify the virtually infinite series of small changes alleged to have occurred because there can be no record of them. But this fact cuts both ways: What cannot be falsified (i.e. tested) cannot be confirmed either, and remains speculation, not a scientific theory. Maybe someday there will be a theory of natural origins. I don't think so myself, but I do know that there isn't one now, only the guess. The guess is as refined and adorned as a royal princess but is still just a guess.