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

Successful PredictionsThe first staple of any valid science is that it must make specific predictions about what we should expect to find if the theory is true. On that basis, evolution has been the basis of several successful predictions (1)(2), including finding Precambrian fossils, finding that no two islands have the same species of flightless bird, and finding that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments do indeed have higher mutation rates. Furthermore, these predictions have been shown to be testable (3). In contrast, Intelligent Design has been found to be consistently wrong with predictions it makes. One such example is Jonathan Wells' incorrect views about the biology of cancer (4), and his subsequent wrong hypothesis from those views about how centrioles produce a "polar ejection force", when actually a molecule called "chromokinesin" is what does it (5). Another example are the plainly wrong claims made against Junk DNA (6) as well as the wrong claim from the Discovery Institute that there wasn't any clear evolutionary precursors to the Cambrian fauna (7), among many, many other wrong predictions made by the intelligent design hypothesis. SpeciationA species is defined as "an actually or potentially interbreeding population that does not interbreed with other such populations when there is opportunity to do so". (10) Under this definition, this helps to prove evolution as there are mass amounts of observed speciation (8)(9)(11), including flies and plants. A common ID advocate's rebuttal to this would be that, for example, "fruit flies are remaining as fruit flies", but as there are some 3,000 different species of fruit fly, it can simply be pointed out that dismissing that would be covering "wide range" and that there are quite clearly several different species of fruit flies that can't interbreed (12). It is directly analogous to the fact that, for example, while apes and gibbons are both monkeys, they're still very quite clearly different species of monkey as they can't interbreed, and there are clearly great differences between them, as there are with fruit flies (13). The same also applies to any accusations made against Richard Lenski's experiments, again considering just how many species of bacteria there are (14), and the fact that clearly Lenski's E. coli developed the ability to metabolise citrate (an experiment that was repeated by Lenski with the same results), an ability E. coli does not normally have (15). To use another analogy, it is like if us humans gained the ability to not only drink poison and survive, but to drink poison and actively live off it. The Lenski results gave significant problems for the Intelligent Design hypothesis. Firstly, because the ability to metabolise citrate quite clearly came from evolutionary processes, and not by intelligent design; and it also threw a spanner ino the works of people like Michael Behe who had claimed in The Edge of Evolution that evolution couldn't happen in this proposed way because of the sheer improbability of such a sequence of mutations, where as Lenski's bacteria that were able to eat citrate managed to achieve a three mutation step to gain their current status in just twenty years. Furthermore, Lenski provided an environment for the bacteria to develop, and it was only expected that there would be marginal changes that would make it better for the bacteria to live in their environment, whereas the ability to absorb citrate by the bacteria was not an "intelligent" aim of the experiment and actually came as a shock to the researchers. Therefore, intelligent design flunks on this level too. Explanatory Power and PracticalityIf a theory is scientifically valid, it should be expected to explain things and have some practical use in modern society. Evolution has a mass amount of explanatory power (16), and can explain things like morality, music, personality, and even religion itself (17)(18)(19)(20), among other things. Intelligent Design's answer to all those basically amounts to "God did it" or alternatively that an "unspecified creator did it". and often appeals to William Dembski's filter are made wherein it asks to remove all possibilities for "regularity" and "chance" in favour of design. But this naturally fails on several grounds (21), not least because a highly ill-defined concept of specification and concepts of complexity and information that he uses are OPPOSITE to how he uses the terms in the literature, as well as falsely claiming limits on evolutionary algorithms (22). In design as well, there are also NUMEROUS examples of things which look FAR from even remotely considerable as "intelligently" designed, such as the non-functioning eyes of cave-fish and the longer-then-it-needs-to-be recurrent laryngeal nerve, both of which make sense when explained by evolution but sound nonsensical when posited to be the work of an intelligent creator (23). And there are many, MANY other examples of awful design (24) There's also the fact that since a lot of ID proponents reject evolution, they cannot account for why the Designer had to create so many species that would become extinct and what in turn was the purpose of the dinosaurs if, as the ID crowd claim, evolution is false and therefore the dinosaurs had descendents? In contrast, evolution explains this by pointing that if species are well adapted to their environment, then they will live long enough to reproduce and their species will live for a long time. Furthermore, evolution actually has practical use (25)(26) including in the development of pesticides for agriculture and antibiotics and vaccines for medicine against diseases. It also gets used in forensics (27) and was used to save the Kapako bird from extinction (28). In contrast, Intelligent Design and other anti-evolution beliefs have been found to have no practical use whatsoever. I now turn to Con to present his counter-argument. Sources:1) . http://www.talkorigins.org...2) . http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org...3) . http://evolution.berkeley.edu...4) . http://www.expelledexposed.com...5) . http://www.pandasthumb.org...6) . http://www.nature.com...7) . http://faculty.smu.edu...8) . http://www.talkorigins.org...9) . http://www.talkorigins.org...10) . http://users.rcn.com...11) . http://www.talkorigins.org...12) . http://www.talkorigins.org...;13) . http://en.wikipedia.org...14) . http://www.thelabrat.com...15) . http://www.newscientist.com...16) . http://understandingscience.ucc.ie...17) . http://www.talkorigins.org...18) . http://www.talkorigins.org...19) . http://www.talkorigins.org...20) . http://www.talkorigins.org...21) . http://www.talkorigins.org...22) . http://www.talkreason.org...23) . http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...24) . http://www.talkorigins.org...25) . http://www.talkorigins.org...26) . http://evolution.berkeley.edu...27) . http://evolution.berkeley.edu...28) Sutherland, William J. , 2002. Science, sex and the kakapo. Nature 419: 265-266