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

So let's start with the obvious stuff for Round 3. Firstly, Con gives the mystifying claim that he wants to debate "whether life actually evolved" and not about whether such a claim is scientific. But surely 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"? There is nothing "narrow" about this debate. Furthermore, proceeding to use this actual sentence as a smear against "evolutionists" is breath-takingly ironic:"Evolutionists want to keep the wizard with his impossible powers safely behind a curtain of technical sounding jargon. They don't really want to deal with the stark essence of their claim: That life 'just happened', alone and unguided."The reason why this is ironic is that as much as Con wants to harp all he wants about the complexities, unknowns, or difficulties, real or imagined, with evolutionary theory, it ultimately does not matter, because every argument of this sort he applies against evolution bounces back to him and applies with even greater force to the idea of a creator/designer.If the premise proposed by Intelligent Design is valid (that H. Sapiens had to have been Designed, on the grounds that "life can only spring from life"), the DESIGNER of H. sapiens MUST itself, have been a LIVING THING. Because if you grant that the Designer WASN'T a living thing, you"ve just NEGATED the life-only-springs-from-life premise which is your JUSTIFICATION for INVOKING a Designer in the first place. And since the life-only-springs-from-life premise requires that the Designer MUST have been a living thing, it equally requires that the Designer, ITSELF, MUST NECESSARILY have been Designed by SOME OTHER DESIGNER. And this Designer-designer in turn, MUST NECESSARILY have been Designed by a Designer^3" who, in turn, MUST NECESSARILY have been Designed by a Designer^4"In short: The life-only-springs-from-life premise, IF said premise is actually valid, ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES an infinite regress of Designers designing Designers designing Designers designing yada yada yada, worlds without end, amen.One way out is to declare that the Designer of humankind is, in fact, NOT a living thing, but if you go that route, kiss your life-only-springs-from-life premise goodbye. Another escape route is to declare that your Designer doesn"t NEED to have sprung from any other life; but this response, like the previous one, just plain old DESTROYS the life-only-springs-from-life premise you"re touting as your justification for invoking a Designer.DefinitionsNow let us address the way Con behaved in the last round. Con essentially didn't address a single thing I wrote in my R2, and while he does present "sources" during his argument, none of them talk about whether evolution or intelligent design are scientifically valid, and half of the sources Con uses are useless (in a debate such as this, linking to an article about a movie is not relavent nor necessary since I hardly think people are somehow unaware of what that movie is), and he otherwise presents no evidence for what he has to say. Con also devotes the entirety of his R2 to declaring evolution as false, which does nothing to prove his other position of ID being true, because even if evolution is false there is nothing to suggest it therefore defaults to ID as being valid.Con instead chooses to focus solely on definitions and states how much he disagrees with them and how this apparently constitutes a falsification of the evidence I provided in my R2. There's just one problem with this: by agreeing to take on on this debate, Con agreed to the set out definitions. For him to now start quarrelling over definitions is rather late, not to mention a violation of Rule 3 in this debate which specifically says not to engage in semantics or lawyering.Still, I will hold my hands up and say that it probably would have helped if I had also provided a definition for Common Descent in my intro for this debate. Luckily, this is easily fixable:Common Descent - In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms have common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor. (1)I believe this goes some way to removing the so-called "vagueness" Con talks about. However, this is the least of Con's issues.Con not only confuses the definition of evolution with the hypothesis for biological evolution, but he also confuses the concept of systems evolving in general with biological evolution, which is in fact the entire reason why two definitions covering general evolution and biological evolution were inserted in this debate in the first place. This therefore makes us ask one important question: Have we actually observed what the above definition of biological evolution describes? Why yes, we have (2), and if Con concedes this, then we have therefore observed biological evolution.Con's conflation of definitions and hypotheses gets worse when he also absurdly dismisses the many examples of genetic variation I provided by only focusing on phylogenic changes. But evolutionary theory quite clearly hypothesises that processes that provide the cause for this have the capability, with enough time given, to affect all life forms (3)(4).Finally on definitions, Con doesn't seem to be able to grasp the difference between the hypothesis "all forms of life can be covered for by this set of processes" with the definition "this set of processes is defined as _______". Clearly, we're talking about different things here.PredictionsNow we move on to the aspect that was quite a major feature of my R2. Con insists that because of the supposed issues with the definitions, we can't possibly make valid predictions from it. What Con doesn't realise is that the way the theory of evolution is defined has absolute nada to do with the predictions it makes. Since Con is so fond of minions, then an analogy that fits the situation is that it's like if we came up with a hypothesis that states "if minions pull the sun, we should expect to see minions and the pulling mechanism if we search around the circumference of the sun with telescopes of sufficient power". With biological evolution being defined as it is, this is what would go in the first clause of the example with the minions, and the test conditions would replace the telescopes nonsense.Furthermore, Con makes the absolutely astonishing claim that hypotheses can't be made on things already observed. If that's truly the case, then because that is the entirety of the experiences people have in science, then Con must surely be saying that no hypothesis can ever be made in science ever. If Con doesn't hold to this view, then he must concede that when biologists are saying things like "If Biological Evolution is true, we should expect to find ______ and we shall look for ________ in tests that are carefully controlled" and then get it right, that evolutionary theory does in fact make valid predictions of the sort that make it a scientific theory and a legit one to boot. (5) Also, if we can't make hypotheses about things we have observed, then by Con's very own prior (to the debate) statements about the observational evidence of ID, ID can't be true either.With this sorted, there's also the fact that Con makes the massive mistake of talking about fossils, as the predictions I talked about in my R2 discussed not just predicting fossils, but predicting things about the fossils.Back to Con.Sources:1) http://en.wikipedia.org...2) http://anthro.palomar.edu...;3) http://evolution.berkeley.edu...4) http://evolution.berkeley.edu...;5) http://www.newscientist.com...;