Intelligent Design should be taught as an alternative theory to Evolution.

"Pro then says if evolution can be shown to have no holes in it, ID is unnecessary. Pro cannot show any true holes in evolution. Pro then says ID can be shown to be very unlikely. " "Unfortunately for Pro, fairies and unicorns cannot be proven false, just unlikely to exist. The moment Pro concedes that ID is not falsifiable, I am winning this debate on the basis that ID is not a science. " These two statements seem contradictory. I offered a way in which ID is falsifiable at least in practice, and my opponent accepts it in the upper quote. But in the second quote, my opponent discards this and says that ID is not falsifiable. I maintain that, while ID is not absolutely falsifiable, it is falsifiable in practice. "If my parents didn't want me to learn calculus, to find out about ionic bonds, or to discover what triggered WWI, then they should not send me to a public school. " This is true. Unfortunately, whether or not a parent is sending his or her child to public school, that parent still must pay taxes to pay for public schools. The public school system should not be paid for by people who disagree with what it teaches. "[H]ow do we decide how to teach ID? " This is a good question. However, the resolution does not ask how ID should be taught, and instead only asks whether it should be taught. So this point is irrelevant. "The purpose of the public school system is to educate the public. This goal is defeated if we lie to kids in the classroom. " For the sake of argument, I will assume that ID is "a lie". Education does not imply truth. The definition of "education" by the Princeton dictionary is "the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill. " This makes no mention of truth. The goal of education is not to teach the truth, but is instead to teach knowledge and skills that will be important in future careers. There are many people in the world who believe evolution and many who believe ID, so it is important that schools teach both theories. "When nearly 100% of the scientific community accepts a theory due to the evidence behind it, that's something. " No, I do not expect forgiveness for my manipulative intent. I realized that you had caught me, and I may as well admit it and not dig myself into a deeper hole. And yes, it is significant when so many scientists support something, but it is not proof, and my other two contentions take priority over this one. "Here's an example: . http://www.pnas.org....... In 1988, scientists grew of E. Coli in an environment which contains citrate. Citrate cannot normally be digested by E. oli, but in 2008, some bacteria displayed the ability to do so. This is not only macroevolution, but the emergence of new genetic information through mutation! " -This does not necessarily imply an increase in information. It is likely that the genetic information was already there, but it was not active. A modification of genetic information allowed for the adaption. This is possible, considering how much DNA bacteria have today. -The difference is that there are some big jumps which cannot be explained as a series of little jumps. See the blood clotting cascade. Another example that I have never seen cited but nonetheless baffles me is the cell wall. 3c. Do you mean the probability of them arising in the 3.5 billion years that they have been evolving? Significantly higher, considering how simple they are. It is possible that archaea have had ample time to evolve. 3d. Cold-blooded animals is a good example. But they still need to get energy from other sources; they cannot just get energy from heat, but must eat as well. 3e. I didn't phrase it exactly like that. Still, I phrased it badly, since I cannot prove that information has never arisen. Let me say that until we see information arise, it is safer to assume that it probably cannot, since a lack of something is simpler than something. 3f. It was guesswork, but that does not mean it was wrong. I have recently written a program designed to simulate evolution. Nothing evolved properly, though this may be attributed to a bad program. Still, it led me to design some formulae for the rate of evolution. An organism contains x bits of information in its genetics. The probability of a given bit mutating is n. The population of the organism is p. Assume that every generation, half the organisms reproduce and half die. This is a reasonable reproduction rate for single-celled organisms. After one generation, on average x*n mutations per organism will have occurred. Half of these will provide an advantage and half will provide a disadvantage. Due to the competition factor, the disadvantaged organisms will on average die after log2(p/(x*n)) years. The #1 most advantaged organism will on average take over after log2(p) years, assuming it does not die first due to the unpredictability of environmental factors. So a little less than every log2(p) generations, the majority of the population will be as good as the original most advantaged organism. Assuming the population is stagnant, this is a linear rate of evolution. Assuming an increasing population size, this means the evolution rate is actually slowing. If g = 3.5 billion and p = 2^60 (a reasonable-ish number for bacteria, and easy to work with), there will have been 3.5 billion / 50 = 7 million mutated bits. DNA contains hundreds of millions or billions of base pairs, and if we take each base pair to be a bit of information, then at best only about one fortieth of all DNA could have mutated over the last 3.5 billion years. This is inadequate to explain the modern diversity of life; it is not even enough to explain the 96% difference between humans and chimpanzees. I have now mathematically proved that evolution is not adequate to explain the extreme diversity of life. Mathematics, unlike science, is universal. Science is frequently backed up by math, but evolution is not. The math is against evolution. Conclusions: I hope that you will not hold it against me that I knowingly used manipulative tactics. The rest of my arguments should stand on their own. No matter what, adults must pay taxes to support public education. It is immoral to force someone to pay for something that he or she does not believe in. Failing to teach ID in schools is not justified.