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

As this debate comes to a close, I will first provide a summary of all of the things Con has failed to address that I have brought to the table in order to demonstrate my position as valid, in order from my R2 to R4:What Con Hasn't Addressed An inability to explain how it is that evolution manages to constantly make successful predictions. The sheer scale of wrong predictions made by the Intelligent Design hypothesis. The quite clearly observed examples of speciation. The problems the Lenski experiment gave to Intelligent Design. The fact that evolution is able to explain a hell of a lot of things, and in addition to the examples I gave in R2 I can also add instincts, language, and consciousness (1)(2)(3). The debunking of Dembski's "filter". The mass amounts of "poor" design. The fact that if evolution isn't valid, then Intelligent Design can't explain the creation of so many species that went extinct and left no descendants, whereas evolution can. The fact that the theory of evolution has lead to it being put to practical use in many occasions while Intelligent Design has not. The fact that he hasn't presented any sources so far that actually support his "Intelligent Design superior to Evolution" premise, as he's presented nothing so far but a movie page, a scientific lecture that doesn't address either evolution or intelligent design, and a source about the Lenski experiments that explicitly says that it was evidence for evolutionary theory. The fact that by agreeing to take on this debate, he'd therefore agreed to the proposed definitions and that it was thus poor form to start complaining about them. How it is he managed to confuse definitions with hypotheses. My rebuttal to what he spewed about phylogenic changes. The fact that we don't just predict that fossils exist, but actual details ABOUT the fossils. (4) The failure to defend his bizarre position that even if the theory of evolution is scientifically valid, it apparently doesn't mean that life evolved. The failure to grasp what "with even greater force" means when talking about the problems Con projected onto evolution, not realising that ID was considerably MORE subject to and deserving of such criticisms. The lack of evidence provided for a Designer/Creator as well as Con's assertion that there are "scientific aspects of creationism". The fact that there is in fact evidence for a Universal Common Ancestor (5). The fact that Con didn't even get that he was supposed to provide evidence for Intelligent Design and against Evolution, as per the debate guidelines set out in R1. The mass amounts of evidence I provided within the Source 3 link from R4 about how evolution is in fact testable, which I'll add to with this article that dismisses the "untestable" nonsense further by explaining about peppered moths (6). Again, the predictions about just how similar animals are to one another (the parts about eusocial systems, pigs, and the intermaxillary bone us humans share with other mammals). A failure to defend his nonsense about "interpretation". Add in the fact that Con failed to provide any sources at all in Round 3, (which in turn means that voters must at the very least give me the points for "Sources" and "Conduct" as per debate rules), and we have a well and truly staggering amount of things that Con has skipped over that is well and truly devastating to his case. Now let us proceed to:Con's Round 4Con starts off by claiming you can't use links as arguments. True, but you can summarise the contents within the link in the context of specific arguments you want to make, and the information I've given in this debate does in fact exist in the links I've provided.Con also says that "prediction is not proof". Again, correct, but it IS evidence. Because Con is ignorant about how science works, he quite clearly doesn't grasp the difference, namely that "All scientific statements and concepts are open to re-evaluation as new data is acquired and novel technologies emerge. Proof, then, is solely the realm of logic and mathematics (and whiskey)" (7). In other words, we're open to the possibility that a theory like evolution may be wrong, but in the mean time it is quite clearly the case that beyond reasonable doubt, evolution is scientifically valid, and it will extraordinary evidence to overturn it.Con's analogy equating "Intelligent Design" to a House of Cards is laughable for two reasons: 1. As Con himself admits, the House of Cards is fragile, but there's no logical reason why an Intelligent Designer would make things so fragile or indeed without purpose if all it can do afterwards is just fall down, especially when it comes to the aforementioned examples I gave above of extinctions and how under Intelligent Design and anti-evolutionist thinking, those extinct animals didn't have any descendants. And 2. Con is still conflating human engineered inventions with nature. This was another point I made to Con earlier in this debate. Since the only examples we have of design are in fact of human design, I asked Con whether this meant the Designer was a human, but he gave no answer. Con again appeals to common sense, which doesn't work because, as pointed out: "Though science formally cannot establish absolute truth, it can provide overwhelming evidence in favor of certain ideas. Usually these ideas are quite unobvious, and often they clash with common sense. Common sense tells us that the earth is flat, that the Sun truly rises and sets, that the surface of the Earth is not spinning at over 1000 miles per hour, that bowling balls fall faster than marbles, that particles don't curve around corners like waves around a floating dock, that the continents don't move, and that objects heavier-than-air can't have sustained flight unless they can flap wings. However, science has been used to demonstrate that all these common sense ideas are wrong." (7) Again, there are numerous examples of things that show very poor or even dowmright nasty "Design" if indeed they are the work of an Intelligent Designer, as well as the plain fact that ultimately arguments for design just amount to Arguments from Incredulity (8). Con also dismisses without evidence the fact that numerous small changes across a timeline end up creating a big change in later ancestors far later in the timeline, even though I've been providing evidence for it during the entire debate. Also, Con falls into exactly the trap I predicted he'd fall in when he says, when referring to Lenski's experiments, that " Richard Lenski has watched over 50,000 generations of e. coli without seeing anything to suggest the e coli will ever be anything but e. coli". As I pointed out before, this is disingenuous, especially considering that there are many different strains of e.coli (9) and not all of them are closely related. As I said before, it's like if us humans gained the ability to not only drink poison but to live off it, which is analogously equivalent to what happened in Lenski's experiment. Furthermore, we've got plenty observational evidence of evolution happening in specific terms (10), contrary to Con's claims about it being a "jumble of data and non-specific claims".Conclusion Mixed with his failure to understand science and his breaching of rules in R3, I have proved my position. Vote Pro.Sources1) http://www.talkorigins.org...2) http://www.talkorigins.org...3) http://www.talkorigins.org... 4) http://science.kqed.org...5) http://www.icb.ufmg.br...6) http://ncse.com...7) http://www.talkorigins.org...8) http://www.talkorigins.org...9) https://en.wikipedia.org...10) http://freethoughtblogs.com...