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

In the process of establishing this debate, a set of rules had to be made. One of those rules was quite clearly when this debate was set up, and Con has now violated it. To quote:-4a. Sources must be given for any arguments made. A failure to do so from one side should result in an automatic sources and conduct awarding of points to the other side.Con in his R3 failed to provide any sources whatsoever for his position. He was made fully aware of these rules and yet, after practically mocking them in his R2 with irrelevant sources, he has now gone ahead and violated the rules. As a result, the voter must award me points for Sources and Conduct, as per the rules.Con fails to address why finding the theory of evolution to be scientifcally valid would somehow not mean that life evolved, so his view is irrelevant. Con then misreads me, claiming that I said that the problems with evolution and ID applied "equally". I'm curious, what precisely did Con think "with even greater force" meant? Evidently, that's quite far from "equal". That certainly does not win Con the debate, especially when the vast majority of my points from R2 remain completely unanswered and I have provided evidence in abundance for the view that evolution is scientific. Furthermore, where is evidence for the claim that there is a creator? Con still hasn't provided any? Likewise for the so-called "scientific aspects of creationism". Where's Con's sources? Plus, saying that a "creator did it" provides no explanation, whereas if Con could actually tell us about the creator and how they work, that would be useful. Con dismisses the "complaint" about the infinite regress of Designers by making appeals to the fact we accept multiverses and Big Bangs. This is an Argument from Incredulity as well as appealing to aspects that are not relevant to this debate, never mind the fact that if this was a debate about the wider sciences, evidence could be provided for the Big Bang that evidently can't be provided for Design or a Designer. As to how it negates the premise, it's simple: for one thing, we're still not seeing any actual evidence of a Designer in contrast to the way that we do in fact have evidence of a Universal Common Ancestor (1), and furthermore, this nature stuff is total garbage (2). Why can't things just be random? How do we know that ID advocates aren't just seeing patterns that they want to see because they can't appreciate the natural world without such self-made projections? Since Con wants to now use analogies regarding cards, I'll use yet another analogy against him: Take two 52-card decks. Thoroughly shuffle them together, and deal out all the cards in the thoroughly shuffled double-deck, face up. You’ll get a sequence of 104 cards, right? As it happens, that card-sequence you just dealt out is one of 104 1.03*10^166 different card-sequences, which means the particular card-sequence you got is, therefore a 1/(1.03*10^166) longshot. But ID-pushers assure us that anything whose probability is less than 1/(10^150) is so improbable that it cannot have arisen by chance, and that means any such stupendously-improbable thing must, therefore, be considered a product of Design!This is, of course, rubbish. It’s also a prime example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. Yes, the particular double-deck card-sequence you dealt out is, indeed, a 1/(1.03*10^166) longshot, and so what? As improbable as that card-sequence may be, it happened. You did deal that card-sequence out. And any line of "reasoning" which ends with “therefore, your card-sequence must have been the product of Design” is utter garbage.Similarly, regardless of how improbable the specific sequernce of events which led up to Homo sapiens may be, that sequence of events happened. And the mere fact that said sequence of events did happen, is no more evidence of a Designer’s intervention with respect to H. Sapiens, than the mere fact that you dealt out a specific card-sequence is evidence of a Designer’s intervention with respect to that card-sequence.Moving on, Con claims he doesn't have to prove ID is correct. Uh, actually, yes he does. From the intro in R1 again:I will be arguing for evolution as an actual valid scientific theory, and against intelligent design as I consider it to be pseudo-science. Con will look to assert the opposite, that ID is an actual valid scientific theory, while evolution is a psedo-science.If he doesn't prove his claim that ID is correct, then the most he can hope for is a draw, because if I somehow didn't manage to prove evolution scientific but proved ID to be unscientific, I've proved one of my premises, and so would Con. Because of Con's refusal to cite sources in R3, a draw is now the best he can hope for, unless my spelling and grammar somehow suffers.Next we get to the part where it's quite clear Con hasn't read any of my sources to date. Con spends much of his remaining post for R3 complaining that I've somehow not provided a testable hypothesis for my claims on Common Descent and Evolution and Biological Evolution. I'm curious, did Con's eyes glaze over during my R2 where I presented a good three examples which contained a plethora of successful predictions that have been made by evolutionary scientists about what we should expect to find if the theory is true? How precisely can Con not consider these to be prime examples of having a testable hypothesis for determining whether evolution and common ancestry is scientifically valid? But beyond this, there are plenty ways to test for it, and a whole bunch of stuff is pointing towards it being scientifically valid (3): the biochemistry and genetic code, the nature of artificial selection (eg: dogs, cats), what we learn from paleontology, the similarities in our anatomies with other species, geographical distribution. We've made predictions on this kind of stuff, and we turned out to be right.My point about Con's minion example is that the processes we'd use when we assume biological evolution is correct are more reliable than Con's method. Con also fundamentally misunderstands how making predictions works in evolutionary science (4)(5). It's not just a matter of merely "looking" at some species and remarking how similar they are, it's then getting into detail about exactly how similar they are like with the eusocial systems of rats and termites(6), as well as also making successful predictions about specific fossils and the features they will have in common with existing animals like pigs, as well as parts of our body we share in common with animals, like the intermaxillary bone (7). This is quite clearly evidence in common descent in spades, and further attempts to claim that somehow it isn't is just being willfully dishonest. As Con has already failed to provide evidence in one of his rounds, his next move will prove extremely telling of his ability to handle the evidence as well as understand the arguments. As he conflates hypotheses and definitions, it demonstrates he doesn't understand the scientific method and that he has no place dismissing any hypothesis as invalid.As for the nonsense on "interpretation", the facts evolution finds is considered evidence for it because it quite clearly fits it and doesn't for other "theories" (8). As for why Con thinks ID is "superior", yet again no sources/evidence is provided. This undermines his claim. Sources 1) http://bioweb.cs.earlham.edu...2) http://www.talkorigins.org...3) http://www.nullens.org...4) http://www.talkorigins.org...5) http://www.talkorigins.org...6) http://www.newscientist.com...7) http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org...8) http://www.talkorigins.org...