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

My heart sank when I read Pro's first bullet point under "what con hasn't addresses": "An inability to explain how it is that evolution manages to constantly make successful predictions." This was the first thing I addressed, and continued to do so. Again, accurate predictions may be made by simply extrapolating from the observations the hypothesis is based on, and don't constitute the direct "if and only if" consequences of the hypothesis that can be used to verify the hypothesis. I must say, Jon, if you challenge somebody to a debate I think you have an ethical obligation to listen to the other side. You've asked for my thoughts, so at least try to understand them. So let me jump down to where Pro complains that I provide a source that "explicitly says that it was evidence for evolutionary theory". This comment brings into stark focus the difference in our approach. Pro merely wants to argue that status quo science favors evolution. It's an argument from authority for him, and this is why the number of references is all important to him. I'm interested in knowing what happened in the past, how we got here, which is quite a different thing. This is why I look at and reference the data from from the Lenski experiment, rather than simply placing a reference in the pro or con column. I must say, I'm rather jealous of Pro: He has a shill and I don't. Let me quote a comment from 'toxicmaniac' to show that Pro is not alone in his approach: "Cons blatant lack of knowledge on the scientific method, lack of actual sources and blatant strawmanning what evolution actually is makes this a painfully one-sided debate" There's one claim toxicmaniac, remarkably, doesn't make: He doesn't claim I'm wrong. So, this goes beyond scientism (1), beyond the belief that empirical science is the ultimate authority: This is a belief that something called science can replace truth. You no longer need to be right, you just have to do the method right. And no, I don't think I'm unfairly going beyond what Pro or toxic have written. This is what the evolution camp does repeatedly: They hide the essential absurdity of their technical claims behind the claim that they are the superior scientists. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", the Wizard of Oz shouted (I won't provide a reference). He didn't want it to be exposed that he was just a guy from Kansas himself. And when he fails Dorothy, she finds out she had the power herself all along. This is my goal here: I want to help the uncertain find the courage to trust their own two eyes. The wonderful thing about the ecosystem is that the data is available to us all. The evidence for ID is the ecosystem itself. I wouldn't necessarily advise anyone to read ID apologetics, or evolution apologetics. I'd suggest just learning all you can about nature. Of course, you have to spit out all the gratuitous references to evolution from so many sources, but you'll soon realize you can do so without losing any actual information. It's part of realizing what a hollow theory evolution is - much of the time it's not really saying anything, it's the equivalent of "peace be upon Him" to the Muslim. Yes, the species have diversified, and genetics is a fascinating field, but it is an adaptive and not creative technology. Like the Greeks or Romans of old, we live in a day of remarkable intelligence and advancement. But they also lived with a whole pantheon of strange gods. How can such things go together, how can humans be so smart and so wrong at the same time? Well, that's a whole other topic, but I suggest we live in the same sort of conditions today. Yes, the elites can be that badly wrong, kids, it happens every generation in one way or another. We can't be so naive as to not see that evolution is our modern creation myth, and has replaced all the gods of our fathers. But as Paul observed in the heydey of the Romans: "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles." We've taken the ancient idolatry to even greater levels of absurdity: We've assigned magical powers to nature itself. Ok, that's my closing argument, fwiw. I guess I'll spend what remains of my 8000 characters going through points I haven't directly addressed yet: "Wrong predictions made by ID" - Again, I don't think Pro understands the role of prediction in the method. Evolutionists have made many mistakes due to their presuppositions, such as apparently useless vestigial organs or the concept of 'junk DNA'. The usefulness of scientific theory is quite different from it's correctness. For instance, early quantum physicists knew that modeling the electron as an orbit was bogus, as real orbits decay. But it was a useful placeholder until they could learn more. "Speciation" - When Darwin wrote "Origin of Species" he simply meant 'origin of all the different kinds of animals' He did not have a highly technical definition in mind (2). So, to then go and define species in narrow terms of reproductive failure, hoping that the amateur will confuse this with an "Origin of Species" kind of definition, is just typical of the 'hiding behind the curtain' that I have alluded to. "Evolution can explain ... instincts, language, and consciousness" This is breathtaking, actually, and proof positive that Pro has an entirely different idea of science than a physicist like Richard Feynman would have. Where has anyone demonstrated that an animal without consciousness developed it through a series of mutations? How exactly would you test for that, Jon? Just saying it exposes what an absurd claim this is. All Pro can possibly mean, if he is sane, is that he has a corollary hypothesis of consciousness that seems to him to work with the overall hypothesis of common descent. "The mass amounts of poor design" - Would these be the very features alleged to have been selected by millions of years of evolution? So features that have shown their utility over many, many years? "The creation of so many species that went extinct" ("left no descendants" would be kind of redundant, eh?) - I can only guess that Pro has some strange notion that an intelligent designer wouldn't create a temporary species? I figure we're all temporary, unless you want to accept eternal life. "Intelligent Design not useful" - Now this one is profoundly wrong. Whenever a scientist of any stripe tries to determine the purpose of any aspect of the human body, for instance, he is using the intelligent design model. "Purpose" can only come from design, or rather, a design comes from an intended purpose. There is no purpose in evolution, only random mutations which survive to reproduce, or not. So if you say that the purpose of the immune system is to ward of infection, you have become a proponent of ID. And you might as well be, because it's going to take way too long to describe how each of the infinite number of mutations that went into developing an immune system got selected. Remember, each mutation had to confer some advantage unrelated to its final purpose. Innumerable mutations would have to occur for each step in the mammalian immune system, and each mutation had to be selected before it combined with innumerable other mutations to confer its final benefit. And the last one I'll have room for: "A scientific lecture that doesn't address either evolution or intelligent design" Yikes. Pro, your claim is that "Evolution is a legit scientific theory". Are you now admitting you don't even care what "legit scientific theory" is? Because that's what the lecture addresses. One of the great scientists explains how the scientific theory works. Ok, out of characters (50+ left). 1) http://en.wikipedia.org... 2) https://en.wikipedia.org...