DaveScot Admits that ID = Creationism

The science of biology operates under a general set of propositions, each of which is constantly tested and refined due to incoming data. The most important general proposition is that all organisms alive arose from a single population of organisms. Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists dispute common descent and argue for special creation by the deity. However, Intelligent Design advocates (at least Michael Behe and William Dembski) largely accept common descent. DaveScot over at Uncommmon Descent has a post up where he tries to make the case that Intelligent Design is actually falsifiable.

He starts out by repeating the argument that Judge Jones used in the Dover case, that ID is not science because it is not falsifiable.

In the next part of the post DaveScot quotes Mayr on Darwin's original creationism and how his voyage on the Beagle continually challenged that belief because of data that did not fit with his creationist mindset. Then he does an interesting rhetorical turn:

Huh. It appears like Darwin was testing scientific creationism and found evidence contrary to it.

So what is it. Is ID science or not science? It seems our opponents want to have their cake and eat it too by saying:

“ID is not science because it cannot be falsified or verified. And by the way, ID has been repeatedly tested and shown to be false.”

Now I have to say I agree with the gist of the first part of DaveScot's post. Unless DaveScot is willing to admit that creationism and ID are synonyms though, I don't quite see how his second argument makes sense.

Let's break it down. Creationism is the belief that all species arose by special creation from a deity. Some creationists believe each species was created individually, while some believe the process was only by kinds with subsequent dynamic evolution from the basic kinds. Yet creationism is most definitely testable and indeed has been tested and has been falsified.

I hope DaveScot can understand that.

However, if someone is like Behe, and accepts common descent, but just believes that somewhere in the mix God did some stuff to help things along now and then (helping make the eye, working on some blood clotting, tweaking the bacterial flagellum a bit), then that really isn't testable. There's no way to prove that organisms weren't tweaked by God.

There are multiple ways to show beyond any reasonable doubt that organisms are commonly descended. So I wonder if DaveScot understands the irony of his blog's title or not.

Now the odd thing there is what DaveScot doesn't do. You'd think that if ID truly were testable, DaveScot would hang out the test that could be done to disprove it, or the findings that would invalidate it. Evolutionary biologists repeatedly have given examples of things that would invalidate the theory of evolution -- rabbits in the Cambrian being the classic example.

So the argument is only rational if you admit that ID is creationism, something that the Discovery Institute spent many years trying to argue it wasn't. Thanks for admitting something that all rational people knew all along, DaveScot. Yet even there, DaveScot can't quite put his theory on the line by giving a simple proof of his point -- what exactly is the test that could be done that would falsify ID?

9/28 -- edited to reflect the proper name of the judge in the Dover case.