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 From National Center for Science Education. 
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2007/US/21_sober_explains_what_is_wrong_w_2_14_2007.asp

Sober explains what is wrong with "intelligent design"

Writing in the Quarterly Review of Biology (March 2007, vol. 82, no. 
1, pp. 3-8), Elliott Sober answers the question, "What is wrong with 
intelligent design?" in a particularly clear and informative way. 
Sober focuses on what he calls "mini-ID": the claim "that the complex 
adaptations that organisms display (e.g., the vertebrate eye) were 
crafted by an intelligent designer." After discussing problems with 
two standard criticisms -- that it is unfalsifiable and that it is 
refuted by the many imperfect adaptations found in nature -- Sober 
argues that mini-ID cannot be tested against evolutionary 
explanations of adaptations, writing, "When scientific theories 
compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently 
attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make 
predictions that disagree with each other. No such auxiliary 
propositions allow mini-ID to do this." Sober concludes, "It is easy 
enough to construct a version of ID that accommodates a set of 
observations already known, but it also is easy to construct a 
version of ID that conflicts with what we have already observed. 
Neither undertaking results in substantive science, nor is there any 
point in constructing a version of ID that is so minimalistic that it 
fails to say much of anything about what we observe. In all its 
forms, ID fails to constitute a serious alternative to evolutionary 
theory." A Supporter of NCSE, Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and 
Henry Vilas Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of 
Wisconsin, Madison.

Perhaps we can discuss this on the list.



Martin

-- 
Martin Weiss, Ph.D
Vice President, Science
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111 th Street
Corona, New York 11368
718 699 0005 x 356

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