Can evolution and intelligent design complement each other?
By Judewang
@Judewang (93)
Malaysia
March 31, 2011 1:03pm CST
I am rather intrigued by both sides of the argument - on evolution and intelligent design and have even asked my close friend if ever the two opposing theories could compliment each other. Why do I ask this? Its because both have their positive contributions to explain about the origin of life and I think these ought to be valued. However, it seems that each is trying to outdo one another. Could they ever come to a point of compromise, for the sake of complementing what is missing about the origin of things? Help me out here.
1 person likes this
3 responses
@meirhu (363)
• Israel
7 Apr 11
Why SHOULD they complement each other.
Evolution is a theory which WORKS and has never been proven wrong.
In all the attempts to prove it wrong it has never been done so EVEN THOUGH it COULD have been.
Intelligent design is an idea which CAN NOT be proved wrong. No experiment COULD prove that intelligent design is wrong. This means that it is NOT falsifiable, and therefore belongs in the realm of pseudo-explanations which explain EVERYTHING that happens and thereby prove NOTHING.
Let's look at it another way. What can be predicted with the idea of intelligent design. NOTHING - because EVERYTHING can be "explained" by it. It doesn't matter WHAT the results are.
On the other hand evolutionary theory is USED - to make better plants, to make better breeds of animals, etc. etc. An experiment that is based on evolution COULD NOT go as predicted and would then PROVE that evolution is a false theorem. The experiments indeed COULD prove the theory false but they DON'T.
All the experiments using evolution WORK.
@Judewang (93)
• Malaysia
8 Apr 11
Thanks, I like the way you presented it. So, does it mean that ID should rightly be seen more as a philosophy than as a scientific theory?
Yet, among ID advocates, they say that the scientificity of ID theory is something related to information theory and observations about intelligent action. In other words, they say that it's scientific because it starts from observable realities - and from which to construct a theory that explains biological systems, without involving any supernatural causes. Whats you opinion regarding this statement?
@savypat (20216)
• United States
31 Mar 11
I think time is the answer here. Given enough time intelligent design can guide evolution. this could account for every thing from universe to smallest particle.
It's all a matter of time.
@Judewang (93)
• Malaysia
31 Mar 11
I should think so. Given the advancements in scientific methodologies and the apparatuses, ID may be able to develop further, hopefully towards a better understanding of the evolution process, hence augmenting what evolution theorists has not been able to explain thus far.
@urbandekay (18278)
•
31 Mar 11
Well, they are theories of a different kind. I proposed, a more sophisticated version of intelligent design back in the 1970s but it is important to understand it is not a scientific theory. For a theory to be scientific it must be open to falsification.
Take for example the theory of gravity, one stone falls upward falsifies the theory. But no such falsifications occur.
Now consider how might the theory of intelligent design be falsified?
Further virtues of scientific theories include prediction; from the theory of gravity we can predict the time taken for an object to fall a given distance. What does intelligent design enable?
So, for these and perhaps other reasons, intelligent design is not a scientific theory.
However, in the form I originally proposed it, quite different from how it is conceived now, it is not incompatible with evolution by natural selection
all the best urban
