re: Impressive support for Intelligent Design

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scientists are people. They have biases and worldviews that drive their exploration just like anybody else. And they do NOT restrict themselves to evidence that can be tested; that's nearly impossible when looking at the historical sciences.

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Replace “scientists” here with “those who read the Bible literally” and you have the same outcome, except for the very important fact that scientists can be proven wrong by, well, the scientific method, while the literal Bible readers will just do what you and Foo have been doing, which is waving your hands and yelling “deus ex machina”.

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Let's get to the core of your argument. First, let me see if I’m understanding your position correctly.

Your argument seems to be that the scientific method already assumes methodological naturalism, which means supernatural explanations are excluded from the start. Because of that starting assumption, scientists will always favor natural explanations even in cases where a supernatural explanation might actually be true. So in your view, science isn’t just limiting itself to testable claims as a practical rule. It’s also building in a philosophical bias that can lead it to reject true explanations simply because they involve supernatural causes.

Is that a fair summary of your position, or am I misunderstanding what you’re getting at?

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Yes, that's a fair summary.

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Yes, that's a fair summary.

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Then I think the disagreement is pretty straightforward.

Your position is that science should allow non-testable sources of evidence, like supernatural testimony, to inform its conclusions.

My point has only been about what science is. The scientific method limits explanations to claims that produce observable consequences that can be compared against evidence.

So at that point we’re not really debating evolution or the data anymore. We’re debating whether the rules of the scientific method should be changed to include non-testable claims.

I do appreciate the good faith effort you’ve brought to the exchange. But your objection ultimately comes down to a philosophical view that science should include non-falsifiable evidence, while I’m describing the method as it actually operates. Since I’m not debating philosophy or theology here, that leaves us at a natural impasse.

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You have no idea if that’s true nor is it falsifiable.

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Correct. And I never claimed otherwise. My quote:

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That likely wasn’t literally one individual cell, but a population of primitive microbes sharing genes in early ecosystems.

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You pulled out one line from my post about whether the earliest ancestor was a single cell or a small population and treated that as if it were the core claim and were still forced to misrepresent me just to do that.

That line was included because you previously framed the theory to include “all life descending from one lucky cell,” which isn’t what evolutionary biology claims.

Clarifying that point was simply correcting that description. Whether the earliest ancestor was one cell or a population doesn’t change the theory in any meaningful way, and that specific framing also seems to be another argument you’ve now abandoned.

The actual claim is universal common ancestry, the idea that all modern life traces back to a single ancestral lineage.

Do you care to address that?

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When you say there are “gaps spackled over with ‘it’s possible,’” what specific predictions of common ancestry do you think fail when we compare them to the evidence?

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So the evidence we have shows the tree of life. One common ancestor, then we've got the fossil record with all the various forms, we know exactly how an early amphibian evolved into a horse. We know everything; we can map it out and show the evidence to anybody who cares to look.

This is your claim, correct? Or are there gaps in our knowledge and the physical evidence?

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So the evidence we have shows the tree of life. One common ancestor, then we've got the fossil record with all the various forms, we know exactly how an early amphibian evolved into a horse. We know everything; we can map it out and show the evidence to anybody who cares to look.

This is your claim, correct? Or are there gaps in our knowledge and the physical evidence?

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No, that’s not my claim. You simply exaggerated my actual claims and attacked your own exaggerations.

Science doesn’t claim we “know everything,” and the existence of gaps in knowledge isn’t controversial. Every scientific field has them.

The question is not whether gaps exist. The question is whether the overall pattern of evidence is better explained by common ancestry or by some alternative explanation.

So I'll ask again: which specific prediction of common ancestry do you think fails when we compare it to the evidence?

Right now you’re arguing that incomplete knowledge invalidates a theory, which would eliminate all of science.

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You even used the word “likely” when describing the origin of life. Can you prove that what you said is likely?

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I’ve been taking the time to answer your questions carefully because earlier in the thread you appeared to be engaging in good faith. If that’s no longer the case and you’d prefer to play rhetorical games, I’m perfectly happy to go toe-to-toe instead.

What you just did is a textbook shift of the goalposts.

First the claim was that common ancestry isn’t falsifiable. When asked what prediction of the theory fails against the evidence, you didn’t provide one. Instead you reframed the discussion to “are there gaps in our knowledge,” which is not the same question.

Now you’ve shifted again and are demanding that probabilistic scientific statements be “proven,” which is a standard no-win move because science does not deal in mathematical proof in the first place. If the standard is absolute proof, then literally every empirical field disappears overnight.

On top of that, you’re selectively quoting one word (“likely”) from a discussion about early life while ignoring the actual claim under discussion, which is common ancestry and the patterns predicted by it in genetics, anatomy, and the fossil record.

That pattern of moving the target is exactly why I keep returning to the same question: what specific prediction of common ancestry fails when compared to the evidence?

If you have one, present it and we can examine it.

If the objection is simply that science expresses conclusions probabilistically and our knowledge is incomplete, that’s not a critique of evolutionary biology. That’s just a description of how empirical inquiry works.

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that was lucky enough to self-arrange.

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I’ve done nothing in this exchange except answer your questions directly and in detail.

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Ok.

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Can you prove that what you said is “likely”?

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You think you’ve got a handle on abiogenesis?
Really?