INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT TESTABLE

One of the main criticisms of Intelligent Design (ID) is that it is not science because it is not testable. This seems reasonable, being based on the fact that ID does not specify a designer or any of the properties of the designer which would dictate what kinds of designs it would or would not make and how it would make them. Needless to say ID proponents claim that ID is testable. Here I examine the claims of William Dembski, the leading ID theorist, (Is Intelligent Design Testable? found at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm.) that ID is not only testable but is more testable than Darwinian evolution. Dembski compares ID and Darwinism with regard to several facets of testability: Falsifiability, Confirmation, Predictability, and Explanatory Power.

Throughout this analysis, I compare Dembski's ideas about theories and testing with those of Karl Popper, one of the most well-known and influential philosophers of science and show that Dembski's arguments are at best disingenuous and at worst illogical. Dembski argues that ID can be falsified if Darwinism can be confirmed. But this would only be a test of Darwinism and cannot logically be equated with a falsification of ID. Dembski further weakens this argument by claiming that Darwinism cannot be falsified, that the confirming evidence for evolution is confined to microevolution and that Darwinism predicts little. He further admits that ID does not predict nor explain anything, making the direct falsification of ID impossible. Finally he admits that ID can accomodate all the results of Darwinism, making confirmation of Darwinism impossible to falsify ID!

The confirming evidence for ID is the existence of complex specified information (CSI), even though Dembski admits that some kinds of CSI can be produced by selection and mutation. Finally I provide confirming evidence for Darwinian macroevolution along with a number of examples of Darwinian predictions involving the fossil record.