Experimental Creationism

[painted wolf]

Is there any way to scientifically provide evidence of Creationism or Intelligent Design? (mind you this is not the same as disproving evolution)

What sort of experiment would we be able to perform to test it?

Any ideas?

wa:do

 

[Engyo]

If creation was the result of a concious choice (or group of choices) rather than the result of an impersonal natural process, then I don't think you can do so. The idea of experimentation relies on finding repeatable results, which don't necessarily obtain in the case of an entity making concious choices. You are left with the impossibility of proving a negative when the expected results don't occur.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Some possible methods:

1) Observe species popping into existence out of thin air. This would lend evidence to supernatural creation events.

2) Observe absolute barriers between different "kinds" which cannot be crossed, i.e. traits which cannot be mixed (you either live on land and breathe air, or at sea and breathe in liquid; you either fly, or you don't, and no one has half a wing, etc.)

3) Demonstrate the "irreducible complexity" of some living system. (For example, I believe Dawkins pointed out we should not expect to find any organisms on other planets with wheels, because it would be impossible to make the wheels and spokes independent without breaking the arteries nourishing the tissue.)

4) Observe that designs are always optimal or "intelligent".

5) Use physics theory/experiment to show that "information" always decreases and is never created by the laws of physics alone. (I.e. a violation of the laws of physics -- a supernatural event -- is required.)

 

[Reptillian]

I recently wrote a blog posting on intelligent design. Reptoavian's Blog: Intelligent Design The existence of something like a message coded in our DNA would favor a designer. The existence of complex body parts that could be shown to not have been built up by small changes in previously existing body structures. The existence of centaurs, mermaids, or other chimeras would be bad for evolution....I'm picturing a bird feathered octopus or a duck with the compound eyes of an insect. The point is that nothing we observe in the living world requires us to hypothesize a creator.

 

[evolved yet?]

Pray not to die when you jump off a building and then jump of the building...
)( to :thud:

 

[Engyo]

I recently wrote a blog posting on intelligent design. Reptoavian's Blog: Intelligent Design The existence of something like a message coded in our DNA would favor a designer. The existence of complex body parts that could be shown to not have been built up by small changes in previously existing body structures. The existence of centaurs, mermaids, or other chimeras would be bad for evolution....I'm picturing a bird feathered octopus or a duck with the compound eyes of an insect. The point is that nothing we observe in the living world requires us to hypothesize a creator.

In fact, some of what we see might imply a somewhat lacking intelligence to the design; either that or maybe a really obscure sense of humor.

I'm thinking of things like duck-billed platypi, or the mating habits of praying manti and certain spiders, and so forth and so on.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Is there any way to scientifically provide evidence of Creationism or Intelligent Design? (mind you this is not the same as disproving evolution)

What sort of experiment would we be able to perform to test it?

Any ideas?

Day-Age Creationism could be supported by paleontology.

It wouldn't provide conclusive evidence that God was responsible, but you could look at the fossil record and determine whether the history of life lined up with the chronology presented in the Bible, both in terms of absolute age and relative order of events.

The idea that all species came out of distinct "kinds" that were present on Noah's Ark ____ years ago implies that the rate of mutation and speciation would've been very high at some point - much higher than current rates. To me, this suggests both that these high rates must have been possible, and that there was some way for the mutation rate of all or most species to change at approximately the same time. You'd probably be able to say better than I would whether this generates any testable predictions for biology.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If creation was the result of a concious choice (or group of choices) rather than the result of an impersonal natural process, then I don't think you can do so. The idea of experimentation relies on finding repeatable results, which don't necessarily obtain in the case of an entity making concious choices. You are left with the impossibility of proving a negative when the expected results don't occur.

I'm not so sure about that... at least not if we're talking about a form of Creationism where God directly guides the process.

We've got evolution, a process with a high degree of explanatory power. To whatever degree evolution by itself explains the history of life, the effect of the "guiding hand of God" becomes insignificant to the same degree... statistically speaking.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Imagine going to another planet populated by races of robots, which some aliens left there. It's not hard to imagine how it would be possible to determine from observations and experiments that these were designed robots left by aliens, and not evolving organisms. If life on Earth were like that, it would be evidence of a Designer / Designers.

 

[painted wolf]

2) Observe absolute barriers between different "kinds" which cannot be crossed, i.e. traits which cannot be mixed (you either live on land and breathe air, or at sea and breathe in liquid; you either fly, or you don't, and no one has half a wing, etc.)

Would this be like the "a cat will never turn into a dog" meme? Or the "there are no transitional fossils" meme?

wa:do

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Would this be like the "a cat will never turn into a dog" meme? Or the "there are no transitional fossils" meme?

I think it's related to the first one, except it's more "there is something about a cat that prevents it and its descendants from ever being anything but cats."

 

[Twilight Hue]

Is there any way to scientifically provide evidence of Creationism or Intelligent Design? (mind you this is not the same as disproving evolution)

No. I don't see it happening until further advances are made to observe "deeper". I personally don't think any of this as a product of intelligent design though. At least in the sense of any controlling deity as some people view it to be.

What sort of experiment would we be able to perform to test it? wa:do

I would think you would first need to go to a source where life and/or material forms and observe and record whats actually goes on there. I would think this requires firstly a more detailed observation at the quantum level (even macro) of which I feel our technology is not well developed enough to do so yet. -NM-

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Would this be like the "a cat will never turn into a dog" meme? Or the "there are no transitional fossils" meme?

wa:do

Exactly. Think of the chemical elements. If you have X number of protons in the nucleus, you have a certain element with certain chemical properties. If you have X+1 protons in the nucleus, you have a different element with a different set of chemical properties. It's all or nothing. You can't have an intermediate element, with an intermediate number of protons and an intermediate set of chemical properties.

If living things were like that it would be one piece of evidence for Creationism. It would certainly disprove Darwinian evolution from a common ancestor.

 

[painted wolf]

If living things were like that it would be one piece of evidence for Creationism. It would certainly disprove Darwinian evolution from a common ancestor.

Yes, but we aren't trying to disprove evolution... how would this provide evidence for creation/ID?

Unless all "kinds" appear ex nihlo at the same time or at specified "day" levels.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

I would think you would first need to go to a source where life and/or material forms and observe and record whats actually goes on there. I would think this requires firstly a more detailed observation at the quantum level (even macro) of which I feel our technology is not well developed enough to do so yet. -NM-

So we would have to see "God throwing the dice" at a quantum or sub-quantum level?
How would we distinguish "intelligent dice throwing" from "natural dice throwing"?

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

Imagine going to another planet populated by races of robots, which some aliens left there. It's not hard to imagine how it would be possible to determine from observations and experiments that these were designed robots left by aliens, and not evolving organisms. If life on Earth were like that, it would be evidence of a Designer / Designers.

If they are self reproductive and said reproduction introduces selectable variation... how would we tell they were created?

wa:do

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes, but we aren't trying to disprove evolution... how would this provide evidence for creation/ID?

It would be evidence for creation/ID the same way that the discovery of the actual age of the Earth was evidence for evolution:

- the theory made a prediction about something unknown
- the prediction was tested
- the tests found that reality matched the prediction.

Creationism/"baraminology" suggests that if we go looking, we'll find some sort of mechanism that prevents mutation from progressing beyond a certain point.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Yes, but we aren't trying to disprove evolution... how would this provide evidence for creation/ID?

Because it would show that the different "kinds" were created independently, as stipulated by Creationism / ID.

Unless all "kinds" appear ex nihlo at the same time or at specified "day" levels.

If they did I suppose that would be further evidence.

 

[Noaidi]

Well, if irreducible complexity was shown to be a valid hypothesis, I suppose we may have to look at the limitations of evolution.

Of course, the notion of irreducible complexity could be:
a) nonsense
b) due to our human lack of fully understanding how complex processes arise and occur.

I might go for b).

 

[Mr Spinkles]

If they are self reproductive and said reproduction introduces selectable variation... how would we tell they were created?

wa:do

There are lots of ways we could tell. For example: suppose all the original "kinds" appear suddenly, at one moment in the fossil record. Suppose in spite of the fact that reproduction introduces selectable variation, the fossil record shows that each kind never evolves into a different kind. That would be strong evidence of a Creation event in which all the kinds were seeded on the planet suddenly (perhaps left there by an intelligent alien race?)

Further, suppose the robots are made of materials that have to be manufactured and parts that have to be put together in the womb, like a car on an assembly line, instead of a single cell which divides and differentiates and goes through stages of development. This would be good evidence these are robots designed by some intelligent aliens.