Quote:
This is one of the foundations of the scientific method. A theory must (as I understand it):

- explain current observations
- be verifiable
- make a testable prediction of something that's not been observed yet (otherwise it could have been tailored to fit what we already know).

I have no patience to wait until I read the rest of the thread before I nitpickingly correct this:
not verifiable, but falsifiable: something that cannot be 'shot down' by a piece of observation is not a scientific theory.

When I am posting already, let me add: ID defitively fails this test. Whatever we observe, it can be attributed to Creator. If ID proponents specified exactly what their thinly disguised Christian God did, without changing it to fit advances in science, than perhaps we could talk.

Even Jeff's concept of ID (which, I think, reflects more his honesty, intelectual and otherwise, than the sad reality of actual ID agenda) is untestable, therefore unfalsifiable, therefore outside of realm of science. As I said a number of times, many scientists engage in entertaining speculation about possibility that our Universe (or even the infinite Multiverse (set of universes) postulated in many different hypoteses) was created, but that interesting pastime does not pretend to be science.

What is missing from both the classic 'watch argument' and Jeff's with game of cards is that neither man of watch materialized all of a sudden out of thin air; we know mechanisms both came to being.

And for the ideal planet: ask Inuit, Berbers of Katrina victims how ideal it is...

Edit: Heh, as I thought, everything I said was said by others....