ID and science

One of my postings from the Debunk Creation newsgroup. In response to Clem:

It is my opinion that Demski considers the paper by the two Finns, one of whom is a (biochemist) creationist, which reviews directed evolution in the drug company labs, to be a review of laboratory demonstrations of what Michael calls theistic evolution. If man can direct evolution in the lab, then clearly God could do so in nature. That is what requires debunking.

Clem

OK, this is something that can be handled scientifically.

Now, one of the things I mention about science is that it involves a very unnatural thinking process. It's almost literally backwards and upside-down from normal thinking. Thus, the question isn't "Did (or does) God guide evolution". The question becomes, "Do we need to postulate the intervention of a God to explain evolution?" So far, the answer has been "no".

As I mentioned a while back, science (and scientists) assume an orderly universe, one governed by rules (laws, principles, etc.) which are known, or which can, at least in principle, be discovered. Direct intervention by a God assumes the universe is disordered. At the very least, it means the laws and rules we think exist can stop working at any time for no good reason.

Now, it's possible that all these rules were set up by a God, but it's also possible that the rules have always existed, and God is, at best, irrelevant.

For the discussion of this topic to be scientific, we need to be able to make predictions about what we'd observe, or what we'd fail to observe, if either case were true.