I was rereading your article on the ID debate after reading through an interesting
article found at the link below   http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/0
0002583/  It made me reconsider your statement: "There is no experiment one can even
conceive of which can test the design hypothesis. What could one do in a laboratory
to test whether a system was designed? Intelligent design ?researchers? do not
do experiments. The question one must ask is not whether the universe shows evidence of
design, but whether it can be positively proved by experiment. ; The intelligent
design idea fails the second test of a scientific theory as well. Not only is
there no experiment which can be done to test the theory, there is no conceivable
way to disprove design. Design is a paradigm, but it is not a scientific paradigm."
I began to wonder if there aren’t other scientific "theories" that are taught
in schools that are also not falsifiable or testable. The author mentions string
theory and Newtonian physics. He mentions that one is not testable and the other
has been proven false. Yet, they are both taught as theories. He also speaks
to the matter of science vs. truth. His conclusions seems to say that if, in fact, science
is bound to methodological naturalism no amount of evidence in the world in
favor of the supernatural would ever be considered valid since it is presupposed
that it cannot be counted. This call seems a bit odd if we are looking for the
best explanation of the evidence. So, is it that *evidence* is not the issue
for those who read science as simply "natural" explanations of whatever is being
examined? If, as you say, "the goal of science is to find an explanation wh
ich is consistent with the experimental evidence", and "[an] acceptable theory
is one which is at least as consistent with the evidence as rival theories",
on what basis is ID disqualified? Has a strict Darwinian Evolutionary theory
ever been tested and proved?