I've said this before on here and received no response: evolution has been observed. Field researchers have witnessed different species of spiders mating to produce a whole new species. In the localized area where this was happening, each species had certain advantages for survival that the other lacked. The two original species were dying out. The researchers' original intent was to study just one of the species. The other species came into the picture later. The original intent of the study was not to witness evolution, it just happened. I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly, the new species of spider could not reproduce with either of the two originals, only with each other. The whole situation was a textbook example of evolution.

The new species replaced the two older species in a matter of weeks or months. It's not hard to see how evolution would work over billions of years from this one small example. And this is only the strongest piece of evidence. Taken with all the other evidence that has been observed, the case for evolution is overwhelming.

As an aside, your idea of falsification confuses the hell out of me. If a light is observed to be blue, and the frequency is measured and it is the frequency of blue light, then one doesn't have to test it against every other frequency of light individually to prove that it is blue light. It has already been determined that the light is blue.

Put another way, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and swims like a duck, chances are it's a duck. I don't have to prove that it's not a goose if I've already shown that it's a duck.

doesn't falsify mean to prove wrong?

I've said this before on here and received no response: evolution has been observed. Field researchers have witnessed different species of spiders mating to produce a whole new species...

Add to this the 23 examples of ring species that have been identified.  The two most firmly established examples are salamanders in North America and warblers in eurasia.  What we observe in a ring species is an unbroken chain of animal populations wherein the neighbors in the chain can produce offspring but more distant populations cannot.  

Humans and chimpanzees would be considered members of a ring species if their ancestors (represented in the spotty fossil record) had never become extinct.  Indeed, all living organisms would be considered end points on a ring species if the ancestor organisms that produced them had never died out.  When the linking populations die out, new species are formed.

Is evolution falsifiable?  I suppose that a cow giving birth to a horse would suffice.  We haven't observed that sort of speciation yet.  :)

This is not impressive evidence for the type of inference that we are asked to make. More importantly, your example ignores what is also probably the other observed fact: a decrease in genetic variability, not an increase.

Please explain what you mean by "decrease in genetic variability".

"Is evolution falsifiable? I suppose that a cow giving birth to a horse would suffice. We haven't observed that sort of speciation yet."

Hmmm, I'm not so sure. Evolutionists tend to view such obstacles to their view as just 'something that is yet to be explained.' If this were to happen, evolutionists would invoke ignorance, but then decry that we shouldn't allow our ignorance to stop further inquiry and to say otherwise is to invoke a 'God of the gaps' philosophy.

First of all, evolution theory predicts that such an event is too unlikely to happen.  IDism predicts that we might actually observe such evolutionary leaps and bounds.  All we observe are the small incremental steps that evolution theory predicts.  Like ring species.  (Even though the existence of ring species was predictable from Darwinian theory, it wasn't actually observed and well-documented until recently.)

But let's allow that it would be enough to rattle even some hard-liners and return to the point of THIS thread, which is that evolutionists believe that their view specifically points towards UNGUIDED processes. If you only say 'processes' then certainly a cow giving birth to a horse 'might suffice' but the addendum of 'unguided' also must be open to falsification.

Not so.  Occam's razor advises us not to introduce unnecessary categories.  We already know that so-called unguided evolution suffices to explain the kinds of biological diversity that we observe.  We would expect to observe different kinds of evolutionary change is IDism were true.  Scientists do not have to falsify every conceivable alternative theory when the one they propose is sufficient to do the job.  If you want to introduce a supplemental claim--Intelligent Design--then you have the burden of showing why such a supplement is required.

You do realize that Popper once said that evolution was unfalsifiable, don't you?

Why would that matter?  He's a great philosopher, but that doesn't mean that his opinions are infallible.  Evolution theory is falsifiable in the sense that it can make false predictions.  A cow giving birth to a horse might not destroy evolution theory, but it would blow a huge hole in it.  IDism, on the other hand, has no smoking gun to offer.

"Please explain what you mean by "decrease in genetic variability"."

I think you know what it means.

I asked the question because I had no idea what you were talking about.  If you can't explain it, that makes two of us.  :)

You seemed to miss my point.  The whole premise of evolution is that what is 'unlikely to happen' is likely to happen, given enough time.  So, you think such an event would falsify evolution, but I don't think so.  They'd find an explanation.  Any possible explanation will do, provided their theory stands.  Or, tweak the theory.  No problem.

I didn't miss your point.  It is true that probability theory has something to say about the likelihood of events in large search spaces.  Evolution is about gradual changes.  It cannot explain horses giving birth to cows, although some anti-evolutionists seem to think that it does.  Your complaint actually applies to all scientific theories.  Anomalies happen.  Science tries to explain them, but the explanation often requires abandoning one theory in favor of another.  Intelligent Design would get a big boost if we observed the cow-produces-horse kind of change.  The fact that such changes are not in evidence is bad news for IDists, since they would strongly suggest some other cause than Darwinian evolution.  Why don't we observe such changes in nature?

Why do you keep equivocating?  Obviously there are expressions of ID where evolution, especially at the microscale, are compatible with evolution, but you seem to be treating 'IDism' as 'theistic evolution.'  ID doesn't predict 'evolutionary leaps.'   Its possible that an intelligent agent could get a horse to give birth to a cow, but it wouldn't be an 'evolutionary leap.'  It would be biological feat wrought by intelligent agency.

Worse yet, there is no reasonable explanation from the ID camp on exactly why we don't see such changes.  We only see changes that "at the microscale" appear "compatible with evolution".  That's why ID is not considered a reasonable alternative theory to evolution.  If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

"Occam's razor advises us not to introduce unnecessary categories."

And it is only advice, and its begging the question.  To say that it is 'unguided' is a positive assertion and requires defense.  If you are telling me that evolution is simply our best solution to the issue of biological complexity by excluding agency a priori, you have a pretty unimpressive theory on your hands.

That's your judgment, anyway.  Most of us think that Occam's Razor saves us the trouble of having to disprove an infinite number of competing explanations for the phenomena that we observe.

I could, with an ounce of imagination, concoct a way that my house got cleaned without invoking the agency of my wife.  By your arguing, in explaining the cleanliness of my house, the possibility of agency is an 'unnecessary category,' and so is excluded  Well, your concoction may be consistent and coherent, but you're a world away from explaining how my house got cleaned!

I have no problem with attributing the cleanliness of your house to the intelligent agency of your fine wife.  I would not attribute it to incremental natural selection that took place over eons of time.

Wrong.  Occam's razor is certainly good advice, but it is not an iron-clad rule.  In this instance it is completely out of order.  If you are only telling me that 'unguided' processes are assumed, I'm down with that.  An assumption is not a scientific fact, and so evolution will be treated as such.  If you want to tell me that 'unguided processes' are demonstrably the correct solution, then you have my respect again, but you'll have to now demonstrate how such a claim is falsifiable.

Scientific claims are falsified when they are shown to give us false expectations.  Evolution theory, so far, has failed to disappoint us on that score.  It has predicted phenomena such as ring species, the fossil record, and the existence of vestigial structures in biological organisms.  Intelligent Design is not needed to explain anything.  It is an unnecessary hypothesis.

That is, the burden is on YOU to show how 'unguided processes' has not been falsified.

How many negatives can you pile up in a sentence?  Darwinian theory has met its burden of proof.  That's why it is universally accepted as true by biologists.  It is Intelligent Design--the so-called 'guided process'--that must tell us something we can't already explain in terms of evolution theory.  Otherwise, it doesn't merit discussion as a scientific hypothesis.  You may still think it perfectly reasonable to believe in on other grounds.  I don't, but those other grounds go beyond science.

"A cow giving birth to a horse might not destroy evolution theory, but it would blow a huge hole in it."

Ah, but scientific theories change!  They are supposed to change!  You underestimate the imaginative abilities of evolutionists.  Let me use this as an opportunity once again to return to the point of this thread.  Would it blow a huge hole?  Perhaps- but would it show design?

It would be exactly the sort of thing that ID proponents would be able to wave under the noses of evolutionists, because IDism offers a possible explanation of such things.  Evolution theory does not.  On the other hand, nobody has discovered cows giving birth to horses yet.  I suppose that you can always entertain the hope, johnny.  

Now, if you don't mind, it so happens that I am well aware of the reality that my house will not clean itself, no matter how much time is allotted for natural causes to do its work, and I need to go do that.  The wife is a bit unhappy that she's the one been doing the cleaning....  :)

I did agree that she was an intelligent agent.  Clearly no fool.  :)  

BTW, Popper's recognition that evolution was not falsifiable was dead on.  His recovery was instructive.  After all, the evolunazis were after him right away.  But the recovery was just as damaging to evolution as science as his assessment that it was not infallible.  Oh, and just a little ironic to dismiss the premier developer of the concept of falsifiability right in his area of expertise, don't you think?  If anyone should know, it should be him.

I don't really think that Popper has sent all of biology into a tizzy.  He is a philosopher, and philosophers have been known to disagree amongst themselves.  Not a few have dared to disagree with Popper himself.  Imagine that.  :)

I've said this before on here and received no response: evolution has been observed. Field researchers have witnessed different species of spiders mating to produce a whole new species. In the localized area where this was happening, each species had certain advantages for survival that the other lacked. The two original species were dying out. The researchers' original intent was to study just one of the species. The other species came into the picture later. The original intent of the study was not to witness evolution, it just happened. I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly, the new species of spider could not reproduce with either of the two originals, only with each other. The whole situation was a textbook example of evolution.

The new species replaced the two older species in a matter of weeks or months. It's not hard to see how evolution would work over billions of years from this one small example. And this is only the strongest piece of evidence. Taken with all the other evidence that has been observed, the case for evolution is overwhelming.

As an aside, your idea of falsification confuses the hell out of me. If a light is observed to be blue, and the frequency is measured and it is the frequency of blue light, then one doesn't have to test it against every other frequency of light individually to prove that it is blue light. It has already been determined that the light is blue.

Put another way, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and swims like a duck, chances are it's a duck. I don't have to prove that it's not a goose if I've already shown that it's a duck.

 I think what you're doing in this instance is confusing evolution and what the old school used to call 'breeding'. As I grew up on a farm I'm quite familiar with it, and the practice has been around as long as animals have been domesticated. This practice always results in the loss of genetic information as well. It is important to note here that  no new genetic information is ever observed.So this is one of the many problems that evolution faces... how to explain the massive increase of genetic information that would be required to create a truly new species? When asked if he had an example of new genetic information being observed in this way(outside of artificial means) even Richard Dawkins  had no real reply.

"Science tries to explain them, but the explanation often requires abandoning one theory in favor of another."

That would presume another theory in the wings vying for attention.  What is that theory?

Most anomalies can be described within the prevailing theory, but occasionally an outstanding class leads to a new theory, as long as the new theory continues to explain things roughly as well as the old one did.

"Intelligent Design would get a big boost if we observed the cow-produces-horse kind of change."

No it wouldn't because ID does not predict that, either.  So, its not 'bad news' for them.  They predict the same thing.  As such, it cannot be used as evidence for one but not the other.

ID predicts that such changes could take place--the spontaneous appearance of a complex structure in the evolutionary chain.  One would expect to find such anomalies, and folks such as Behe and Dembski have been trying to do just that.  Unfortunately, they have made no headway in convincing their skeptics.  Every potential example seems to have a good explanation under the prevailing theory, if not compelling evidence, to favor the Darwinian explanation.

Of course, but Occam's Razor was never meant as a mindless cookie cutter mechanism.  It certainly hasn't prevented scientists from postulating an infinite number of competing UNIVERSES to explain the phenomena that we observe, so I don't think we need to worry ourselves too much about Occam's applicability here.  Not all things that are true are simple.

Occam's razor is about competing theories, not universes.  Proponents of a "multiverse" theory can only defend it on the grounds that it is the least complex explanation of a body of evidence.

...My challenge to you is whether or not you can say it is a SCIENTIFIC fact that my wife cleaned the house, or if by virtue of the introduction of an intelligent agent as an explanation that possibility is rendered 'unscientific.'

There is no evidence at issue here, so I fail to see how it is a scientific fact.  You might construct a scientific argument to defend the theory, but you are right that that would be a silly exercise.  As silly as the analogy.  Perhaps you can come up with something more reasonable to illustrate your point.  Merely pointing to instances of intelligent design does not prove that intuition is an infallible method of detecting it.  The disagreement between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists over the nature of biological designs is a case in point.  Intuitions differ on the critical cases.  Scientists are looking for a more compelling argument than the famous "pornography defense" ("I know it when I see it").

...I'm talking about the specific claim that evolution is UNGUIDED.  The other parts you mention are not relevant.  In your esteemed opinion, would you say that the claim that evolution is UNGUIDED is a scientific claim, or not?

I would if you mean "unguided by intelligence", which is the way you originally presented the term.  Evolution, of course, is guided by natural selection.  Another way of looking at it is to ask whether UNNATURAL SELECTION (i.e. Intelligent Design) is needed to explain any biological developments, given the already accepted need for NATURAL SELECTION as its guiding force.  One might consider the breeding of animals to be a form of unnatural selection, but it, too, supports the case for natural selection simply because it relies on genetics to shape the direction of evolutionary change.  Dogs evolved from wolves because humans selected those genetic features that they wished their canine companions to have.  Normally, it is serendipitous environmental changes that do the "breeding".

"Intelligent Design is not needed to explain anything. It is an unnecessary hypothesis."

That is your judgment.  I would love to see some experiments that actually are constructed to prove the point.

I would, too.  We can construct experiments that demonstrate "unguided" evolution.  The viability of natural selection as a design process is fairly easy to prove algorithmically.  One can easily model it in computers.  One cannot similarly model ID easily, because it is not an algorithmic process.  AI researchers have tried to mimic intelligent design in computer models, but there is no clear process to base such models on.

See above. Either the assertion that evolution is 'unguided' is a scientific claim, or it is not.  If it is a scientific claim, then it needs to be falsifiable, and you need to show me how it could in principle be falsified.  If it is NOT a scientific claim, then I lose interest in the theory.

Perhaps you are getting confused between "falsifiable" and "falsified".  Evolution theory is astoundingly simple to explain and easy to verify.  All you need is (1) a self-replicating mechanism of some kind.  Animals self-replicate through reproduction.  Then you need (2) a flaw in the process of self-replication.  DNA replication is very stable, but not perfect.  Random mutations occur in the process.  The expectation is that those processes (or organisms) that produce the most offspring will crowd out those that produce fewer offspring.  Voila.  That's it.  Natural selection determines which organisms survive to produce the greatest number of offspring, but an intelligent being could step in to "game" the system.  That's what human breeders have done with livestock, crops, and pets.  A Christian might well argue that God has stepped in to "game" human evolution by manipulating the environment that carries out natural selection.  In other words, evolution theory has nothing to do with belief or lack of belief in God.  It may confound scriptural opinions on the nature of speciation, but that is hardly surprising.  Scripture was written by people who didn't understand natural selection.

There are several ways to falsify evolution.  You could show that the mutation process is not random.  You could show that a genetic mutation that succeeded could not have occurred by natural selection.  Horse-producing cows would be a good example, but the observation of sudden radical changes in biological development would most likely be taken as severe anomalies for evolutionists.

Actually, as I was saying earlier, such a thing would NOT be consistent with ID, and I bet would probably not go well for the ID theorists.  The only way that such an event would support ID is if it took intelligent agents to pull it off.

Humans have already done this through implantation of embryos, but we would need to observe it occurring without human intervention--e.g. the birth of Jesus by a virgin.

Popper endured a firestorm from SCIENTISTS when he made his statement and then was forced to recant (revise) under the inquisition, in large part because of how esteemed he was and how what he was saying was taking the rug out from many evolutionists that thought they were really meeting his criteria.  Paul Davies has endured similar firestorms.  No doubt, many philosophers have disagreed with Popper, but scientists certainly haven't on his argument that science needs to be falsifiable.  YOU certainly don't.  Since he is so esteemed on that particular subject, it says something if after his many years he concludes that evolution ain't falsifiable.  Even taking his recanting into the context.

I would assume that nobody threatened Popper with instruments of torture in order to get him to recant.  Religious zealots have been known to resort to such tactics.  It is even possible that Popper acknowledged an error in his original claim.  That also happens from time to time.  One should remember that philosophers are not scientists.  Philosophers of science ought to be better than laymen at determining what is scientifically falsifiable, but Popper was never a biologist.  Perhaps he just changed his mind after having listened to what real scientists consider "defeasible logic" in evidential disputes.

So I ask you again, are you saying that it cannot be scientifically argued that my wife is the true explanation for my clean house?

No.  I have said that one could verify the claim objectively and scientifically.  I suspect that a hidden camera would make a wonderful piece of lab equipment in the experiment.  :)  What lab equipment would you use to verify an intelligent agent (i.e. God) and not nature creates complex biological structures?

That is what I mean indeed.  So, you think its a scientific fact that evolution is 'unguided by intelligence' ?

Yes. No appeal to an intelligent agency is necessary in order to explain biological evolution.

"Evolution, of course, is guided by natural selection."

We can quibble over this:  lurking behind the semantics is equivocation.  But I'm more interested in hearing you affirm indeed that you think it is a scientific fact or assertion that biological systems arose 'unguided by intelligence.'

Abiogenesis is a reasonable assumption, but we have not yet verified how life evolved from inanimate processes.  It's also conceivable that Goddidit.  Let's be careful not to confuse abiogenesis with evolutionary design, a process that even Michael Behe admits to have been verified in the lab.

My friend.  This is not of interest because it is not the part that is disputed.  The disputable part is whether or not such 'experiments' allow the reasonable inference that such results are able to account for all the observed systems back a billion years.  I want to see an experiment that will show THAT.  I put experiments in ' because most such 'experiments' presented in this situations are not actually experiments.  I don't doubt that some exist, but a 'prediction' is not the same as an 'experiment' and I will not be satisfied by 'predictions.'

Thank you for admitting clearly and openly that the predictions made by evolution theory have actually been tested.  Behe and Dembski agree with that point, so you are in good company.  We have yet to see how IDism can be similarly tested.  As for your claim that we need some kind of comprehensive experiment to prove conclusively that ALL THE OBSERVED SYSTEMS BACK A BILLION YEARS resulted from evolution, I applaud your call for rigor.  No such experiment exists or is conceivable.  Does this mean that we must now accept Intelligent Design as a scientific theory?  I think not.

"The viability of natural selection as a design process is fairly easy to prove algorithmically."

What?  Darwkin's little computer critters?  I surely hope you mean something else.

Dawkins' little computer critters demonstrated convincingly how intelligently-guided selection could drive an algorithmic evolutionary process.  It is easy to show how natural environments drive the design process in the same way.  That is exactly what Darwin and Wallace did, and that is why their work became the foundation of biological theory.  However, there are quite a few computer programs out there that model evolutionary processes in a far more sophisticated way than Dawkins did.

"AI researchers have tried to mimic intelligent design in computer models, but there is no clear process to base such models on."

And what does that tell you about the apparent fact that we possess intelligence at all?

Nothing.  Why should it tell me anything about why we possess intelligence at all?  The point was that the concept of intelligence itself is extremely vague and difficult to define.

"Scripture was written by people who didn't understand natural selection. "

Says you.  In this account they seem to understand the principles just fine.  Obviously it wouldn't have occurred to them to think that they could use such a principle to explain the origin of all the species, but not because they wouldn't have understood it.  Here is the account in Genesis:  30:31-36.

How does that passage tell us anything about natural selection?  At best, it explains the process by which humans bred cattle through artificial selection.  In biological evolution (as opposed to breeding), no intelligence guides the process.  It is just a matter of which competing organisms leave the most offspring.

"You could show that the mutation process is not random. You could show that a genetic mutation that succeeded could not have occurred by natural selection."

Both of these sound like arguing for intelligent agency as the falsifying mechanisms.  But his shoots you in the foot, because the converse would then be that ID is falsified by showing that all mutation processes are random and that all genetic mutations that succeed 'could have' occurred by natural selection.  And that would make ID falsifiable.

Nonsense.  You might as well claim the every experiment which fails therefore proves the existence of an intelligent agent, since one can always appeal to invisible intelligent agents (demons and spirits) as an explanation of any natural phenomenon.

"I suspect that a hidden camera would make a wonderful piece of lab equipment in the experiment."

I never said anything about anything other than coming upon a cleaned house.  In this scenario, we are exploring a current situation and attempting to explain a past sequence of events, like evolution and ID both claim to do.   Even so, you've shot yourself in the foot again.  You've provided a verification measure to test a hypothesis involving an intelligent agent, the very thing you have been saying can't be done.

No, that isn't what I've been saying, and I think that you must know that by now.  It SHOULD be possible to present some kind of evidence of those past events in principle.  If scientists could do that for Intelligent Design, then it would graduate to a scientific hypothesis rather than a thinly-veiled smokescreen for religious speculation.  All you are saying is that the verification measure is useless, since the opportunity to observe the evidence has vanished.  There are two senses of "unfalsifiable" here--cannot be falsified in principle and cannot be falsified in practice.  I think that ID is definitely the latter, but the former depends on how one defines ID.  In either case, it still doesn't pass any tests.

So, return please to the scenario.  Given that you have just come upon my clean house, is the possibility that my wife cleaned it a non-scientific possibility a priori?   That's exactly how I presented it originally.  Yes or No.

I don't know, since the scenario is so contrived.  Now we are told that we cannot make any predictions about future house-cleanings or establish hidden cameras to catch her in the act.  I've got to hand it to you, though.  You really work hard to defend the indefensible.  

...Since you admit that you are asserting a scientific fact, then it follows that you need to be able to falsify that particular claim, not just assume it by default.  What tests specifically looking for design are you aware of, sponsored and promoted by evolutionists themselves, have been conducted to attempt to falsify evolution at this level of the question?

Evolution has several testable consequences.  One is that we will find ancestor fossils that demonstrate gradual transitions between species.  We continue to find such fossil linkages, and we have no reason to suspect that the gaps in the record will suprise us in any way.  Another is that we should be able to make predictive models for the growth and shrinkage of animal populations on the basis of natural selection.  We can.  Another is that we should expect to find linkages between biological function and climate.  No problems there.  Another is that we should expect to be able to show evolution experimentally in the lab with organisms that breed quickly (fruit flies, bacteria).  Lots of evidence there.  Another is that we should be able to establish the physical mechanism by which organisms mutate and to observe random mutations in that mechanism--genes, chromosomes, DNA.  As with most of science, the theory is tested by observation of events in nature and how well the evidence supports expectations created by the theory.  A hallmark of good science is that it predicts phenomena that were not established at the time of the invention of the theory.  The discovery of ring species is classic validation of a scientific hypothesis.  Hence, ID proponents all (except for the creationist supporters) accept evolution theory as a falsifiable claim that has met its burden of proof.

Now, what predictions does IDism make?  We need some reliable principle for distinguishing artificial (intelligent) design from natural design.  Big failure there.  Every attempt to do so crashes on the rocks.  Intuition is notoriously unreliable.  Organisms and biological systems proposed as "irreducibly complex" turn out not to meet the criterion and to have quite reasonable evolutionary explanations.  It is an empty shell.  Hence, biologists see no need or justification for forcing science students to study it.  It belongs in philosophy and social studies classes.

"Thank you for admitting clearly and openly that the predictions made by evolution theory have actually been tested."

Well I'm glad to oblige.  I'm shocked that you thought it was an issue.  Perhaps you need to invest more time on the subject to suspect my position would be anything else.

Oh, I've invested quite a bit of time in examining your contradictory and shifting positions.  I find it fascinating that someone of your obvious intelligence would employ it in the defense of such an absurd idea.

"We have yet to see how IDism can be similarly tested."

This is not true, and both Behe and Dembski agree with THAT as well, so I reckon I'm still in good company.  

I'm not so sure that they do agree with that.  I think that their argument is more in the area of "we should look more closely at this hypothesis that we can't disprove".  Both gentlemen will demur and temporize if you ask them what experiments have shown ID to have occurred.  

"... need some kind of comprehensive experiment to prove conclusively that ALL THE OBSERVED SYSTEMS BACK A BILLION YEARS resulted from evolution, I applaud your call for rigor. No such experiment exists or is conceivable. Does this mean that we must now accept Intelligent Design as a scientific theory?"

Only as scientific as evolution.    I thank you for admitting the critical fact, however, that no such experiment exists- nor is it conceivable.  I'd say that puts it into a different epistemological class than other scientific 'theories' we often hear about.  For example, the rate of gravitational attraction contributes to some gravitational theories where experiments both exist AND are conceivable.  Evolution is more akin to a historical science then it is a physical science, but you couldn't tell that from college level 'science books.'

Whoa.  There you go again.  You make a ridiculously absurd demand and then claim you've won a point when it cannot be met.  Then you create an inappropriate analogy to try to drive a wedge between evolution and similar scientific theories.  Experiments exist and are conceivable to support evolution theory.  Moreover, it supports our expectations of future biological changes and discoveries in just the same way that physical theories about gravitation do.  It is no different from the physical theories in that respect.  What we cannot do for any scientific theory is prove conclusively that it is the ONLY explanation for all physical phenomena that look like gravitational attraction at first blush.  We expect to find evidence that is consistent with prevailing theory, and we do that continually for both evolution and gravitation.  We expect to find anomalies, and that happens in both physics and biology.  The way science works is that those anomalies will either find explanations under prevailing theory, or a new and better theory will be proposed that explains known facts and the anomalies.  Intelligent Design speculation has yet to find a place in that process.

However, it is not my argument that just because of this we must now accept ID as anything.  My point was laser-eyed focused on evolution.  If it is a 'scientific fact' it is a 'scientific fact' in a different class then gravity, light, heat, chemistry, etc.

You have been blinded by your laser.  Evolution theory is a biological theory, but it is in the same class of theory as physical theories.  It is subject to continual verification.

Convincingly.  lol. It was a strained argument from credulity.  He used an intelligently guided selection process to try to demonstrate an unguided one...

That's true, but the argument wasn't strained.  In your zeal to contradict and denigrate everything that Dawkins says, you missed the central point.  He was not trying to disprove Intelligent Design, but to teach how biological evolution works.  His program teaches us that the process of change itself is unguided--algorithmic, in fact.  The selection part that drives the process can be an intelligent one or merely environmental circumstances.  That was not relevant to his purpose.  His purpose was to show how genes work to "design" forms that respond to environmental pressure.  The godless part of evolution comes in when we look at biological forms in nature.  We don't find any need to go beyond forces in the physical environment to explain the direction of change.  Christians may suspect and hope that there is a Christian God (a behind-the-scenes-Dawkins) manipulating the environment to craft human evolution, but THERE IS NO EVIDENCE of that.  If there were evidence, then ID could be studied scientifically.

...As Darwin frequently also referred to artificial selection, this little rebuttal is pretty weak.  There is nothing unique about the principles involved, biologically, between natural and artificial selection.

Here, we seem in violent agreement.

For you to think that people in the past could grasp how different traits could be bred for in a domestic population but they were reduced to blathering idiots and unable to recognize that obviously the same proceses would be and could be at work in non-domesticated populations smacks of chronological snobbery.

Stop putting words in my mouth.  I never accused anyone of being "blathering idiots".  Those who lived in more primitive cultures than the present one were often quite brilliant in manipulating nature.  They just didn't understand the principles of evolution that underlay breeding.  Hence, they interpreted much of what they saw as the work of unseen spirits.  Nowadays, we know better.

"Both of these sound like arguing for intelligent agency as the falsifying mechanisms. But his shoots you in the foot, because the converse would then be that ID is falsified by showing that all mutation processes are random and that all genetic mutations that succeed 'could have' occurred by natural selection. And that would make ID falsifiable."

That is an absurd requirement to make of any science.  All science attempts to do is develop theories to explain what we have seen and what we EXPECT TO SEE in nature.  Scientific theories make predictions.  They do not ever show the kind of conclusive proof that you impose on evolution in order to justify a position that has zero evidence to support it.  Quite the contrary.  We expect to find anomalies that don't immediately fit theoretical predictions.  When scientists uncover such anomalies in the data, they do not jump to the conclusion that the cause must have been an intelligent agent of some kind.

No, silly.  All we are doing is talking about principles.  It is your position that ID is in principle not falsifiable.  You may as well be arguing that every time an experiment to show that ID is correct fails it proves the power of evolution.  Oh wait.  That IS what you are saying.  Your motto appears to be, "durrnit Logic!  Full speed ahead!"

It is NOT my position that ID "is in principle not falsifiable".  That is the straw man that you started this thread with.  It is my position that ID has yet to make a testable prediction.  To the extent that one can think of how it might be tested, it fails the test.  I have invited you to produce some testable hypothesis that would support IDism, but you have failed to do that.  Big surprise.

So, how does one falsify the assertion that biology proceeded from purely unguided (guided in the sense of intelligent agency, as you well know we mean) processes?

You produce an alternative hypothesis that explains biological development better, and then you produce evidence that supports that hypothesis.  So far, the attempts by some IDists to do that have failed miserably.