In this forum they've discussed "utility" in science and the search for "truth." Anyone that is in science to search for "the truth" must live in disappointment most of their lives. We hope to come close to what some people call truth but we have a problem, we know that things that we thought of as the truth were found to be not quite right. We had to rewrite the first law of thermodyamics when we discovered nuclear fusion and fission, and we have a history of improvement in our understanding of nature. That is all that we can hope for is to better our understanding, some new technique or discovery may change our views. In many cases we do not expect wholesale change, but we don't expect to have the "truth" either.

ID tries to capitalize on this aspect of science, but they have a problem. Their methodology has never been a successful means of improving our understanding of nature. Until ID can enter the realm of science there is no reason to consider the notion. It could be "true" but we have no way to determine that at this time and there is no reason to use the concept to help us in any of our experiments, so it is worthless in science. I don't know if that makes ID meaningless, but the main problem with ID is that it is not defined well enough to be useful. It may have meaning, but as it stands that meaning isn't good for anything at this time.

-- Ron Okimoto, Asst. Prof., Univ. of Arkansas (posted 2/12, 2:55 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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