this is very scarie since my appendix burst about two years ago and had to e removed, the doctors assured me that it was usless and i didn’t need it anyway…….

Cheryl,
Why not discuss this with a doctor? You probably have nothing to fear.

Francis,
Thank you for this revelation about the spleen. I think that this finding once again demonstrates that intelligent design is better able to predict future scientific finidngs than is evolution, which necessarily predicts that future findings would increasingly reveal a messy hodge-podge of useless, leftover organs and structures.

Daniel Mann,
Can you please point to an intelligent design advocate that predicted that the spleen really did have a useful function and what that function was, based on an intelligent design hypothesis? I would be interested in some of your examples that “once again demonstrates that intelligent design is better able to predict future scientific finidngs [sic] than is evolution.” I have read books by several ID proponents and I have not seen any predictions in those books, much less predictions that have turned out to “true”.
The problem with intelligent design is that by pointing to supernatural causes it negates any scientific predictions, because it makes the natural world and natural laws part of God’s inscrutable ways.
Evolution does not predict that organisms are a “hodge-podge of useless, leftover organs and structures”, as you say. There are countless examples of evolution using an old structure for a new purpose (ironically, especially ID favorites like the bacterial flagellum and clotting factors). Even some IDers like Michael Behe accept common decent and don’t think that evolution predicts a “hodge-podge” of parts.

Dear Your Name,
You wrote, “The problem with intelligent design is that by pointing to supernatural causes it negates any scientific predictions, because it makes the natural world and natural laws part of God’s inscrutable ways.”
Some of god’s ways are inscrutable while others while others are clearly amenable to wisdom and research. The very fact that we have been able to discover the laws by which He regulates nature demonstrates this fact.
You also wrote, “Can you please point to an intelligent design advocate that predicted that the spleen really did have a useful function and what that function was, based on an intelligent design hypothesis? I would be interested in some of your examples that ‘once again demonstrates that intelligent design is better able to predict future scientific finidngs [sic] than is evolution.’”
Although I am not well read regarding ID, the very hypothesis predicts many findings. For instance–that the universe had a beginning; that we started from perfection and we are deteriorating. Just regard the loss of 98% of known species or the deterioration of the human genome that is accumulating errors or the fact that we’ve seen many super novae (star explosion) but never the formation of a star.

Daniel Mann,
You wrote “Some of god’s ways are inscrutable while others while others are clearly amenable to wisdom and research. The very fact that we have been able to discover the laws by which He regulates nature demonstrates this fact.”
This statement invalidates your earlier statement that Intelligent Design predicts scientific advancements better than does evolution. To believe that you also have to accept that much of the natural world’s laws are not discoverable by the scientific method. Intelligent design is fundamentally based on supernatural intervention, which is unpredictable.
You wrote “Although I am not well read regarding ID, the very hypothesis predicts many findings. For instance–that the universe had a beginning; that we started from perfection and we are deteriorating. Just regard the loss of 98% of known species or the deterioration of the human genome that is accumulating errors or the fact that we’ve seen many super novae (star explosion) but never the formation of a star.”
Intelligent Design proponents often do not predict that the universe started in perfection. Michael Behe actually accepts common decent. I find your examples of ID’s predictions puzzling. The fact that 98% of known species are extinct fits much better with evolution as with ID. We actually have seen stars forming, because some light from the big bang is just now reaching earth. This is predicted nicely by physics and astronomy, but not by intelligent design. Intelligent Design can not make predictions because it relies on supernatural intervention, and not measurable natural laws. That’s why Intelligent Design is NOT science.

The foreskin is a body part that many think is superfluous but it plays an integral part in male (and female) sexuality.

Dan,
For starters, we need to get on the same page regarding ID. Although it acknowledges that God can work miraculously and super-naturally, He largely governs the world through laws. The Bible has a lot to say about this:
Jeremiah 33:25 “This is what the LORD says: ‘If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth”
Job 38:33 “Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?”
Therefore, there is no disjuncture between ID and scientific predictability, as you had claimed. Perhaps I was not clear enough in my former comment. While ID recognizes that the world is winding down (God had created everything perfectly!), evolution must maintain that organisms are progressing, although evolutionists resist this conclusion. However, in order to explain the transition of non-life to life, or a photo-electric cell to an eye, or an amoeba to an alligator, evolution is coerced into carrying the banner of progress. (This is embarrassing for them since the fossil record cannot be coerced into agreeing with them.) Another way to put it: if evolution had been able to bring about such startling developments, we should be able to detect similar developments in progress all over the place.
Instead, we find the opposite—de-evolution rather than evolution; a loss in species rather than a proliferation. The basic principles of science also seem to accord better with the ID paradigm. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics declares that everything is breaking apart. This argues against the evolutionary progress from non-life to life. The 1st Law of Therm. declares that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This too would argue against evolutionary gradualism.
An ordered universe argues in favor of ID, while no-design always tends toward chaos. The fact that we have physical laws that pertain equally and harmoniously throughout the universe again argues in favor of design and against no-design. The intelligibility of the universe also argues in favor of ID. Conversely, ID would predict all of the above.
You conclude, “Intelligent Design can not make predictions because it relies on supernatural intervention, and not measurable natural laws. That’s why Intelligent Design is NOT science.”
You would be entirely correct if God didn’t work according to laws, but this just isn’t the case, and I have never heard any IDer suggest otherwise.

Daniel Mann,
I understand that ID says that God can work through laws, so does theistic evolution. The difference is that intelligent design says to explain certain things in biology we have to revert to supernatural explanations. Intelligent Design basically says “since this is very complicated, then it points to God intervening supernaturally into his natural creation.” Supernatural intervention is not science. It is a science stopper. It says that since we don’t know exactly how the first living cell was created then it must have been God, while evolutionists who are Christians are free to embrace the idea that God might have worked through natural laws to create the first cell.
When scientists finally solve the problem of the first cell, ID (and Christians who base their faith on it) will suffer a fatal blow, while theistic evolution will not be hurt a bit. And scientists are closing in on how the first cell might have came about. Here is a Scientific American article, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-life-on-earth
I can also point you to some more technical, peer-reviewed research if you want.
Intelligent Design advocates usually understand that ID is not science, which is why Phillip Johnson, Michael behe, and Dembski have said we need to change the definition of science. Michael Behe admitted in the Dover trial that under the broadened ID definition of science astrology (horoscopes, zodiacs, etc) would also count as science.
You wrote “While ID recognizes that the world is winding down (God had created everything perfectly!), evolution must maintain that organisms are progressing, although evolutionists resist this conclusion.”
ID does not say that God created everything perfectly! Michael Behe believes in common descent (single-cell to man evolution). Young Earth creationism usually says that God created everything perfectly, but I do not know of one Christian Intelligent Design proponent that says that.
Evolution means change over time, not getting better over time. There is not really such a thing as “devolution”, evolution can sometimes build complexity or specialize an animal to live in a specific environment, but it is certainly not a vertical progression. I do not know of any evolutionist that defines evolution as you do. The chain of being is not an evolutionary idea, but a creationist idea.
You said the fossil record cannot be coerced to align with evolution, but in reality in can not be corrected to align with the idea that everything was created in perfection. That is why bacteria appear before fish, and fish appear before mammals, and the early primates appear before humans. Here is BioLogo’s answer on fossils: http://biologos.org/questions/fossil-record/
Besides I think the genetic evidence for common decent is even stronger than the fossil record. If we had zero fossils or biogeography evidence for evolution, the different animal genome project should have still cemented evolution as a scientific certainty.
The thermodynamic laws arguments are interesting; I used to use them in debates often when I was a young earth creationist a few years ago. Now I see that when I used it I did not understand evolution, ecology, or physics. You need to understand the difference between an open or a closed system, you need to understand tropic levels, you need to understand what the second law is really saying. If evolution is a violation of the second law then so is a tree growing, a cow eating grass, or a baby growing into adult. For example: sunlight is less complex that grass, grass in less complex than a cow, and a steak is less complex than human, but still the simple energy of the sun is powerful enough to lead to something as complex as a human. The 2nd law just says that energy will be wasted as in descends down tropic levels, not that each tropic level will decrease in complexity. Here is a link to BioLogos’s take on the subject: http://www.biologos.org/questions/evolution-and-the-second-law
You conclude with “You would be entirely correct [that ID wasn’t science] if God didn’t work according to laws, but this just isn’t the case, and I have never heard any IDer suggest otherwise.”
The whole point of ID is that God doesn’t work through natural laws in many of the complex biological questions, that is why all the proponents admit the definition of science has to be broadened to include supernatural explanation for natural phenomenon. If Intelligent Design proponents only focused on natural laws, they would be regular scientists, not intelligent design advocates. I have read several books by ID advocates (several while I was a young earth creationist) and they ALL say that we need supernatural explanations in science.
What makes a person a belier in intelligent design is not that they believe that there are no natural laws, but the belief that parts science can only be explained by supernatural action, and that this inscrutably supernatural action can be measured by scientists.
Keep searching for answers and please don’t be afraid of evolution. It hasn’t hurt my faith a bit and has increased my love for science.

Dan,
Thanks for the clarification. I stand corrected on my careless use of terminology. A “perfect creation” is a tenant of creationism and not necessarily of intelligent design.
I can also partially agree with you that intelligent design is a “science stopper” when it comes to certain forms of research. For instance, I would suspect that an IDer wouldn’t bother to formulate a naturalistic understanding regarding the formation of the first cell. For one thing, this is not so much of a scientific question as it is a historical question—“What happened back then?”
For another thing, an IDer is convinced that a natural explanation is not adequate to explain such a phenomenon. Similarly, if I find a gallon of milk on my table, I would be foolish to seek for a natural explanation. Likewise, if I find a book or a watch, I would be foolish to begin to do scientific research to determine how they came to be. We can very accurately distinguish between formulaic and intelligent causation. In light of this, ID isn’t, must accurately speaking, a “science stopper” but a science re-director. The question is whether or not it’s directing research into fruitful areas.
You conclude, “If Intelligent Design proponents only focused on natural laws, they would be regular scientists, not intelligent design advocates. I have read several books by ID advocates (several while I was a young earth creationist) and they ALL say that we need supernatural explanations in science.”
Why not both? In fact, this whole thing about “natural laws” is not a matter of science, but rather philosophy. While we all agree that there are laws at work and phenomena operate predictably according to these laws, science can’t directly determine if these laws are in fact natural, unintelligent laws or rather laws in the mind of a supernatural God. In fact, I think that there are many compelling reasons to re-examine this whole concept of “naturalism.” For one thing, this concept is not parsimonious. It posits the existence of a multitude of “natural” laws, with their equations, all acting independently. Besides, in this expanding universe where we can only see molecules-in-motion, there is no way to “naturally” account for their unchanging nature, unless we reach to some greater principle beyond naturalism. Furthermore, naturalism can’t account for their uniformity (they apply equally throughout the universe). In short, science is at best myopic when it limits itself to naturalism.
(I’m sorry I haven’t addressed your other worthy points. Perhaps later??)

Daniel Mann,
You said, “For one thing, this [the formation of the first cell] is not so much of a scientific question as it is a historical question—“What happened back then?”
In reality all science research is focused on evidence that is historical. When we see stars explode today it is amazing to think that often that star really blew up millions or even billions of years ago. So the data is really historical data. All data collected is historical in the sense that it takes at least a few nanoseconds for any technology or our eyes to record whatever a person is studying. Science uses this historical data to formulate theories and make future predictions. So “historical” questions are vital for science to progress, and simply saying that a piece of data is explained by a miracle, rather than natural laws, is a science stopper.
The idea of the first cell is an interesting example. Because scientists don’t understand how it formed completely, intelligent design advocates what to say that it has to have a supernatural (read non-natural or miraculous) explanation. What would have happened if we had done the same thing for the cause of disease, or why planets hold their orbits, or how the heart works? IDers would have said “this (orbits, disease, the heart, etc) is really complicated, so it must not have a natural explanation, it must be a miracle.” Science is ended; nothing is really explained, only explained away.
We often cannot distinguish between things that are designed and not-designed. As Michael Shermer says, we humans are pattern-seeking animals. We see patterns in places that there often is not. Just think of the virgin-Mary grilled cheese, UFO’s, or ghost stories, as well as many other more serious examples. An example of the non-logic that pushes intelligent design was an example Francis Collins used to discredit ID in “The Language of God.” I will restate it poorly I am sure, but the basic non-logic is “electricity comes to my house by the power company, and that electricity is designed by the power company. Lighting is also electricity; therefore it must be designed by the power company too.” That is basically what ID does. It shows an example in nature of something that looks designed, and then says it was designed by a god, because it resembles something that humans might design.
Also, evolution can design things. That’s the whole point of natural selection couples with genetics, it “designs” things to adapt to their environment. I believe God uses the natural laws of evolution in creation, but the natural laws are there for us to discover. ID says that God uses supernatural laws, and that somehow science can explain these miracles (which are by definition outside of science).
You said, “In fact, this whole thing about “natural laws” is not a matter of science, but rather philosophy. While we all agree that there are laws at work and phenomena operate predictably according to these laws, science can’t directly determine if these laws are in fact natural, unintelligent laws or rather laws in the mind of a supernatural God.”
The idea of natural laws IS a matter for science. That is what the scientific method was designed to discover. The idea that if there is anything above these laws or not is philosophical or theological, but natural laws themselves ARE science. I’m not sure you understand what natural laws mean. When someone says “natural laws” they don’t mean that God does not exist, it means that the laws are predictable and discoverable by the scientific method. I fully believe in natural laws and a supernatural God. When Intelligent Design talks about design, they don’t mean design through natural laws, they mean through miracles that violate, or at least can’t be explained by, natural laws. ID and theistic evolution both believe that a supernatural God is behind natural laws.
The difference is that ID says that natural laws, even with God as the supernatural author, is not enough for many of biology’s and science’s most interesting questions, so we should just give up and explain them with miracles. That is the problem, and that is why ID is not science, and would actually hurt the future of science.

Isaac Newton, in Principia, stated, “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion on an intelligent and powerful Being.”
These days, many famous scientists are strong proponents of atheism. However, in the past, and even today, many scientists believe that God exists and is responsible for what we see in nature. This is a small sampling of scientists who contributed to the development of modern science while believing in God. Although many people believe in a “God of the gaps”, these scientists, and still others alive today, believe because of the evidence.-Rich Deem