On Alternative theories.

It seems the one thing that absolutely all attacks on evolution have is that they don't pursue an alternative theory, which is ironic since they are constantly telling us that we should teach alternative theories to evolution. Instead what they do is they attack evolution and offer nothing in its place, or at best offer some vague outline of something that can't even be called a theory.

Previously, I discussed Plantinga's argument from natural selection. Plantinga argued that evolution could not account for reason, but he did not provide an alternative to demonstrate that something else can account for reason. Science is poor at proving or disproving theories in isolation. It mostly just compares theories and says one is better than another. Every theory in all of the sciences has some things it cannot yet explain. No theory is complete. So the simple observation of things that can't be explained is meaningless, unless you have an alternative theory that can explain them.

A theory is a complex structure, explaining a wide variety of observations. It incorporates many hypothesis, laws, and subtheories. Simply saying that one theory is wrong is not a theory. In the posts to follow, I will show how intelligent design simply is not a theory. I will try to show how it would proceed if it actually was a scientific enterprise and what it would really look like if it was an alternative theory.