Originally Posted by PoodleLovinPessimist

I've never seen a convincing argument to that effect. I'm happy to take that question head-on in a separate thread. You probably disagree, but I think I successfully defended falsification in our earlier thread (which I'm too lazy to look up), but I'm always happy to discuss it again.

Originally Posted by PLP

How many times must I reiterate that I am discussing falsification as a demarcation criterion, and explicitly denying that I am discussing what we should conclude when some prediction of a theory appears to be false-to-fact.

Both Special and General Relativity are falsifiable. They make definite and objectively specifiable falsifiable predictions. In fact, they make observably different predictions than the theories (Gallilean Relativity (SR) and Newtonian Gravitation (GR)) they are intended to replace. We can apply falsification as a demarcation criterion and find that both SR and GR are indeed well-formed scientific hypotheses, and thus they fall well within the domain of scientific investigation.

What happens after that is irrelevant to the use of falsificationism as a demarcation criterion.

Originally Posted by Doubting Didymus

In fact, you've repeatedly said in that and related discussions that falsificationism only scrapes off the most obvious bad nuts, implying that there are things called 'science' that are falsifyable but not material that would be acceptable in, say, a science class. If this isn't what you mean, you'll need to clarify.

Originally Posted by PLP

I'll repeat my position: The empirical falsification criteria of demarcation and evaluation works perfectly to exclude ID, on completely objectively-determinable grounds: If proponents present ID in empirically unfalsifiable terms to avoid being found false, it gets excluded by definition. If cast into empirically falsifiable terms, it is false, and gets excluded for falsity or at the very least failure to be well-supported. [emphasis added]

Originally Posted by PoodleLovinPessimist

Like I said, I'm happy to discuss any objections you might have to falsificationism in a separate thread. I don't want to derail this one.

Originally Posted by PoodleLovinPessimist

We cannot exclude a theory for being false if it is not falsifiable. We cannot exclude an unfalsifiable theory for failure to be "well-supported", since anything and everything "supports" an unfalsifiable theory.

Originally Posted by Doubting Didymus

You've argued righ here that a strict, legalistic demarcation criteria is neccessary to exclude ID from schools. My contention stands that falsification, being by your admission unable to perform better than to divide 'nonscience' from 'good and bad science', is not insufficient to decide what is and isn't taught in schools. i.e. you still need a way to keep 'bad science' out of classrooms, so your objection about keeping ID out if it's allowed to be defined as 'science' however bad, evaporates. We're still discussing issues you raised in this thread, by my reckoning.

Originally Posted by Doubting Didymus

Lakatos's way works for me. I know you don't like Lakatos, but you must at least admit that the existance of his metric for evaluating theories, which he held to be generally and equally unfalsifyable, is a problem for your contention that such an evaluation is impossible?

Originally Posted by PoodleLovinPessimist

I focus on the falsifiability criterion merely because the proponents of ID are not arguing that their theory is well-supported on evidential grounds.

Originally Posted by Doubting Didymus

Sure they are. Behe argues that all the time.