You misunderestimate me (and I encourage that by using pseuod-words like
"misunderestimate" :-) )
Yes and no. If you can prove that the positive ("There are square circles,"
for example) is self-contradictory, you can prove its negation ("There are
no square circles"). This is *often* the case in philosophy.
It wouldn't be an issue if the two approaches were otherwise equal. Then, it
would be simply a matter of dueling theories. But, where a naturalist theory
has a certain burden of proof, a non-naturalist theory takes on a double
burden because of the extra *philosophical* baggage.
Oddly, this does not eliminate ID theory as such. It only eliminates
*non-naturalistic* design theories. Aliens (etc.) could still be
responsible. How *they* would have come about could be a different question.
Perhaps their base of origin (planet?) *did* fully support evolution.
Perhaps life in the Universe is much rarer than we evolutionists tend to
think, and the aliens, realizing that they were pretty much alone in the
Universe, decided to "seed" planets such as ours with life.
However, though design theory is not altogether eliminated, it will still
take strong evidence to overcome the non-parsimoniousness of such an theory.
I'm not too worried that we will find that such a theory is necessary.
Ordinary evolutionary theory seems to be doing reasonably well. It's
doubtful that we can ever *prove* that life on Earth originated in one
precise way. Nevertheless, it appears that we may be able to find a
significant number (i.e., more than zero! :-) ) of ways that life *could*
originate naturally (if we are able to create life in any of these ways and
by showing that the appropriate conditions could readily have occurred at
the appropriate time in Earth's history).
In any case, *if* it's impossible to prove a negative, and if the negative
in question is that naturalism is false, that just means that non-naturalism
can't be proved, most likely. It doesn't mean that the burden of proof is
not still present for non-naturalism. It's not my fault that negatives often
cannot be proved. That's just the way it is, and we have to take that into
account in building our theories, and not depend on theories that require
proving negatives, unless we *can* prove them (via showing the
contradictoriness of their positives).
What we do in science, and sometimes in philosophy, is show that a theory is
a *minimal* theory among the ones we have to work with that we think are at
least possibly true (plus, of course, all the testing against facts). Thus,
given theories A and B that both cover the data equally well, that both have
the same implications for empirical research, etc., we will take the one
that is, other things being equal, the "lesser" of the two theories. If
theory A posits facts F and G and principles P and Q, but theory B only
requires fact F and principle P and yet it still works, we choose B over
theory A. If theory B posits fact F and principle R, then, unless there is
something really unacceptable about R, we'd have to go with B again.
But, if a theory postulates an entire *metaphysical* category that the other
theory does not, then it is no longer in the same ballpark as the other
theory. The facts must then somehow prove that any theory that does not have
such an additional metaphysical category *cannot* work. That is, it must
show that *no* lesser theory can work. In the case of theistic design
theory, it must show that *no* naturalistic theory *can* work, not merely
that any proposed at the moment happen not to work.
The way to avoid that burden, of course, is not to take on additional major
metaphysical categories unless a contradiction is *first* found in the very
premise of lesser theories. Only then are we justified in giving up on the
lesser category of theories and stepping up to the next higher metaphysical
category.
Do you still think I was making the novice's mistake of invalidly requiring
a proof of a negative? I hope not. (Incidentally, there is at least one
other category of negatives that can be proved, other than those that imply
a self-contradiction by themselves. Can anyone reading this tell us what it
is?).
Happy thinking.
--Chris