""irreducible complexity" Essentially, since evolution requires a step-wise development in which each variation is advantageous enough to survival to spread throughout the gene pool, then evolution with respect to a particular biological structure could be falsified if the components of that organ were found to be totally useless unless already put together"
Sounds like a logical claim of falsification... but the problem is that it's hard to prove that something cannot form step-wise. So i wouldn't say irreducible complexity doesn't meet the standard, but that we haven't yet observed the "totally useless" part. That is, we haven't seen the parts form while not being useful at all until put together.
Myself, I'm not that fond of the claim.
One part I think doesn't make sense is the assumption that useful mutations, and variations, are just random and/or causal. The earth is around 4.5 billion years old (from what they say); the probabilities of useful mutations occuring with that time scale amounts to it being almost impossible for creatures to have evolved to the extent is has...
When creatures develop mutations, it's usually an addition of information that's already known in the gene (such as developping a third arm) and new information is rare, even if you consider a long, gradual, process; but actually, we haven't proven that variations we see have mutated with any new information; the information could simply be old information known in the genes.
I think any theory, or part, should be assigned a probability percentage, and it's natural not to assume things that have too low probabilities. Macro-evolution has very low probability, and I don't think any logical scientist could say otherwise, at least not without sure observations for many parts of the claims. Though of course the probabilities would be debated.
And of course, whether consciousness can form is another aspect.
That consciousness is possible is not falsifiable (Since it's impossible to know if something has true consciousness or not besides yourself), so at least that part shouldn't be part of the theory of evolution.
The theory of evolution doesn't account for everything, even though it tries to. There's no reason why someone couldn't see evolution along with creationism(as long as you aren't stuck to the idea of "god" like in the bible) or even something else. Dunno yet what that something else would be, but that's not a problem; the world is filled with uncertainty.
