ID taken to the end

I think you've missed Nuggin's point. No, his argument doesn't depend on that, just on the proposition that anything that designed life on Earth must be more complex than, for example, a prokaryote. Not necessarily. But if IDists were to claim that started out simple and evolved to become more complex --- complex enough to design life on Earth --- then his point is that then the IDists have practically given the whole show away, since they have always claimed that the creation of ordered complexity is exactly the sort of thing which needs a designer and which cannot evolve. To maintain that the designer itself evolved is to admit that a designer is not necessary (and that evolution is sufficient) to explain the very phenomenon for which ID purports to provide an explanation.

Yes, this is an assumption. It's a COMPLETELY valid assumption.If you have ANY evidence of ANY life form which is LESS complex than the simplest virus AND which has produced space travel, genetic manipulation and cloaking technology, then let's hear it....None, right?
How about a life form which is WAY more complex than that cut off. Let's say a single celled life form that's produced this technology. Got that?
No?
How about a simple sponge? How about a plant? How about an insect? How about a fish? An amphibian? No, no, no, no, no, no.How about humans? Do WE have the technology to pull this off? Nope. Almost. We're pretty close, but we don't have it.So, NOTHING on Earth is capable of this and EVERYTHING on Earth is too complex for the cut off.I'm EXTREMELY confident that this "assumption" is going to stand. This isn't an assumption. This is the direct result of the IDers claim.It MUST have started out less complex than life on Earth because ALL life on Earth is too complex to exist without design.It MUST have remained less complex than life on Earth because ALL life on Earth is too complex to exist without design.There is an assumption present, but it's not mine. It's the basis of the IDers claim. I'm just forcing them to play by their own rules. Behe. That's one. And he admitted it because he was under oath.It's NOT a component of ID because it's incompatible with the claims of ID. So "Prominent IDers" = Behe
But Dembski = "non-prominent IDer"??Nice try

Yes! Thank you!

I think the real problem here is the heterogenous and malleable thing that is the ID movement. As we all know the 'aliens' argument is, for the vast majority of ID proponents, a fig leaf to allow them to pretend the ID isn't all about their religious convictions.There is no logical reason why a complex organism could not previously have evolved which did not display irreducible complexity. It is hard however to see how one could evolve which didn't have complex specified information in some form. The only example of life we know of is supposedly 'too complex to have evolved' , at least on Earth in the commonly accepted time frame, but that doesn't rule out the existence of other forms of life which are equivalently complex but not in such a way as for their evolution to have been as astronomically improbable as IDists hold ours to have been.There are plenty of ad hoc apologetics one can come up with as to how hypothetical complex aliens could have evolved de novo but humans could not have. They could have had an earlier formed planet with a prebiotic atmosphere more conducive to abiogenesis which reached a suitable environmental state for life to develop billions of years before or own. Were we to have any actual 'Irreducibly Complex' system for which there was no plausible scaffoding pathway that might be similarly considered. In the absence of having to provide evidence it is possible to argue almost anything with such ad hoc musings.The problem is that outside of abiogenesis the aliens argument is no more of a useful hypothesis than the god one, considerably less so in fact. At least once one has gone as far as the god hypothesis one can allow all sorts of hidden supernatural tinkering in the genome, like Randman's quantum nudging jiggery pokery. With the aliens hypothesis, as with a front loading form of theistic ID, we are confronted by the fact that there is no evidence for any sort of encrypted or hidden pre-formed information in the genome.So aliens might explain the supposed Irreducible Complexity of the bacterial flagellum or core conserved metabolic cycles, but unless you get into Eric Von Daniken territory with aliens actively zipping about in UFOs curating the planet for millions of years they won't get you to an 'Irreducibly Complex' vertebrate immune system.As was pointed out even the most prominent ID figures don't seem to be able to agree on what the theory means. Its worse down at the ground level, such as here at EvC, where people who are just straight creationists and deny macroevolution and sometimes even the existence of beneficial mutations regularly call their position ID.I know much of this has already been covered in this thread, but that doesn't usually stop me sticking my oar in.TTFN,WK

I'm about to get on a train to go on a little vacation. I want that password by the time I get back next week.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

One's a biologist. The other is a theologian/philosopher. Take your pick.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

This has not prevented William Dembski from becoming a prominent IDer, since to achieve that dubious eminence biological expertise is not a prerequisite and might indeed be considered a handicap.