They weren't putting forth new data, just disputing existing data.
Where "they" are the "professional IDians" -- the people
selling the idea.
The ID "program"
Curiously, this - and the political appeals such as "teach the controversy" - appears to be the whole program. It is not a matter of "question everything" (science already does that), but of portraying evidence in a manner that gives a false impression of what the evidence in question really means. You can see this most when they use things like carbon-14 dating for objects that did not obtain the measured levels of carbon originally from the atmosphere but some other reservoir system: old seals, young coal. It relies on the ignorance and willing gullibility of the audience rather than on the validity of the argument.
One would think that, if there were any kind of (honest) program behind ID, then there would be, could be,
should be, areas of investigation where they were looking to provide something
additional, something that would provide positive evidence
FOR ID.
Irreducible Complexity
So far they have not really defined what that kind of evidence would be. The closest any one has come is the concept of "Irreducible Complexity" or "IC" - originally defined as (
Michael Behe, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution." - p 39):
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution.
The conclusion made by Behe and others is that
IF evolution cannot produce them,
THEN they must have been made, designed, created.
The problem is that this does not preclude the
indirect production of such systems through evolution and adaptation of existing systems for new uses and the subsequent loss of now non-functional elements that were part of the original feature. This is similar to the way roman arches are constructed by supporting the stones until the keystone is in place and then removal of the supporting structure - the arch is irreducibly complex, remove one stone and the arch fails.
Behe during the Dover trial admitted that all known biological systems that have been touted as IC systems could be developed in this manner, and that there was evidence of this being the case.
There are also a few known instances where an IC system has been observed to evolve, such as the
Hall experiments. This turns the "IC" concept into a non-starter for something that demonstrates ID.
Information
The only other thing they have going is the issue of "Information" in a number of different permutations, all of which rely absolutely on not providing a definition or a metric for measuring what is meant by "Information" so the statements cannot be tested, verified, or
falsified.
However it can be shown (see
Hall again) that for the statements\claims made about information (such as "there is only loss of information, never gain") that either (a) the concept of "information" is irrelevant to the issue of what can and cannot occur through evolution or (b) that the statement\claim is falsified. Either way this turns "information" into a non-starter for something that could demonstrate ID.
Conclusion
They are left with portrayals of evidence in false manners and political issues that play on the ignorance and willing gullibility of their audience.
And the only thing that keeps these ideas going is the ignorance and willing gullibility of the audience.
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