In
Message 31 of the "To Good to be True? Intelligently Designed?" thread, jaywill and I get into a discussion regarding the work of Behe, his intellectual integrity, and the status of "irreducible complexity."
The question is: What does it take for an advocate of ID in general and IC in particular to claim that it doesn't exist? If it is scientific, then it must be testable. If it is testable, then it can fail the test. If it fails the test, then it is discarded (to some degree).
So enlighten us: What would it take? What sort of experiment would have to be run in order to conclude that "ID/IC" is nonsense?
At the time Behe wrote
Darwin's Black Box, he made the extraordinary claim that there were no papers published anywhere regarding molecular evolution. A simple search of PubMed turned up hundreds of such papers, some written 20 years before Behe's book. Since then, thousands of new papers on molecular evolution have been published and still Behe's book is published stating that there are hardly any. When he was a witness to the Dover case, he repeated this claim only to have the cross-examining attorney start piling up the references in front of him that grew so tall that Behe had to ask that they be cleared because he could no longer see over them.
So what does this mean for Behe's claims? How can he or anybody else justify that "nobody is looking into it"? Or that there are huge questions? Every single example Behe brought up in his book has been shown to be not only reducible but evolved. How many refuting studies must be done before it can be said that Behe was wrong?
ABE: I should think this spin-off discussion would go in either "Biological Evolution" as it relates to how to measure and test ID in general and IC in particular or "Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution."
Edited by Rrhain, : Added where I thought the conversation should go.
Edited by Rrhain, : Reworked original post
Edited by Rrhain, : Changing topic title.
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to
Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.