Methinks it is sort-of like two weasels

[Paul_King]

@lee_merrill

@nwrickert

Many of us would be happy to see actual evidence of design.

For that matter, many of us would cheer if the ID proponents would come up with a clear enough definition of “design” that we could use for detection.

“An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.” (Behe here)

That is certainly not a definition of design. Nor can it be considered evidence of design. After all, unselected steps will occur (quite frequently) and evolution is hardly going to care about whether it is including unselected steps or not.

Any argument to the contrary makes the mistake of confusing probabilities before and after the event. A particular unselected step may be unlikely before the event, but that does not mean that unselected steps do not occur nor does it mean that evolution cannot incorporate those that do occur.