No evidence for 1), and 2) is an argument from ignorance. Want to try that one again?
And yet another argument from ignorance.
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I think we would like to see that argument.
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Above, T_aquaticus was very clearly referring to evidence, not argument.
And you replied directly to the question about IC systems, while now you appear to be moving the goalposts away from the ever-changing specificity of IC.
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It sounds as though you have no familiarity with any of the relevant scientific literature, so your use of “usually” is unwarranted. You’re misrepresenting the scientific as all handwaving rhetoric and no evidence.
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Didn’t we tenderize that ex-equine last week after I pointed that, even if such evidence were produced, it still would not rule out design. If merely moves the goalposts to proving every single step is not designed.
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I have no intention of typing out dozens of pages of careful arguments from Behe’s books because you are too lazy to read them. I’ve done my homework. If you haven’t done yours, you have no business being in the discussion. (Whether you have a Ph.D. in biology or not.)
Wrong, as usual. The evidence for 1 is in his books, but you refuse to read them, and 2 isn’t an argument from ignorance, but an argument based on Behe’s search through thousands of articles in the technical literature for the detailed evolutionary pathways, and coming up blank. If you know where the detailed accounts are found, why don’t you write to Behe and give him all the book and article references?
Then read his friggin’ books, instead of arguing off the cuff based on what you imagine that he says!
But the point is that John Harshman, John Mercer, and T. aquaticus can’t produce such evidence, and can’t even point to articles and books in the literature where it is found. The emperor has no clothes.
I’ve read them. Behe is not careful with his arguments, nor far more importantly, with the evidence.
Then please summarize the scientific evidence for the evolutionary origins of both bacterial flagella, not arguments from bloggers.
You DID look at the evidence before deciding that Behe was right, didn’t you?
I’ve read them. The evidence isn’t in his books.
Behe’s failure to carefully search the technical literature has been demonstrated on more than one occasion. Here’s just one:
Q. You indicated earlier when we were discussing your paper with Dr. Snoke that transpositions are a kind of mutation, correct?
A. Yes, they are.
Q. Now, you on Monday showed the court, or maybe it was Tuesday you showed the court that you had done a literature search of articles on the immune system looking for the words “random mutation,” correct?
A. Yes.
Q. But you didn’t search for transpositions, is that correct?
A. That’s correct.
Q. And that word appears in a number of the titles here?
A. It does, but the critical difference is the word random. There’s lots of mutations, and it’s entirely possible that intelligent design or some process of the development of life can occur by changes in DNA, but the critical factor is are such changes random, are they not random, so just there are also many occurrences of the word mutation, but it was not just mutation that is the critical element of Darwinian theory. It is random mutation.
Q. But in modern Darwinian theory transposition is one of the kind of mutations that natural selection acts upon, correct?
A. It is a mutation, and natural selection can act upon it.
So, Eddie, how much of the literature concerning mutations will we miss if we expect the term to be preceded by “random,” when in reality, mutations are random in only a single respect and nonrandom in many others?
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Or it’s been a straw man argument all along, since everyone knows that reconstructing stepwise pathways that may well predate LUCA is practically impossible. This is pretty much the same argument we had last week.
Meanwhile, simple stepwise pathways have been demonstrated in the lab, and it is completely plausible that longer pathways could be demonstrated.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283607010297
If we had one clear example of a single designed step, or a “probability of design” to compare to probability of Darwinian mechanisms, then Behe might actually have something to argue about.
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Behe’s demand is as stupid as a historian demanding documentation for every last footstep made by Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke in their famous expedition across the U.S. or else the expedition never happened.
We have plenty of evidence for the evolution of things like bacteria flagella and a big fat ZERO any biological feature was Intelligently Designed.
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“Plausible”, but the point is that no one has provided the demonstration.
I’m not demanding the actual pathways, but only a set of steps that could in principle deliver the results. But the set of steps, even hypothetical steps, must be complete. There is not even a set of hypothetical steps in the literature.
Does that prove the bacterial flagellum did not evolve from a bacterium without a flagellum? Of course not. But the claim is not just that the bacterial flagellum evolved somehow, some way, from a bacterium with a flagellum; the claim is that it evolved by certain mechanisms – mutation and natural selection. So the only way of making that claim plausible is to show at least a hypothetical chain of steps – and the chain must be complete, or doubt will remain.
I’m not faulting biologists for not yet producing a full set of steps. I only fault them for trying to browbeat everyone in the planet into accepting that the flagellum did arise out of such mechanisms when they themselves can’t demonstrate even a workable hypothetical stepwise pathway, let alone the actual one. I’m asking for a little more epistemological humility about what we know. But when it comes to evolutionary biologists – at least, those who argue aggressively on the internet (maybe the silent majority aren’t like this) – epistemological humility is in short supply. Conjectures, speculations, plausible reconstructions, etc. are routinely treated as “established science” rather than as provisional hypotheses. I find the physics/astronomy people to be more often willing to acknowledge the tentativeness of their constructs. I wish that attitude would rub off a bit more on the “genes and populations” crowd.
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Or else what? More of your “science doesn’t know everything therefore science doesn’t know anything” argument?
Where is your / Behe’s complete set of steps the Designer used in creating the pathways? Isn’t Behe’s hypocrisy getting pretty old by now?
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Yep. Some people refer to the Intelligent Design ridiculous demand as IDID, or “I DEMAND INFINITE DETAIL!” 
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Speaking of amazing bone fragments, here is a recent case where extracted DNA turned out to be from a 90,000 year old first generation offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father (!)
Mum’s a Neanderthal, Dad’s a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid
No, that’s not Behe’s argument. Your parallel is inexact.
A more exact parallel would be: “Could Lewis and Clark [which you spelled incorrectly] have crossed over rivers, swamps, and steep mountainsides using a combination of pogo stick and skateboard?” It might well be possible to have traversed that distance by a combined use of feet, boats, balloons, horses and other things; but if one was restricted to a certain set of mechanisms (pogo stick and skateboard) it might well be impossible. (Try crossing a major river, or a bog, or the side of a steep mountain, using either.)
The Darwinian theory is not merely that bacteria with flagella evolved from bacteria without flagella, or that camera eyes evolved from light-sensitive spots. It’s a theory that includes a mechanism for getting from the starting to the ending point. Behe’s arguments (which I doubt you’ve read a paragraph of, in his own words) all concern whether or not the putative mechanism of evolution (RM + NS) is capable of crossing the distances it is alleged to have crossed.
You should try understanding an author before you raise objections to that author. And if you hope to understand an author, you have to actually (gasp!) read what he writes.
That’s exactly Behe’s argument. Make ridiculous demands for details while providing none himself, make unsupported ignorance-based assertions natural evolutionary processes are incapable of producing the result.
Why would the evolution of anything have to be restricted to Random Mutuations + Natural Selection? [I’ve spelled out the abbreviations for the benefit of visitors to this forum who may need that assistance.] Haven’t scientists known about various other evolutionary processes for much or even most of a century by now?
This topic reminds me of that infamous “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” petition at:
“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
If not for the misuse of their names for propaganda purposes, could not all scientists agree that:
(1) We should always remain skeptical (in a genuinely healthy scientific sense) towards everything we think we understand about science.
(2) RM + NS hasn’t been the sum total of evolutionary processes in a very long time.
(3) “Careful examination of of the evidence” applies to every area of science! Is there any scientist on the planet who would encourage non-careful (i.e., sloppy or reckless) examination of the evidence?
Even so, I still hear from people telling me to look and “see how many prominent scientists have signed the Dissent from Darwinism petition!”
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Your answer shows not even a moment’s thought-engagement with what I wrote.
Some scientists here are good at genuine dialogue – Joshua and the two Dans and Neil; others, like T. aquaticus, while showing strong partisanship, at least attempt to respond to points of substance; but others, like yourself and John Mercer, answer primarily in sharp-edged remarks, biting rhetorical questions, crude misrepresentations, etc., showing not an ounce of the spirit of dialogue, but only a desire to prove the other guy completely wrong on every single point. What people like you and Mercer don’t seem to grasp is that when neutrals, who haven’t made up their minds about evolution yet, read this site, and see the representatives of “science” behaving in that way (trying to score points rather than enter into the give and take of dialogue), it just confirms the charge that “evolutionists” are aggressive dogmatists, and this is likely to drive them toward creationism! You guys are doing Ken Ham a big favor, by confirming for his readers all the bad stereotypes about evolutionists. So if you want people on the fence to reject modern evolutionary theory, just keep doing what you’re doing.
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I didn’t say it did. I’m describing Behe’s arguments, based on long engagement with his writings. Just as you, back when you were a Biblical scholar, might have described Wellhausen’s arguments as you found them, even if you thought that Wellhausen was leaving important things out. The things Wellhausen was leaving out, you would bring up under the “critique” section of your essay, but in your initial exposition, where you were trying to teach the reader what Wellhausen was about, you would focus on reporting his ideas and arguments accurately.
Timothy Horton doesn’t seem to have a clue what Behe actually says, and from that I infer that he hasn’t read Behe, but relies on snippets quoted or paraphrased by Behe’s enemies. Tim apparently doesn’t understand what “scholarship” is, and why it’s a necessary preparative for “critique.”
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