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It doesn't matter how many people believe something, as easily demonstrated by today's events in Baghdad.

What matters is that ID proponents support their position by pointing to an object, such as a flagellum, and say, "This is irreducibly complex; there can be no functional subcomponents of this. It needs all its pieces to work."

Biologists come along and demonstrate that pieces of the flagellum structure do in fact have useful functions and do exist in living bacteria.

This is what I mean by being in perpetual retreat. There is no part of a living thing that will not be investigated, and so far, nothing that has been investigated has been irreducibly complex.

You can get 1.2 billion people to close their eyes and pretend that this doesn't happen, and yet it continues to happen.

This is not simply about being right or wrong. It is about asking the right questions. If you are doing science, the right question is always, "How could this have come about through natural processes." If this isn't your question, you aren't doing science.

You didn't elaborate on what you meant by "position in retreat," so I went on the attack

I wasn't the one who developed or proposed the "irreducible complexity" argument (as if one needs a mirror to confirm there is a nose on one's face). Even pieces of a complex object, to the extent they exhibit any functionality at all, imply intelligence and design. Science can just as easily ask of those pieces, "How did this come about through natural processes?" But certain parties define "natural processes" as being devoid of any signs of intelligence or design, and that is where I beg to differ.

Show me one natural process that does not demonstrate, in any manner or degree, some form of intelligence or design. If I have the capacity to distinguish one object or process from another, then it must have distinguishing attributes; it must be formed or operate in a manner that communicates its existence through one of my senses.

If the reference point for intelligence is the human observer, and the human observer has consistently apprehended human intelligence applying itself by way of tools designed to accomplish a given task, why would it be unreasonable to infer, when the dynamism of the universe exhibits functionalism, that intelligence is also operative in those cases (albeit currently intangible through any instrument of science other than human reason)?