ID does not assert a universal negative. Why is there an attempt to impose an impossible burden of proof on ID to prove a universal negative, in this case that there can be no possible Darwinian pathway? It seems to me the burden of proof is on the Darwinist to present a rigorous, thorough account of its history, since it is the Darwinist who asserts that its history is Darwinian. ID just makes the claim, based on such imponderables as the critical assembly required of the components (not just the chemical 'pathways' required) that the Darwinian mechanism is causally insufficient to produce the result.
It just got poofed into existence by a designer that takes pleasure in watching children die from dysentery.
Is that a there is no designer because a designer wouldn't have done it that way because its wrong to take pleasure in watching children die from dysentery argument? Is that a scientific argument?
Cordially,
Biology cannot possibly provide a detailed history of every past event, any more than physics can provide a detailed history of the weather going back millions of years.
The question is whether it is reasonable for physicists to teach in high school the possibility that Katrina was sent by an intelligent agency to punish New Orleans for its sins, or whether a particular configuration of alleles was twiched into place by an intelligence, for some purpose.
I am told that one of the halmarks of design is purpose. Since the flagellum is the poster child for intentional design, one has to consider the designer's purpose. We know what the flagellum does: it kills children. this leads to the question of the designer's motives.
ID does not assert a universal negative.
No, that's exactly what ID does. Granted it doesn't assert a universal negative as a conclusion. It's worse than that. It assumes a universal negative as a premise.
Both the main methods for (putatively) inferring that this or that structure was the result of "intelligent design" -- that its is "irreducibly complex" or that it exhibits "specified complexity" -- purport that structures with either of these characteristic COULD NOT have been developed by ANY series of stepwise modifications, i.e. that there is NO POSSIBLE "naturalistic" path to their formation.
Expanding a bit on your argument. If the proposed path for the flagellum is wrong, it is up to an honest researcher to propose an alternate path.
Science does not proceed by asserting that a natural explanation cannot be found.