This will be long, but it covers several replies, and covers important key points/allegations brought up.
**[Well, that one’s shot. The fossil record goes back almost 4 billion years]**
That is an opinion made on assumptions based on results of dating methods whos results are only accepted by peers less than 10% of the time. One has to ask why the other 90% are rejected?
**[About a billion years ago, IIRC, nucleated cells finally make an appearance. Then it’s hundreds of millions of years before the first multicellular creatures appear. Then for a long time after that it’s nothing but worms and other simple invertebrates. Etc, etc. The emergence of complex animals took literally billions of years]**
We’re all quite familiar with what evolution teaches based on preconceived opinion. The evidence has yet to show any of this.
**[Since ID refuses to posit any specific claims about HOW the Intelligent Designer goes (or went) about formulating or embodying his [her? its?] designs, how can ID possibly “predict” this?]**
How’s the ‘origin of species’ thing going? How is it that eovlution is allowed to propose somethign that can’t be proven or even showed and ID isn’t? Infact, all the proposed methods of origins fall apart and the exhaustive testing has only left more question than it’s answered, and presented more impossibilities for hte model, and shown that perhaps their proposals weren’t the mechanism by which life supposedly arose. I also wonder how the first vertebrates ‘evolved’- did they have just one spinal joint? Several? If so, where’d the NEW information come from? And more importantly, where are the fossils of the first evolving vertebrates? Istead, we find, as predicted by ID, fully formed vertebrates in the fossil records that appeared suddenly.
[3) re-usage of similar parts in different organisms]
ID proposes that the design has markers that show a designer. They have predicted that the design will be found in unrelated species and the same designs will have different purposes- Bingo- that’s what we find.
**[Intelligent design theory predicts: 1) that we will find specified complexity in biology. One special easily detectable form of specified complexity is irreducible complexity.
ID doesn’t “predict” that at all. For a scientific theory to “predict” something it has to have a mechanism or mechanisms and/or to make reasonably specific empirical claims. To “predict” means that the operation of the theory’s mechanism and/or deducible implications of the theory’s empirical claims entail consequences that can be observed.]**
It most certainly does predict specific complexity, and it most certainly is observable in even the most ‘simplest’ of organisms.
**[There are well known mechanisms, for instance, whereby ordinary evolution (i.e. preceding in small, progressive steps, each individually viable) can produce “irreducibly complex” systems.
]**
I’m afraid that’s not correct- precisely because irreducible complexity is absolutely undone by this so called ‘slow process of accumulation of mutations’ The whole premise behind irreducible complexity lies in the fact that the functioning organ in question would absolutely cease to function unless all the complex parts were inplace and operational to begin with.
When science finds all the parts lying around dormant for the Ecoli flagellum ‘motor’, please lemme know- or when science finds all the parts needed for the eye, just lying around dormant in a species- unnassembled, lemme know. ID predicted that we’ll find only completed fulyl functioning complex organs, and would not find all the parts just lying around dormant while the species waited billions of years for the improbability of accumulated mutaitons to create the last needed part before all the parts could start to migrate to the correct positions in order to ‘hook up’ so that the eye, the ecoli motor, the hearing etc, could all begin to work properly.
You showed a list of very different species with the jaw bones that when set side by side APPEARED to show a gradual movement- however, the drawings were deceitfully inept in that they didn’t mention that htese species were all so different that to suggest the ‘prediction’ that we’d see movement in the bones’ is nothing but an assumption/personal opinion, and open to MUCH fierce debate even amoungst secular scientists. Showing a hippo sized animal with the bone about mid way in the jaw, then setting that picture next to a rat sized animal with the same bone a bit further back, and suggesting that it ‘clearly shows the migration of hte bone’ is a HUGE assumption/personal opinion/leap of faith, and does nothign to undermine the equally valid view that they are nothign but two unique species with differenly positioned bones- that’s it!
**[ID has no mechanism. It asserts that there is, by inference, an “intelligent designer” [or designers?] but it refused to describe (or even speculate about) this designer in any way which would usefully characterize it as a theoretical mechanism]**
Since when do they ‘refuse’? As I mentioned, ID proposes that the designer’s fingerprint can be found in absolutely dissimiliar species sharing the same design features- it’s exactly what we find- the fingerprint of design. What we do NOT find however, (and what ID predicts) is transitional species showing the ‘evolution’ of these complex systems in the dissimiliar species. What we DO find is a very weak case for just ONE sytem- hearing, which is nothign more than assumptions based on VERY shaky evidences.
ID proposes testifiable, falsifiable predictions, nd that’s what we’ve got. Yuo test for design by observing the data- either the data supports or refutes the design proposal. Is design falsifiable? Certainly the observations will tell us.
Are Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity falisfiable? Absolutely! One can falsify intelligent design merely by showing that all the complexities of design features could arise naturally. Has science been able to do this? No. Despite having tried.
Darwinism has the magic wand of the omnipotent designer called TIME to fall back on in light of the absence of evidence, in the absence of a fingerprint. Time solves all- mention time, and the possibilities reportedly and supposedly abound. Given enough TIME we’re told, anythign could happen despite the overwhelming odds (as pointed out by ID). The lack of transitions is covered by the TIME argument despite the fact that we find fully formed, fully functional explosion of fully ‘created’ forms all at once, several times.. So tell me, which of the two models is unfalsifiable again?
You have a strong opinion about evolution, and I’m not deriding that, but I’d liek to ask that the same courtesy be afforded the science of ID as well. We may dissagree, but let’s be respectful of both sciences because both rely on testifiable models to degrees, and both are as valid an undertaking as the other.
That is an opinion made on assumptions based on results of dating methods whos results are only accepted by peers less than 10% of the time. One has to ask why the other 90% are rejected? The age of the earth at around 4.6 billion years, and the relative dating in that time span of it's geologic strata, is not an "assumption" within science. It is based on extremely strong, comprehensive and highly consilient evidence. (I have no idea which, of the many consilient, dating methods you're referencing with that arm waving factoid.) These ages and the relative dating are accepted, with good reason, by ALL scientists SOLEY excepting those who have an explicit basis in Biblical literalism for preemptively rejecting them.
In any case the RELATIVE dates (e.g. this strata being older than that one, as opposed to this strata being a particular number of years old) are what are operative wrt to your claim of the "rapid appearance of complexity in the fossil record". These RELATIVE dates were not only accepted by pre-Darwinian creationists, they were established and confirmed by pre-Darwinian creationists. It's just that the strata they thought contained no fossils turned out, on closer examination and further prospecting, to have fossils, albeit relatively simple and/or microscopic ones.
And besides all that I thought -- indeed you specified -- that we were talking about "Intelligent Design". ID doesn't take any position on the age of the earth. Therefore since it doesn't dispute it, on a matter presumably relevant and demanding exception if any be taken, ID can only be presumed to accept the prevailing scientific view. So if you want to quibble about geologic dating you can't do so in the name of Intelligent Design.
I also wonder how the first vertebrates ‘evolved’- did they have just one spinal joint? Several? If so, where’d the NEW information come from? And more importantly, where are the fossils of the first evolving vertebrates? First of all your conception -- that evolution must have preceded from one spinal joint to two and then more -- is all bollixed up. It may help if you understand that vertebrates are not (as often assumed) a Phylum, but are (or is it Craniata, animals with cranium that are?) rather a Sub-Phylum of Chordata, animals with notochords. The notochord is a flexible rod that runs lengthwise through the body of Chordates, although in vertebrates in only exists during embryonic stages. What happened in evolution (and what happens in embryological development) is that the vertebrae (and the spinal column) are built in relation to the notochord. Therefore there was no need for vertebrae to evolve one at a time since the pre-vertebrate Chordates had notochords into their adult stages, around which the vertebrae could grow in any number.
As to transitional forms, again a successful prediction from evolution is operative here. For years and years the living lancet amphioxus was presented as a model of what the progenitor of vertibrates must have looked like. Here's a diagram of this critter:
Now obviously amphioxus itself could not have been the transitional, or near to the transition, since it is a living creature. But the point was that it must have been something very much like amphioxus. However in recent decades a pre-Cambrian Burgess shale animal -- Pikia -- that had previously been assumed to be just another worm, turned out on closer examination to have notochord, and to be very similar to Amphioxus, a proto-Chordate ancestor in just the right place.
There are a series of other transitionals which progressively add features of Chordates, craniates and vertebrates. E.g. Haikouella, Yunnanozoon, Pikaia, Haikouichthys, and Myllokumingia.
I’m afraid that’s not correct- precisely because irreducible complexity is absolutely undone by this so called ‘slow process of accumulation of mutations’ The whole premise behind irreducible complexity lies in the fact that the functioning organ in question would absolutely cease to function unless all the complex parts were inplace and operational to begin with. Ah, subtly but crucially you've MISDEFINED "irreducible complexity" in a way that commits the elementary fallacy of embedding your conclusion as a premise. (Don't feel bad. IDer's do this all the time.)
The definition of an IC system is one were all the parts must be present for the system to function. This is not the same as saying that all the parts must be present "to begin with", i.e. from the beginning.
If you say the latter you're simply denying, by definition, and in advance and despite of any argument and evidence, precisely what is being argued: that it is possible for an IC system to be formed in stepwise fashion from one that is not IC.
Simply as a matter of logic and adequate reflection however it's clear that there ARE ways to do exactly that.
One example is "removal of scaffolding". Consider an ordinary stone arch. Although a "simple" structure it clearly meets the definition of being "inherently complex". It must have all it's parts together at once to function as an arch (e.g. a passageway through a wall). If the sides aren't present there's nothing to hold the keystone up. If the keystone isn't present the sides will collapse. And yet it clearly IS possible to build an arch in stepwise fashion by adding single stones one at a time. All you have to do is remove some of the stones (those inside the arch) at some point.
Other possibilities are "functional shift" (parts of the system shifting from one function to another, or the whole system shifting it's function) and optional parts becoming necessary parts (something that initially merely helped becomes necessary because of other changes). I'll leave it as an exercise to you and other readers to imagine examples of these.
The point is that the claim that its impossible by the very nature of IC systems for them to form in stepwise fashion is flatly and obviously false, even before one starts looking at biological evidence.