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This is the usual answer that comes from basic ID theory. It's no surprise that most folks don't have much use for it.

Yes but sometimes it is better than saying you know things you don't. That is the biggest problem with the scientific community today, whether it be evolution or global warming or epidemiological studies, you claim to know things you do not.

You claim you know how the old the world is and how old rocks are (there are massive assumptions in radiometric dating). You claim to know how life evolved over millions of years(assuming correlation = causation).

You claim all this and yet noone in the evolutionary world can explain how a creature without legs or arms came to have them, except the standard old mutation and natural selection with a bit of punctuated equilibrium added or not, depending on your preference and my all time favorite, which is that an arm or leg had some other function until it finally became an arm.

I think Michael Crighton was right when he said magicians love scientists the most because they are the easiest to fool, because they fancy themselves as being objective.

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That is the biggest problem with the scientific community today, whether it be evolution or global warming or epidemiological studies, you claim to know things you do not.

Yet you do the very same thing in your post #231. I don't know if you realize it but you sound just like an evolutionary biologist. ;)

In general, scientists are very aware of the limits of knowledge in their field. However, the media filter makes things sound very strange and there are people with a political agenda who will use anything to get their way. When scientists exact words are quoted here on FR, creationists complain that they use words like "seems to", "it's probable that", or "this evidence suggests". So you can't have it both ways.

In the case of organisms growing arms and legs, Ichneumon's post documents the fossil evidence of this occurring. Alternative points of view to evolution don't address the fossil record. That's why I was being satirical about the previous poster's ID prediction.

The problem for anti-science is that there is an enormous amount of fossil evidence. More than any one individual could view in their lifetime. Creationists can't address it. They're still looking for the origins of seaweed. ID'ers can't address it because they have a rhetorical argument, not a theory. They're still struggling to understand complexity. So they've chosen to pick on something well documented, like the development of flagella or eyes (there are over 3500 different kinds), but have ignored truly complex structures like the brain.

Evolutionary biology is still the best explanation. And our understanding of how this works is growing daily. If we're lucky, we'll be here long enough to see a pill that can grow someone a new kidney. But who knows.