If the only thing that needs to be done to falsify the claim that life was intelligently designed is to show that an irreducibly complex system could have evolved naturally, then ID has in fact been falsified. Irreducibly complex systems can in principle evolve naturally via a stepwise process.[emphasis mine]
-Imagine an organism...
- It is easy to imagine that a stepwise evolutionary process might produce...
-Now imagine that the system is such that A and B are redundant parts...
-It is easy to see that it would be possible for system CDE to arise...
- I have shown above that this system could have arisen via an unintelligent stepwise evolutionary process...
I'll need more than imagination to accept the conclusion that such a system could have arisen via an unintelligent stepwise evolutionary process, and further, that such a thing has been demonstrated in fact and that therefore ID has been falsified. The fact is that no biologist has come even remotely close to reconstructing the history of something like a bacterial flagellum in Darwinian terms.
If the tables were turned, could Darwinism be potentially falsified with respect to some alertedly IC biological system? I think it is not falsifiable. One would have to show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to that system, which seems effectively impossible.
Cordially,
This was the original claim to which I was responding. This is meant to be a falsification criterion for ID. This claim is that no unintelligent process (emphasis mine) be sufficient to produce such irreducibly complex systems, not that no unintelligent process that can actually be demonstrated to have formed a biological system be sufficient to produce such irreducibly complex systems. I have demonstrated that the first claim, the one actually put forth is incorrect. I assume you are not willing at this point to give up on ID. Therefore, this claim cannot represent a falsification criterion for ID.
The fact is that no biologist has come even remotely close to reconstructing the history of something like a bacterial flagellum in Darwinian terms.That's a strange statement, because a little googling turned up quite a bit of information about the flagellum. I doubt you'll find it convincing, because if you did then there would be one fewer irreducibly complex things in nature. That's a hazard of the designer-of-the-gaps philosophy.
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum_background.html http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html
Asking as an atheist, isn't this debate a little insulting to people of faith? I wouldn't want my faith reduced to grasping at flagellum or clotting cascades or whatever to prove that science wasn't omniscient, that there is still a necessity for the god I pray to. It seems to miss the point of the Sermon on the Mount. But then again I'm not a believer, and if I was, I don't think I'd be a literalist. Oh well, the world takes all kinds.