Intelligent Design Takes a Hit

This article in Wired demonstrates the precise reason that I don’t endorse Intelligent Design. Apparently Michael Behe has used the protein transport mechanism as an example of “irreducible complexity” and from there proposed that an intelligent designer was involved. It really should be obvious, one would think, that proposing an inference based on a lack of data is actually a worse gamble, probabilistically, than making the original radical inferences for evolution.

The problem comes when the artifacts of the components of the machinery are found in unassembled form in earlier creatures. Finding the components of the “irreducible complex” machinery always emboldens the evolutionists to claim that all that was needed for the machine to exist was time… deep time, the magic elixer of evolution.

This is the point where I.D. proponents must rely on probability to determine that the likelihood of self-assembly of loose components running around accidentally forming into a new, valuable function such as protein transfer is smaller than miniscule. But that argument never gains traction with the deep time crowd. (Not that any I.D. argument ever would).

The point is that I.D. arguments are both inferential AND falsifiable, in a very loose use of that term.

I.D. is doomed, for the reason that it can never be proven, and it frequently can be disputed if not disproved outright. I.D. just doesn’t know how it will be disproved in any given case. But of course that is true of evolution, too, with its mountain of inferences and not one single experimental verification. Both are completely speculatory.

So I don’t support either one.