Science v Intelligent Design: Dembski again
In his talk “Molecular Machines/Death of Darwinism”, Dembski makes the following observation:
Dembski wrote:
what do they do. Darwinian mechanisms is a divide and conquer strategy. You take a system and if you can find a sub system of that system which performs some function then you have divided the problem . Clearly the global system evolved from the system that is embedded in it. End of story. No need to do any engineering work or any design work or anything, that’s enough. Enough to point to these intermediate systems. but not give any detailed testable step by step scenario for how point A could have evolved by gradual means into point B. Nevertheless that is enough to convince them because from their perspective design is a non-starter, it’s unthinkable
In order to understand the scientific argument, it is important to remember how ‘design’ is defined by Intelligent Design. Design is the “set theoretic complement of regularity and chance”. In order to reach a design inference, Intelligent Design needs to show that of the countless possible paths, none remain plausible, quite an unenviable task. Behe has attempted to circumvent the hard work by arguing that systems that are Irreducibly Complex cannot have evolved (well, he does accept the possibility of evolution of such systems but considers them improbable). That position by itself has turned the certainty argument of ID into a probability argument and thus undermines the ID position. But science has done more, it has shown that so-called Irreducibly Complex systems can exist as smaller parts with a different function. In other words, the system is only irreducibly complex as to a single function. Science is pointing out that simpler systems with a function do exist and thus the IC argument fails. Does this mean that science rests? Of course not. Let’s take the bacterial flagella as an example and compare what science has done versus what ID has done. Well, I have provided science’s progress in this area, and I am hoping that an ID proponent can fill in the details as to what ID has added to explain the bacterial flagella. Needless to say, Dembski’s words show that he clearly does not comprehend the concept of ‘design’ and the scientific response to it.