Jason’s recent encounter with ID-apologist Tom Woodward spurred me to revisit his book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design (2006) which I had tossed aside months back due to its breathless, inane cheerleading for ID. Not surprisingly, the talk Jason witnessed follows the book quite closely, so you can save yourself the pain by just reading Jason’s posts [1, 2, 3, 4].
On page 77, Woodward tries to deal with the accusation that ID does not make any predictions. He replies that ID does indeed have a "clear and daring prediction." And what is it?
"Darwinists will not begin filling in plausible, testable scenarios for any of the irreducibly complex cellular systems." (p. 78).
That’s it. Nothing more. A purely negative (albeit clear) claim about what "Darwinists" will not do regarding "irreducibly complex systems". Given that ID proponents have been unable to unambiguously detect "irreducibly complex systems," this is somewhat akin to demanding that zoologists provide scenarios that describe the life history of Bigfoot, and when they dont, claiming that it proves the existence of the big hairy guy. Clear and daring? You decide.
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"Darwinists will not begin filling in plausible, testable scenarios for any of the irreducibly complex cellular systems." (p. 78).
Aside from the bombador beetle, the human eye, the bacterial falgellum, the blood clotting cascade...
Not only do they make irrelevant predictions, they don't even bother to keep up and see how they turned out. Intellectual laziness incarnate!
I call bull.
How can anybody of sound mind get through 77 pages of that sort of stuff?
It borders on a physical impossibility
Right.... especially since there's a new paper out on the origins of bacterial flagella and their proteins.