I am not sure I follow you here. Darwin explicitly said what would falsify his theory, and Behe understood this and made a creditable attempt at meeting Darwin’s criteria. ID as currently constituted is very difficult to falsify because there is not why to show that any designer did not mimic evolution. Since the designers’ powers are unspecified we have no basis to say what they could or could not have done. Just because something looks as if it has evolved we cannot be sure that Loki/Trickster is not just fooling us.
Yes, I can see you’re missing the point I’m trying to make. It doesn’t matter that Darwin provided an abstract criterion of falsifiability. If there is no way of actually making that criterion concrete (and replacing it with another abstract criterion doesn’t do this), then it’s not really a falsifiable theory, in any measurable, ‘scientific’ sense.
When you talk about ID in this paragraph, you are creating a straw man. ID, insofar as it is a potentially scientific project, is obviously not interested in claiming that a description of evolutionary processes is evidence of design. But that is what is implied when you talk about the designer “mimicking” evolution. Can you see that?
That said, my questions stand:
“That * was exactly my point, so still, isn’t the obvious equivalent [to Darwin’s criterion]: “If it could be demonstrated that it is not true for any of the complex organs which exist that they could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, ID theory would absolutely break down”? And if it’s not good for the goose, why think it’s good for the gander? If we could never demonstrate the antecedent here (Behe), what makes you think we could demonstrate it there (Darwin)? Isn’t there a symmetry between the two cases?”
It is the ID side that is changing definitions. There are three in the ISCID Encyclopedia, Behe’s original, Dembski’s modification of Behe and Behe’s second definition in terms of process rather than final state.
I think that’s debatable, as I pointed out, but in any case: what of it? Changing definitions is perfectly acceptable scientific practise.
The bacterial flagellum was one of the proposed IC systems in Darwin’s Black Box along with the blood clotting cascade and the adaptive immune system.
Yes, the key word being proposed. Reasons were given for why its complexity seemed to be irreducible. It wasn’t simply declared to be intrinsically IC, was it?
Behe’s claims are not ID claims, they are claims about evolution. Behe has obviously read Darwin and has proposed IC to meet Darwin’s criterion for falsifying evolution. Behe’s claims about the unevolvability of “knockout IC” have been shown to be incorrect. That does not say anything one way or the other about ID.
Again, maybe I need to read Behe again, but this seems to clearly misrepresent Behe’s position. He is not anti-evolution, he just believes that it may be possible to detect limit cases where evolutionary explanations cannot be found.*
