science involves testing…yes

I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’ve said here…but… To be a valid critique of anything scientific, the theory need not prove anything on it’s own. To be a valid critique, it need not be measureable or testable in and of itself. (Again, the question of what kind of proof is accepted as valid rears its head.) To be a valid critique, it need not offer a solution.

ID though, doesn’t just say that evolution does not explain how the flagellum evolved – it makes a much stronger claim – that evolution CANNOT explain how the flagellum evolved. That’s a pretty bold claim – the only basis for this that I’ve ever seen, is that the person “fails to see how evolution could explain it” — which again, seems more like a study on the limits of human imagination…

OK, I’ll grant that it says it cannot. But not by some out of the blue answer, but by evolution’s own tenets. Evolutionary theory states that things change gradually over time, and that every change preserved MUST offer a decided advantage to the organism to remain. The parts of the flagellum do work together, and there isn’t any evidence that they existed in another function before hand.

Even if they did have a function before hand, the function of all the separately functioning items in the flagellum would necessarily, in order for evolution to be correct, change progressively, with each change causing a decided benefit to the organism. It is not as simple as changing one set of functions for another. We would need proof that every step provided a benefit.

No, not a limit of imagination. A probability argument, i.e.: It is more likely with the information coded in life and the process of things required to happen to spawn life, than it was purposed rather than it was accidental. It’s a flat probability argument. If nothing else, ID has forced the atheistic community to acknowledge that the Big Bang and evolution don’t explain origination.

Stealth pudge, you misrepresent Darwinian theory as if it itself were intelligent design. The theory does NOT state that the flagellum must have had a beneficial effect upon the organisms (survival) remember survival is all that matters, hence the irrelevancy of life-span after reproduction. Rather, all that is necessary for a mutation to survive is that it NOT HINDER the organism’s reproduction

or survival until reproduction. Further, if this was your point i don’t know. Neither intelligent design theory nor DT are strongly falsifiable in Popper’s sense. But falsificationism is not the only reliable scientific method. DT is more empirically verifiable that intelligent design. It makes less unempirical assumptions, namely, God, but also why mutations need only be sufficient to be

present in the progeny. Intelligent design would seem to be bound to answer the question as to why our testacles are so vulnerable when God (or ‘the designer’) could have made them both invincible AND good for reproducing. The ad hoc claim that ‘the design is beyond the mental capacity of humans to understand’ is both ridiculous and scientifically irresponsible, the sine qua non of unempirical