Which Golf Course?
As I understand it....
Darwin himself proposed the following make or break test for his theory:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.”
ID reads “complex multi-protein genetically defined structure with a novel function” for “complex organ” and proposes that the bacterial flagellum motor function is one such case. Not that it could not occur by numerous successive slight modifications BUT that the pathway to the final working structure is too improbable to allow us to accept chance mutation and natural selection as reasonable causes of the structure.
ID suggests that the pathway to a useful motor function does not have sufficient selectively advantageous “stopping places” along the way to allow an unintelligent process to reach it in the amount of time available.
Thus Darwin proposes that the “golf course” where the “hole” is the working motor performing a useful function is more like a cone with the hole at the tip….gradually the “golf ball” will move under the weight of selective advantage to the “hole” of molecular motor function.
ID proposes that the “golf course” is more like a real golfcourse where blind and deaf golfers are at a distinct disadvantage!
If ID is true then one would hope to find:
(a) there would be very few functional selectively advantageous structures as intermediate stopping places along the way to the motor function. (the golf course is not designed to make a 'hole in one' likely for any rolling golf ball)
(b) The number of possible structures with a motor function will be relatively few (the hole is small)
If Darwin’s theory were the true explanation of the origin of the motor function of the bacterial flagellum then one would hope to find:
(a) there would be many functional selectively advantageous structures as intermediate “stopping places” along the way to motor function. (the golf course slopes down to the hole)
(b) The number of possible structures with a selectively advantageous motor function will be relatively large (the hole is large.)
...have I grasped the issue?