Go here: http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm.
From Day 12, pages 104-105, 110-112:
“Q. Professor Behe, you say right here, here is the test, here is the test that science should do, grow the bacterial flagellum in the laboratory. And that hasn’t been done, correct?
A. That has not been done. I was advising people who are skeptical of the induction that, if they want to essentially come up with persuasive evidence that, in fact, an alternative process to an intelligent one could produce the flagellum, then that’s what they should do….
Q. Professor Behe, the tests you proposed here regarding the bacterial flagellum is like asking Dr. Padian to grow a bird wing in a laboratory, isn’t it?
A. The test that is sufficient for a theory is proportional to what the theory claims. I’m no physicist, but in physics, there have been claims, many claims that required enormous amounts of effort by the entire physical community to build large structures, took many years to do so. And nonetheless, they thought that this effort was worth it, because they wanted to be sure of the answer. In biology, the claim that random mutation and natural selection can produce systems like the flagellum or other molecular machines is a very large claim. And one can’t simply say that because it would be hard to test it, we will just assume it’s true. So if somebody wants to be sure or somebody wants to — wants to — wants to respond to a skeptic with evidence that would convince somebody that was not already convinced of the theory, then there is no escaping the fact that you have to show that your theory can do what you claim for it….
Q. In order to validate this big claim that the theory of evolution makes, what you’re really saying is, they’ve got to create a laboratory that includes all of biological life and operates over deep time?
A. No, I didn’t say that at all. I said, if it can be demonstrated that random mutation and natural selection can produce complex systems, then intelligent design would be falsified. One doesn’t have to, you know, re — show that something of the complexity of a flagellum would be made. But if one saw that something somewhat less complex might be made in a reasonable time, then one might be able to extrapolate. You’d have to pay attention to the details of the system. So it’s not, you know — you don’t need a worldwide laboratory and a billion years to test this….”
This “deep time” excuse is lame.
First of all the rate of natural random mutation can and is routinely accelerated by orders of magnitude in the lab using chemicals and radiation. Morever, natural selection doesn’t have to haphazardly work to fix beneficial mutations in a population. In a lab any individual with an interesting mutation, even if it doesn’t aid survival, can be artificially selected and hence immediately fixed in the population.
These two means of accelerating random mutation + natural selection is clearly adequate to eliminate the deep time problem. Evolutionists, failing to reproduce the production of novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans in the laboratory via mutation and selection are in denial. The grand hypothesis of RM+NS as the mechanism behind diversity is a FAILED hypothesis. Make a damn public admission of the failure and move on already.
From Day 5, page 46:
John F. Haught, Ph.D.: “Intelligence is just as much part of nature as rats and radishes.”
If one actually believes this, then why doesn’t methodolical naturalism permit intelligence as an explanation for any biological phenomena?
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