Biologists Are Blasting Down the Walls of "Intelligent Design"

Intelligent Design theorists (creationists by any other name) have argued that certain structures are "irreducibly complex" and cannot be accounted for by natural selection. They claim that a prize example of this complexity is the flagellum at the end of a sperm cell. Now scientists are closing in on this mystery and are handing the ID proponents yet another defeat. The mechanisms behind the evolution of this structure are slowly but surely being elucidated. Soon another "irreducible complexity" will be reduced.

To me, the most illuminating passage in this article was the following, referring to biologist Michael Behe, who is an ID proponent who recently argued the ID side of the Dover, Delaware case:

Perhaps the strongest rebuke to ID in the Dover case concerned the claim by Behe and others that it would be impossible for evolution to produce the immune system. Miller testified that since Behe wrote his 1996 book, evolutionary biologists have built a rich account of the immune system--a point Judge Jones highlighted in his ruling."[Behe] was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system," Jones wrote, "however, he simply insisted ... that it was not `good enough.'" (Emphasis added.)

That's right. No matter what genuine science says, it will never be enough to dislodge the blindness of ideological fanaticism. The fight will not be to convince the Michael Behes of the world. It will be to convince our children and grandchildren.