In this UD post I suggested that the facts (in particular, those presented by Michael Behe in The Edge of Evolution) speak for themselves. I was challenged by a commenter with: “If the facts speak for themselves, why does Behe need to write a book-length argument to make their case?”
My response is that the facts have to be presented before they can speak for themselves, and Behe presents lots of facts of which I was not aware. One of the most telling facts is that since widespread drug treatments first appeared, more than 10^20 malarial cells have been born, and no new protein-protein interactions have evolved. Furthermore, the broken genes that confer chloroquine resistance disappear once drug therapy is removed. My claim is that these facts certainly do speak for themselves, and they say that Darwinian claims about the creative power of random mutation and natural selection are bogus.
By the way, as Behe points out, 10^20 is more than all the mammals that have ever lived (deep time is not the issue when it comes to evolution, but the number of individuals and generations), yet Darwinists would like us to believe that mutation and selection turned a primitive simian ancestor into Chopin, when this process hasn’t been demonstrated to have the power to produce a novel protein-protein interaction with 10^20 chances.
These facts reveal why Darwinists must resort to tactics like literature bluffing. They don’t have much else. These facts also suggest that design should be the default position, and those proposing fantastic hypotheses like the universal creative power of Darwinian mechanisms should be on the defensive, and bear the burden of proof and demonstration.
So, am I off base, or do the facts speak for themselves?