It is frustrating for me to see that even most ID proponents are ready to concede a Darwinian explanation for any complex structure which does not seem to be irreducibly complex. If someone could show, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could have been constructed through many gradual improvements, would I find a Darwinian explanation reasonable? Heck no. It seems reasonable only if you assume that random errors are only occurring in the DNA. Gil Dodgen gave a brilliant analogy in a Sept 28, 2006 post at UD: he said that if you really want to simulate evolution with computer programs, you should introduce random errors not only in the string simulating DNA, but also in your entire program, the compiler that is compiling it, the operating system, and the computer hardware on which it is running–then see what happens. Unintelligent forces simply can’t do intelligent things, and Behe’s new book, “The Edge of Evolution,” confirms that natural selection of random mutations has the same effect on complexity as all other unintelligent processes: it degrades it.
In a Fall 2001 Mathematical Intelligencer article, I began my response to critics of my Fall 2000 article as follows:
“Mathematicians are trained to value simplicity. When we have a simple, clear proof of a theorem, and a long, complicated counter-argument, full of hotly debated and unverifiable points, we accept the simple proof, even before we find the errors in the complicated argument”
The simple, clear, proof is here ; and, no, I am not embarrassed to write such “simplistic” essays, the whole argument is ridiculously simple, in my view