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“ID creationism” in Pearson textbook

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A student kindly writes to comment on the textbook, Evolutionary Analysis, by Jon C. Herron and Scott Freeman of which, he says,

I was suprised to find “ID creationism” mentioned in my evolutionary analysis textbook. While talking about biochemical designs, the book states “creationist Michael Behe believes he has found a profusion of cases”. They mention the cilium is not irreducibly complex in an evolutionary or a mechanical sense and that IC systems can evolve by natural selection. Also, “we predict that in the coming decades, all of Behe’s examples of IC will yield to evolutionary analysis”. Have they yielded any?

Also, the objections they cite that ID makes are: violation of the 2nd law and speciation has never been directly observed.

They also bash Dembski’s NFL theorem.

Right. But why do they care? Laszlo Bencze heard about it and wrote to say,

Another way to look at it is the old ad man’s trope: “Any publicity is good publicity.” The fact that your text feels it important to dispute ID is good indication of how significant they find it. In times past no textbook writers bothered to give contemporary creationism so much as a nod. Creationism wasn’t on the map. Now ID (disparaged with the bogus term “ID creationism”) has stepped into the foreground.

As for your questions, the situation is worse for a random evolution of the flagellum now than it was when Behe wrote his book. More complexity has been discovered.

Yes, and people are even trying to poach the ID brand now.

See also: Michael Behe isn’t actually a creationist, but it probably doesn’t matter. One might wonder why anybody who questions these types of folk is supposed to be a  “creationist” anyway? How much longer can that last?

and

What the fossils told us in their own words

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Comments
All publicity is good publicity for causes that are right. Amen. I know in Canada they bring up iD in university textbooks but then say its illegal and dumb etc. Yes they must bring it up. I think because they want to persuade kids there is no evidence in nature for God or genesis and since great numbers think there is THEN its very pregnant to ignore a famous revolution in our times ID or the ancient beliefs YEC. Over drinks they decide they need a paragraph to address the famous opposition and hope they kill it. They can't win. They just publicize to millions of kids who never heard of it. They can't win. Error never can in the end.Robert Byers
January 15, 2016
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Misattributed All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer http://www.megafoundation.org/Genius/GeniusHall.htmlJim Smith
January 14, 2016
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I was surprised to find “ID creationism” mentioned in my evolutionary analysis textbook.
Seeing that ID creationism exists only in the minds of the willfully ignorant, it is surprising to see it in any textbook that isn't exposing it as such.Virgil Cain
January 14, 2016
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[F]inding a subsystem of a functional system that performs some other function is hardly an argument for the original system evolving from that other system. One might just as well say that because the motor of a motorcycle can be used as a blender, therefore the [blender] motor evolved into the motorcycle. Perhaps, but not without intelligent design. Indeed, multipart, tightly integrated functional systems almost invariably contain multipart subsystems that serve some different function. At best the TTSS [Type III Secretory System] represents one possible step in the indirect Darwinian evolution of the bacterial flagellum. But that still wouldn't constitute a solution to the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. What's needed is a complete evolutionary path and not merely a possible oasis along the way. To claim otherwise is like saying we can travel by foot from Los Angeles to Tokyo because we've discovered the Hawaiian Islands. Evolutionary biology needs to do better than that. William Dembski
emphasis mineRexTugwell
January 14, 2016
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