You know, the funny thing is that this is perhaps the one cdesign proponentist argument that I've ever heard that actually has a germ of a real idea behind it. One way that the ToE can be falsified (perhaps the only way) is to show that an organism or a feature of an organism, could not have arisen through a series of slight modifications. IC is a cdesign proponentist's idea of how to find such an organism or feature.
The failure of IC as a scientific theory is not that it's trying to disprove the ToE. Trying to disprove any scientific theory is the goal of science. No, the problem is that in the description and application of the theory of IC, Behe (probably knowingly) ignores well established and well understood methods in the process of evolution.
The much more interesting topic to discuss is, if someone is going to try to falsify the ToE by establishing the inability of evolution to produce a given organism or feature, how can they ever possibly get around the argument that the attempt is an argument from ignorance? Imagine that a real scientist has devised a scheme for determining that an organism could not have arisen from a series of slight modifications of previous organisms. How can such a theory ever be proven by what Ray might call "positive evidence," rather than being, in concept anyway, a position of simply pointing out a lack of understanding how something could have evolved?
At least at first blush, it occurs to me that the ToE might be susceptible to a charge of non-falsifiability if any legitimate attempt to falsify it can be dismissed as nothing more substantial than an argument from ignorance.
Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
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