quote:
It is a false analogy. Behe is comparing the living to non-living.
Precisely. Mt. Rushmore was manufactured. Organisms are formed through biological reproduction. These are two completely different mechanisms. Manufactured items are not created through descent with modification, and they do not fit into a single nested hiearchy. Biological organisms are created through descent with modification and organisms fit into a single nested hiearchy.
The problem that Behe faces is that he extrapolates IC systems created through manufacture to biological IC systems that are created through biological reproduction. The two are not comparable.
The second or third problem (I am losing track) is that we have a known mechanism and a known intelligence for explaining Mt. Rushmore. ID has neither, and must therefore attribute design only if an when all natural mechanisms have been ruled out, natural mechanisms that are known now and those that may be discovered in the future.
Why do we infer intelligent design when we find pottery shards? Because we have independent/separate evidence for an intelligence and a mechanism used by that intelligence that could have resulted in that pottery shard. There is not one non-living artifact (ie ID design) on earth that can not be explained by the intervention of a known intelligence, human intelligence, using known mechanisms. Behe tries to argue that we can detect design without both an evidenced intelligence and an evidenced mechanism, yet he has failed to do so with one present day example.
The ID philosophy is interesting, but it fails as a science.