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If These Critics of Intelligent Design Are Right, Then Evolution Can’t Be Tested

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Doug Axe and his colleagues Ann Gauger and Mariclair Reeves tested evolution in the lab at the most fundamental possible level — effecting a minor transition in function between similar protein folds. They found that you can’t get there from here by “any evolutionarily plausible means.” In a brief video conversation, Dr. Axe, author of Undeniable, discusses responses to this research from critics of intelligent design in the science world.

What I take away from this is that it if these critics are right, then evolution, for practical purposes, cannot really be tested in the lab. As Axe explains, an “A to B” transition for enzymes should be “easy,” accomplished “readily” and “all the time,” if evolutionary theory is correct. However, that ease and readiness evidently can’t be demonstrated, only asserted.

Taken on faith, in other words. The storytelling falls to pieces as soon as you try to assay its plausibility. And they say we’re “anti-science”?

I’m on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Science and Culture Today
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He is the author of seven books including Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome and The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy. A former senior editor at National Review, he has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University in 1987. Born in Santa Monica, CA, he lives on Mercer Island, WA.
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