The case of the evolving immune system

During the Dover trial, the lawyer for the , Rothschild, addressed the
claim by Michael Behe that the immune system is another example of a
biochemical system that is irreducibly complex.
(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm.html)

<quote>

Q <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm.html#day12pm54>. We'll
return to that in a little while. Let's turn back to Darwin's Black Box
and continue discussing the immune system. If you could turn to page
138? Matt, if you could highlight the second full paragraph on page 138?
What you say is, "We can look high or we can look low in books or in
journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no
answers to the question of the origin of the immune system." That's what
you wrote, correct?

A <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm.html#day12pm55>. And in
the context that means that the scientific literature has no detailed
testable answers to the question of how the immune system could have
arisen by random mutation and natural selection.</quote>

Rothschild then presented Behe with a stack of literature relevant to
the evolution of the immune system.

On Pandasthumb, Nick Matke presents the history and background of how
the plaintiffs' lawyer decided to take on Behe.

Andrea Bottaro, Matt Inlay and Nick Matzke just got published in a
“Commentary” essay in May 2006 issue of /Nature Immunology/
<http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v7/n5/abs/ni0506-433.html>.

Reference: Bottaro, Andrea, Inlay, Matt A., and Matzke, Nicholas J.
(2006). “Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover ‘Intelligent Design’
trial <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ni0506-433>.” /Nature Immunology/.
7(5), 433-435. May 2005
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/pt_posters_in_n.html

In http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/immune_system_e.html,
Nick Matzke outlines the commentary on the Annotated Bibliography on the
Evolution of the Immune System
<http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/immune/immune_evo_annotated_bib.html>

Nick describes in more depth the annotated bibliography relevant to the
immune system :
http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/immune/immune_evo_annotated_bib.html

What this shows is not only how one of the expert witnesses had
concluded that the immune system was irreducibly complex and that the
scientific literature remained silent on the topic of evolution and
origins of the immun system, but it also underlines the differences
between science and Intelligent Design when it comes to detailed
explanations of biological systems. While science's explanations may be
called speculative (Discover Institute
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/03/di_book_rebutti.html) the DI
seems to forget that all science is speculative by its own nature.
Confronted with the science, all that Behe could do was to give the
following 'detailed' response
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3218

<quote>The Court’s reasoning in section E-4 is premised on: a cramped
view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism;
the incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the
theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and
strawman arguments against ID. The Court has accepted the most
tendentious and shopworn excuses for Darwinism with great charity and
impatiently dismissed arguments for design.

All of that is regrettable, but in the end does not impact the realities
of biology, which are not amenable to adjudication. On December 21,
2005, as before, the cell is run by amazingly complex, functional
machinery that in any other context would immediately be recognized as
designed. On December 21, 2005, as before, there are no non-design
explanations for the molecular machinery of life, only wishful
speculations and Just-So stories.</quote>
Received on Wed Apr 26 13:09:43 2006