Mark L. Psiaki, faculty advisor of the IDEA Club at Cornell University, addressed that on the IDEA Club’s blog, The Design Paradigm:

…
The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.

That sounds to me like a “science stopper” and a “dead end” of the worst sort.

An exercise for the reader: guess which research program is more likely to get solid empirical results that support their hypotheses?

(Answer: The research program in which people actually do empirical research.)

Once again, the claim that ID has something to contribute in understanding the evolution of marsupials/mammals is a claim that remains unsupported by any logic or argument.

And that my friends is why ID is scientifically vacuous.

It should be noted that the article Salvador is referencing you to view is not research, and doesn’t prove anything at all. As the author, Salvador states, it is “a potential area of ID research. Who knows how long it may take to uncover, but here is where Explanatory Filter (EF) methods may help and where IDers can make a killer breakthrough for their theory if they succeed. There will be money, fame, and glory if this enigma is solved by IDers.”

So where is the proof?

Elena asked:

Again, I’m curious, what sorts of questions do you then ask, or what research do you do, if you accept that something has been designed?

See here for some questions that can be asked from a design perspective which make no sense in terms of Blind Watchmakers:
Marsupials and Placentals: a case of front-loaded, pre-programmed, designed evolution?

Salvador

Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Cordova appear to be answering this sort of question in more or less the same way in the comments here: to provide humans with something to think about (e.g., “was this extinction part of the plan of the intelligent designers?”)

I personally do not find it a very satisfying answer and Mr. Bartlett, at least, has indicated that such questions are theological and not scientific.

How much there is or isn’t is irrelevant here; my statement was purely hypothetical.

I know your statement was hypothetical.

Your analysis of what is parsimonious according to your stated hypothetical is what does not make sense to me, Hannah.

Introducing intelligent beings who have the power to create everything from scratch is not more parsimonious than introducing intelligent beings who merely tweak things here and there.

If anything, the explanations are equally parsimonious since they both invoke entities (intelligent non-humans with extraordinary powers of creation) for which no evidence exists.

Answer: Something that will bring healing to the sick and make money for the biotech industry.

If this is the case, then why do ID proponents insist on reciting the debunked (or even retracted) claims of Behe and Dembski?

All you need to do is find a scientist who has made an important discovery and pay the scientist to say, “I made this discovery with ‘intelligent design’ theory,” and make sure that the scientist’s message is spread throughout the land (i.e., by issuing press releases, arranging appearances on prominent TV and radio programs, magazine and newspaper interviews, etc.).

That is how ideological “wars” and political battles are won.

I’m not aware of any scientific controversy that was won in this fashion however. And the fact that life on earth evolved and natural selection was involved in that process is only “controversial” in the minds of a handful of ID proponents and the lay people who are ignorant of the science. In the real world of scientists, there is no controversy about the fundamental mechanisms which causes the life forms on earth to slowly change over the centuries.

Why would an intelligent designer purposefully create complex organisms if simple ones are go extinct less often? Furthermore, why don’t these birds that are going extinct just tap into their front-loaded, hidden data set and regain their ability to fly in a couple of generations (Moa and other extinct flghtless birds)?