These comparisons of numbers of publications have departed from the central point: there are no peer reviewed scientific publications from the Discovery Institute staff or any others giving evidence from original verifiable experimental or analytical research supporting ID. No original scientific research with reproducible methods, no peer reviewed publications, no verifiability, no science.

Dr. Schaefer is at the University of Georgia, not the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Whatever kind of affiliation he may have with ISI, it is not as a professional scientist involved in ID research. The closest his area of expertise comes to evolutionary biology is physical organic chemistry. I could find no indication that he has published any peer reviewed scientific research on Intelligent Design in a recognized scientifc journal. There is nothing to cite. That his work in physical chemistry may be highly cited is irrelevant to ID.

Dr. Schaefer’s scientific standing in physical chemistry lends no more support to the validity of Intelligent Design than my total lack of scientific standing in Physical Chemistry undermines evolutionary theory. At best, taking your word that he believes in ID, he is an established scientist in one field expressing beliefs about the validity of a central theory in another field in which he is not qualified, evolutionary biology.

Monado:

Fritz Schaefer has a couple of hundred publications to his credit and he is an ISI highly cited researcher. (I commend your stepdaughter for her productivity as a graduate student, though.)

I’ll leave it to someone else to describe biogenesis to you, except to say that it would have been a long, gradual process between the first organic molecules (amino acids, nucleic acids, sugars, etc) floating around and the first bacteria.

As for the bats: imagine tree-dwelling shrews (bats are descended from shrew-like insectivores rather than rodents). As they run around the trees they will occasionally fall. Being so small they are unlikely to splat on the ground but they could be injured, caught by a lurking predator or fall into a pool and drown. Any shrew that is able to use its limbs like a skydiver to direct where it’s going to fall would be at an advantage.

From here, if webs of skin form between the fingers and toes and between the limbs and the body this will give the falling animal a softer landing and more control. It will also give it more control and distance when jumping from branch to branch, useful when escaping a predator or chasing dinner and other shrews (to defend territory and get mates). The development of flaps of skin is quite a common occurrence and is seen in marsupials, squirrels, frogs, lizards and other animals. It is quite likely that webbing between the fingers and toes results from a single mutation so could happen quickly. The final step, to develop flapping flight, seems more difficult as it has happened relatively rarely.

An essential feature is that all intermediate steps confer an advantage, or at least are not a disadvantage. Evolution cannot get an organism over a ‘hump’. A good example of this is the human appendix, which causes problems but seems to have no use. The reason it hasn’t just got smaller and vanished is that people with smaller appendices are precisely those who are most likely to have problems (it is to do with the reduced blood supply) so there has been selection for people with a small, but not too small appendix.

I hope this helps.

Ever since I read the talkorigins entry I’ve been keeping a lookout for the mosquito on my daily commute. No luck, even in summer. I’ve seen plenty of fleas though.

The Ford Pinto illustration was *Luskin’s*.

Our science is better than their science because there are more of us writing more articles.

No, because there are no ID peerreviewed articles at all. Peerreview is an important part of science. If ID can’t produce such biology papers, it isn’t science. And it could not.

Another sign that ID isn’t science is because of insistence such as yours that non-natural explanations can be a part of science. But it simply doesn’t work, since it stops all explanations to say “goddidit”. We also see that natural explanations is enough. Like it or not, this is an integral part of the methods of science.

show me one animal changing into another

As noted this doesn’t make sense. But speciation is observed.

I’m sure you have been tipped of about talk origins where you can find references to scientific evidence. Here is the entry into speciation: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html .

The London Underground mosquito species seems particularly interesting because it would be fun to go and have a look with own eyes on a this brand new species.

“could have [been] designed” is not a mechanism, moron.