The Explanatory Filter and Biological Systems- the Bacterial Flagellum

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Evolutionists say they have seen the explanatory filter used for anything dealing with biology. That must be because they haven't looked.

What is the explanatory filter? It's just a process that forces you to follow science's mandate. See Newton's Four Rules.

(page 13 of No Free Lunch shows the EF flowchart. It can also be found on page 37 of The Design Inference, page 182 of Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design, and page 88 of The Design Revolution)

The flowchart for the EF is set up so that there are 3 decision nodes, each node capable only of a Yes or No decision. As are all filters it is eliminative. It eliminates via consideration/ examination. That is why the design inference cannot be the default.

START
↓
CONTINGENCY? →No → Necessity (regularity/ law)
↓yes

COMPLEXITY? →No → Chance
↓yes

SPECIFICATION? →No → Chance
↓ yes

Design


Take the bacterial flagellum:

There isn't anything in peer-review that demonstrates any bacterial flagellum can evolve via accumulations of/ culled genetic accidents in a population that never had one. With Dr. Lenski's long running E. coli experiment there hasn't even been any new proteins, let alone new multi-protein complexes.

As Jerry Coyne said, these things are true, no math needed. As as Christopher Hitchens said “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”  The necessity and chance hypotheses are hence dismissed. As if I have to do the work of the evolutionists.

So the first two decision boxes have answered "Yes".

Moving to the third node:

The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ‘ s Black Box: “Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.”

He goes on to say: ” Might there be some as-yet-undiscovered natural process that would explain biochemical complexity? No one would be foolish enough to categorically deny the possibility. Nonetheless, we can say that if there is such a process, no one has a clue how it would work. Further, it would go against all human experience, like postulating that a natural process might explain computers.”

The bacterial flagellum is both complex and specified. Therefor given our current state of knowledge of cause and effect relationships, ie science, we can say with confidence that the bacterial flagellum is designed.

"Thus, Behe concludes on the basis of our knowledge of present cause-and-effect relationships (in accord with the standard uniformitarian method employed in the historical sciences) that the molecular machines and complex systems we observe in cells can be best explained as the result of an intelligent cause.

In brief, molecular motors appear designed because they were designed” Pg. 72 of Darwinism, Design and Public Education

And there you have it.