The smoke and mirrors strategy

Ok, Behe has dazzled (actually, bored) us non-scientists with his scientific wizardry the last two days. (We'll ask our attorneys if the use of wizardry in a federal courtroom violates the Establishment Clause.)

The community education team isn't going to act like we can counterpoint statements on the bacterial flagellum, but there are plenty of scientists who can. Be sure to check out the links at the right. Also, consider this segment from an op-ed by H. Allen Orr, a bio prof at the University of Rochester, from the New Yorker in May:

But Behe's principal argument soon ran into trouble. As biologists pointed out, there are several different ways that Darwinian evolution can build irreducibly complex systems. In one, elaborate structures may evolve for one reason and then get co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function. Who says those thirty flagellar proteins weren't present in bacteria long before bacteria sported flagella? They may have been performing other jobs in the cell and only later got drafted into flagellum-building. Indeed, there's now strong evidence that several flagellar proteins once played roles in a type of molecular pump found in the membranes of bacterial cells.

Full article

Meanwhile, Mike Argento of the York Daily Record is at it again with biting commentary:
Behe's 15th-century science
Scientists, sex mark Day 10