Q.
Now you, in fact, have stated that intelligent
design can never be ruled out, correct?
A.
Yes, that's right.
Q.
Now let's turn to your test here of whether
bacterial flagellum could evolve through random
mutation and natural selection. 10,000 generations, that's
your proposal, correct?
A.
Right.
Q.
And it sounds like a lot, but you actually
testified that, that would just take a couple of years,
right?
A.
Right.
Q.
And, you know, based on your understanding of
normal laboratory procedures, even the best
laboratories, how much bacteria would be made a part of
that test?
A.
Oh, probably at the best, 10 to the 10th, 10 to
the 12th, at the outside.
Q.
Now you haven't tested intelligent design
yourself this way, have you?
A.
No, I have not.
Q.
And nobody in the intelligent design movement
has?
A.
That's correct.
Q.
And nobody else has?
A.
I'm sorry?
Q.
And nobody else has, outside the intelligent
design movement?
A.
Well, I'm not sure -- I don't think I would agree
with that. I think the experiments described by Barry
Hall were actually in an attempt to do exactly that. He
wanted to see if he could, in his laboratory, re-evolve
a lac operon. His first step in that process in the mid
1970's were the experiments that I discussed here
yesterday, knocking out the beta galactosidase gene.
His intention was, from things he has written
later, was to see how that would evolve and then knock
out two steps at a time, and eventually see how he could
get really the whole functioning system. But he had
such trouble with just getting that one step to go, and
since he could not knock out anything else, and get it
to re-evolve, he gave up.
And so I would count his efforts as a test of
that, and say that the test, you know, that it was, it
did not falsify intelligent design thinking.
Q.
And I had actually made a blood pact with my
co-counsel not to ask you about the lac operon, but now
I had to violate it.
A.
Too late.
Q.
How many years has he done this experiment?
A.
I think he was working on it for 20 years or so.
Q.
In any event, that's the lac operon. But for
bacterial flagellum, you're not aware of that test being
done?
A. No.
Q.
Certainly not by anybody in the intelligent
design movement?
A.
No.
Q.
Okay. So you can't claim that the proposition
that the bacterial flagellum was intelligently designed
is a well-tested proposition?
A.
Yes, you can, I'm afraid. It's well-tested from
the inductive argument. We can, from our inductive
understanding of whenever we see something that has a
large number of parts, which interacts to fulfill some
function, when we see a purposeful arrangement of parts,
we have always found that to be design.
And so, an inductive argument relies on the
validity of the previous instances of what you're
inducing. So I would say that, that is tested.
Q.
Professor Behe, you say right here, here is the
test, here is the test that science should do, grow the
bacterial flagellum in the laboratory. And that hasn't
been done, correct?
A.
That has not been done. I was advising people
who are skeptical of the induction that, if they want to
essentially come up with persuasive evidence that, in
fact, an alternative process to an intelligent one could
produce the flagellum, then that's what they should do.
Q. So all those other scientists should do that, but
you're not going to?
A.
Well, I think I'm persuaded by the evidence that
I cite in my book, that this is a good explanation and
that spending a lot of effort in trying to show how
random mutation and natural selection could produce
complex systems, like Barry Hall tried to do, is likely
to result -- is not real likely to be fruitful, as his
results were not fruitful. So, no, I don't do that in
order to spend my time on other things.
Q.
Waste of time for Barry Hall?
A.
I'm sorry?
Q.
Waste of time for Barrie Hall?
A.
No, certainly not a waste of time. It was very
interesting. He thought that he would learn things.
And he did learn things. But they weren't the things
that he started out to learn. He thought that he would
be able to see the evolution of a complex system. And
he learned how difficult that was.
Q.
In any event, you have not undertaken the kind of
test you describe here for any of the irreducibly
complex systems you have identified?
A.
I have not.
Q.
And neither has anybody else in the intelligent
design movement?
