Michael Behe's full response to the 2007 paper regarding BF Evolution:

In Evolution of the Bacterial Flagellum (July 2007) Wong et al seek to counter arg
uments of intelligent design proponents such as myself that the flagellum did no
t evolve by random mutation and natural selection. Unfortunately, their otherwis
e-fine review misunderstands design reasoning and so fails to engage that issue.
The critical passage from Wong et al is the first paragraph:
"Proponents of the intelligent design (ID) explanation for how organisms develop
ed claim that the bacterial flagellum (BF) is irreducibly complex. They argue th
at this structure is so complicated that it could not have emerged through rando
m selection but had to be designed by an intelligent entity. One part of this cl
aim is that each flagellar component is used solely for the purpose of making a
flagellum that, in turn, is used only for motility. Further, each flagellar prot
ein is assumed to have appeared independently of the other component proteins."
Although the first two sentences are correct, the last two sentences are quite w
rong. (The authors cite no references for these latter claims.) It is no part of
the design argument that each component of an irreducibly complex structure mus
t be used solely for that purpose, nor that each part must arise independently.
In my 1996 book Darwin s Black Box, which brought the concept of irreducible compl
exity to wide public attention, I pointed out the fact that, for example, protei
ns of the blood clotting cascade share sequence homology with each other and wit
h other serine proteases, and the fact that ciliary proteins such as tubulin are
involved in other tasks in the cell. Yet I explained that neither sequence homo
logy nor multiple functions showed how integrated systems containing many parts
could be put together by small random steps. Unfortunately, Wong et al spend the
ir efforts addressing their own erroneous assertions. They fail to address the o
nly pertinent question, the question of whether random, unintelligent processes
even when filtered by natural selection could plausibly build a structure such a
s the flagellum.
To address the adequacy of random processes plus selection would require rigorou
s experiments or calculations showing that the intricate, functional structures
are not too improbable given the evolutionary resources available. Recent work b
ears negatively on this difficult question. In long term laboratory evolution ex
periments over tens of thousands of generations (Lenski, R.E. 2004. Phenotypic a
nd genomic evolution during a 20,000-generation experiment with the bacterium Es
cherichia coli. Plant Breeding Reviews 24:225-265), cultures of E. coli were rep
eatedly seen to lose the ability to make ribose and maltose, and to repair their
DNA. Some mutations shut down expression of their flagellar genes, apparently t
o conserve energy. No selected mutations were observed which could plausibly be
argued to be the incipient stages of some new, complex functional system. Simila
r kinds of results are seen in other well-studied evolutionary systems. For exam
ple, in response to strong pressure from the malarial parasite, the human genome
has suffered a handful of positively-selected-yet-degradative mutations (Carter
, R. and Mendis, K.N. 2002. Evolutionary and historical aspects of the burden of
malaria. Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 15:564-594), including ones that render nonfunct
ional the genes for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, the alpha and beta chains
of hemoglobin, band 3 protein, and others. Again, no selected mutations were ob
served which could plausibly be argued to be the incipient stages of some new, c
omplex functional system.
To a skeptic such as myself, this does not look like the sort of process which c
ould build complex molecular machinery. Those who would argue persuasively again
st intelligent design must address this basic issue. Michael J. Behe, Department
of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University