Even more confusing is this: we don't know - so we insert a designer?

If we don't know, we don't know.

Sure, design COULD explain it, so could magic, or time folded upon itself, or wormholes from other universes, or... evolution.  Since we have evidence of evolution and no evidence that the others exist in the process, we are wise to stick with evolution.

Remember, after all the scientistic language RF can't point to ONE design event.  Not one.  Only a gap in knowledge.

You are correct once again.


Close. ID states that design is a better explanation for many of the characteristics we observe in nature.  Design explains irreducible complexity, specified complexity, the origination of information, artificial language, and a host of other objective complex characteristics while material processes are unable to account for any of these.  I agree that while claiming a designer designed evolution is interesting, it makes little sense to me as well.

Exactly what phenotype changes are you referring to?  Has the phenotype of the flat worm been changed to  adapt to human or animal hosts as opposed to some vanishing organic rich environment that may no longer exist? 

On the other hand have some metabolic processes been altered and others damaged or disabled to make reliance on a host required so that survival on its own is no longer possible?  My scenario is supported by observation that metabolic processes are often damaged when others can fill in.  Evolutionary processes are quite able to accomplish this scenario within the limits of available probabilistic resources.

 
Nothing would allow one example to succeed while others fail.  This is why presuming phenotype changes is questionable without observable evidence to support the narrative.


The more immediate question is are there alternate environments other than animal hosts that at one time were available but the parasite has migrated into animals as they encroached on their original habitat?  Has the worm since evolved and lost function so that the hosts are now a requirement?

So, "EVIL Magic Man Done It"!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?  Yikes!

Note that however anyone wants to create the narrative, RF is fine with it AS LONG AS IT INVOLVES A DESIGNER.

He even claims that a designer who designed evolution is within his game.  Anything that includes a designer - even if an unnecessary addition - is the important part of his hypothesis. As long as there is a gap for his deusigner, he is happy.

I thought it was your presumption that this form may represent a minor adaptation of a free ranging form that used these features to make use of an organic environment that no longer exists. I believe the cercaria produce enzymes capable of dissolving tissue when they come in contact with human tissue.


I am not making any claims as to how this arose by evolutionary processes. Using the design inference there are multiple factors leading one to conclude specified complexity. Multiple hosts, the fact that 2 stages in its life cycle cannot support themselves, only the ultimate stage can mature and reproduce, and the use of digestive (?) enzymes redirected to infect hosts. Loss of any of these features causes this organism to be non-viable.


I don't know. Take away humans and see if it goes extinct? Only the original  designer would be willing to perform that experiment. At any rate, there are multitudes of these buggers for different hosts, some even encapsulate in the second host and go on to hit the trifecta. Obviously they are designed to be parasitic to something. Since we agree on design, maybe we ought hike over to philosophy and religion to determine motive.


I don't know what wouldn't involve parasitism. The point is that many of these parasites exhibit a complexity that was either some sort of pre-loaded design or a sustantial increase in genetic information through evolutionary processes.

Some form perhaps, but why should we presume the original form lacked features that alow it to penetrate organic tissue?  Perhaps it's role was to aid decomposition of tissue?  That presumption does not make sense.



I do not dispute that the worm as a whole contains markers for design.  I accept that its original form was likely designed but I also know that the present form may be altered from the original by invading hosts and then through evolution, losing function that were reduntant to functions the host now performs for the worm (thus parasite).




Indeed, and since observations indicate that evolutionry processes don't increase form and function, design is the better explanation.  But it is a stretch to insist that the current habitat was the original habitat. Evolution can damage function that is reduntant and in the process trap the worm in a parasite situation.

True enough in one sense.  It takes far less faith to believe we were designed than to beleive materialism.  Lewontin confirms this in the words I provided earlier: