Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.
Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on.
The point here is that physics followed the data where it seemed to lead, even though some thought the model gave aid and comfort to religion.
The question of how the eye works - that is, what happens when a photon of light first impinges on the retina - simply could not be answered at that time.
Thus it seemed to Haeckel that such simple life could easily be produced from inanimate material.
We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box.
