Irreducible complexity is a joke. Its major fallacy is assuming that the current function of a biologic system is the reason that system evolved. How would one test design? Don't use Demski's methods, they are pure statistical gibberish. I don't know about you, but I don't feel I'm qualified to divine the mind of a "creator". Example, there are identical homeobox gene complexes that regulate both the segmentation of insects and the development of the vertebrate hindbrain. This is a very conserved set of genes and there is no reason to assume that they were "designed" independently. Segmentation in insects and vertebrate hindbrain development have nothing in common from a design point of view. This represents another example of natural selection co-opting an already existing set of genes shared with some common ancestor and using and adapting this gene complex to its needs. Another example. Why are all bees that sting, female? The stingers of bees and bee ovipositors are very similar, genetically. Ovipositors were co-opted by natural selection and evolved a new function. Male bees do not have ovipositors, therefore, drone bees do not have stingers. The list goes on and on and does not need a design explanation. Where does irreducible complexity end? The number of proteins involved in the construction of bacterial flagella ranges from, approximately, 27 proteins to 44 proteins. What is the irreducible number of proteins? Obviously, flagella-protein numbers are not conserved and irreducible complexity would have a hard time explaining large protein-number differences. I guess flagella are not that irreducible, after all. Again, irreducible complexity is a joke. Dave Gary On Aug 21, 2005, at 4:16 AM, Don J. Colton wrote:
August 20, 2005 - An Open Letter to Science Magazine From William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, and Jonathan Witt.
Alan I. Leshner ("Redefining Science," July 8) says intelligent design isn't science because scientific theories "explain what can be observed" and are "testable by repeatable observations and experimentation." But particular design arguments meet this standard. Biologist Michael Behe, for instance, argues that design is detectable in the bacterial flagellum because the tiny motor needs all its parts to function-is irreducibly complex-a hallmark of designed systems. The argument rests on what we know about designed systems, and from our growing knowledge of the cellular world and its many mechanisms.
How to test and discredit Behe's argument? Provide a continuously functional evolutionary pathway from simple ancestor to present motor. Darwinists like Kenneth Miller point to the hope of future discoveries, and to the type III secretory system as a machine possibly co-opted on the evolutionary path to the flagellum. The argument <http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html> is riddled with problems <http://www.designinference.com/documents/ 2003.02.Miller_Response.htm>, but it shows that Miller, at least, understands perfectly well that Behe's argument is testable. If irreducible complexity can't even be considered in microbiology, how do we test the Darwinian story there? We certainly don't observe the Darwinian mechanism producing molecular machines. Is it true by default, by dogmatic pronouncement? That doesn't sound very scientific.
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