Stonehenge and Irreducible Complexity

er. i'm not following.i don't think your metaphors line up.

the problem is that you're starting with a mousetrap and working backwards. of course if you remove a part, the rest fails. that's not the definition of an "irreducibly complex" system, that's the definition of ANY system.now, it would be preposterous to assume that a mousetrap evolved. we know man made the mousetrap. but let's use it as an extended analogy. we'll suppose that more successful features get passed on, and there is some benefit to the trap in catchin mices. (or at least dashing them into pieces)so we'll start with a large rock. mice run under it, and sometimes it rolls over on them, killing the mouse. not a very effective trap per se, but it kills the mouse occasionally. and occasionally is better than never. rocks that are more likely to roll over accidentally do better than stable rocks.now suppose it eventually develops a catch, so that it doesn't pointlessly roll over. put some kind of a prop under it. think wile e. coyote here. this increases its effectivity, and it doesn't accidentally go off as much, just when a mouse runs under it. these rocks with props under the them are better adapted than the ones without, so more of these get made.now a way to attract mice would good. so they develop a baiting system. the ones with the bait are more likely to catch mice than the ones without. so more of those get made. the ones with the better bait do better.mice are pretty fast though. so the ones that start having a form of propellant (spring) on the other side of the rock start doing better and better, replacing the ones before it. the better the spring, the better the trap works and more of them are made.on a similar theme, the ones that do away with the rock entirely, opting for consistently smaller, faster, and lighter things with which to smash the mouse start doing better than the ones with just the spring.and of course, the best way to catch more mice is to be where the mice are. so the ones that become portable, with their own bases, do better than the rest.am i forgetting any parts? that's only sort of a joke. we now have your ic mousetrap, developed through a process very similar to that of evolution. if we take away the spring, it doesn't work. it doesn't work without the catch, or the bar, etc. it doesn't really need the bait or base that much, but we'll count them too. each new part has become somewhat dependent on the sum of the last.but look, we have examples throughout that are missing LOTS of parts! well, we just made one with darwinian evolution. the sad part of this argument is that it's literally so old that darwin himself addressed it. keep in mind i did that without very many fancy techniques evolution employs on a regular basis. i only scaffolded once.the even sadder part is that darwiniant evolution PREDICTS these sorts of systems, and is often demonstrated to be the best way to produce them. evolutionary algorithms are used in all kind of designs in engineering. the make the most efficient and interconnected piping plans, and the best wing designs for planes.there's an old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. is the chain an ic system? if we have a chain holding two things together, and i remove a link, it ceases to function as a chain that holds things together. yet i can make one with repeated small additions: one link at a time.now, i'm not assuming that you actually HAVE behe's book. but if you do, turn to pages 38 and 39 and follow along. behe says that no system with subsystems can be ic. you can just reduce it to it's component parts, no problem. everything else just comes from functional additions to the subsystem, or combination of subsystems. ie: nothing with "parts" can be ic.yet his examples all have subsystems in them. curious.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-16-2004 01:54 AM

no, you missed it. the prop comes from an extention of the bit the rock is balanced on in the first place. it's not a replacement for the balanced rock, but a more effective alteration of its shape. until a mouse hits the prop. then the rock falls, and kills the mouse. the more sensitive props, and the ones more likely to get dislodged by the mouse are more likely to succeed. not exactly. the ones with props ONLY roll over when a mouse hits runs into the prop. the ones without fall over at random intervals. so the ones with props are far more likely to catch mice than the ones that go off randomly. since we've decided that there is something beneficial about catching mice, and the ones with props are more likely to catch mice instead of going off accindentally like the ones with out, we'll get more and more props and less and less precariously balanced rocks. in this case, the catch and the detector are one piece, as in a good portion of modern mousetraps. the mouse hits the prop, triggering its own death. granted, this is not the most effective detection device, but i gaurantee you that you've seen equally as simple trapping devices, if only in saturday morning cartoons. it's better than nothing, and better than less, and that's all that matters. actually, it's not. we've had one goal in this demonstration: catching mice. what if the original function was to make a loud noise? in biology, functions CHANGE. behe neglects to address this. well, of course it will. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. you take ANYTHING apart and it doesn't work.the problem is that that doesn't mean it ALWAYS had all of those parts. evolution means that various parts come to rely on other parts they didn't originally need. for instance, the rock didn't originally need the prop, as you pointed out. but when we added the spring, it did. and when we remove the rock entirely, the catch and the spring no longer without each other. but did it need the catch? did it need the spring? no. it didn't need EITHER. they came to rely on each other. ask behe, i suspect he knows and isn't admitting. you see, like i said, behe freely admits that anything with subsystems cannot be ic (page 38 or 39. go read it.) because you can just reduce it to the subsystems.in this case, i'm removing everything but the secretory system. look at that, it works: as a secretory system. do a little thinking, and see how this relates to the first part of the post. you sing the praises of rotary flagellum very well. but they're NOT that efficient. a propellor with lifting surfaces (ala bernouli) wold be FAR more efficient. or even a screw prop would work better.and if you've ever seen a documentary on how babies are made, you'll notice that flagellum are not very efficient at propelling much anything, and sometimes don't work very well at all.

no, behe's full of it anyways. and i would argue that a mousetrap is no more or less ic than any system, and that i can kill a mouse with far less parts. exactly. although i do not agree with your next statement. i think whole concept of ic is bunk.

no, not at all. you're mixing metaphors. human design for natural occurance, aliens for god.behe also has reached a logical conclusion, albeit a wrong one. his flawed logic is at least a little better than arguments from incredulity, like the one you are proposing. they are both wrong in the same step, yes. but arguments are not the same.oh, and as a side note, i saw this show on the discovery channel a little while ago about raising egyptian monoliths. scientists have been baffled for years as to how the egyptians did it, and some crackpots have argued that it must mean that aliens did it. but the program showed a bunch of college kids raising one with a kite.so even if science LEGITIMATELY doesn't know the answer (unlike evolution and "ic") it is still possible that we haven't thought ot every mechanism there is.

here's the quote in question. now, i don't have behe's book anymore (i returned it to the library) so i'm gonna have to quote the paper i wrote on it instead, which contains the section of page 38 i'm concerned with. it's where behe is talking about the flaws in other ic arguments.

quote:

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Behe explains that other arguments such as ones found in Hitching’s The Neck of the Giraffe are "vulnerable because he mistakes an integrated system of systems for a single system" (38). If it can be pointed out that Behe’s argument contains the same fallacy, that the systems he cites as Irreducibly Complex can be reduced to at least one subsystem on which the other can be built, his argument crumbles very quickly

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he argues futher (if photographic memory serves) at the top of page 39, why a stereo cannot be an ic system. yes, the parts do not play music absent one part, but it's really just a combination speakers, a cd player, a reciever, etc. the only difference is semmantics, really. what behe is trying to do is argue in the smallest terms possible: just the parts. no systems of subsystems. unless you're a dolphin.

quote:

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[] in the absence of any of the components, blood does not clot and the system fails. One of those components that [Behe] talked about is called factor 12 or Hagemann factor, and you'd think, if we take it away, the system should fail, so there shouldn't be any living organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, but it turns out, [] lo and behold, that there are some organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, [] and those organisms turn out to be, dolphins and porpoises. (Miller, Q&A)

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http://www.ncseweb.org/..._dr_michael_behe_dr_10_31_2002.asp so, as a third year bio student, how do you understand the process of evolution to work? why the objections to it? have you read dawkin's book, "the blind watchmaker"? and what do you think of it if you have? well, you've got the reply button down, that's a start.copy and paste works well. ever used html? ubb code is very similar, with start and close tags. [qs] or [quote] and [/qs] or [/quote] work pretty well. if you wanna see how someone did something, you can also click the little raw-text button next to the reply button.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-17-2004 02:55 AM

and his definition given in interviews is outright preposterous. when challenged on the matter, he insists that system must still have THE SAME function.yeah, of course the intended function doesn't work when you take away parts. it doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. but what if it does something else? no, that's not ok with behe. see the part vs system debate above. behe defines part in the smallest term he can. i bet he'd go quantum if he could. i would make a very similar argument: that there is no such thing as a direct route. evolution is not guided, like putting parts of a mousetrap together. it is formative, changing the components themselves. and it's one iteration at a time. either one thing works better, or it doesn't. it's not going anywhere. but the fact that it makes progress should not be a suprise.since i still have my paper open, i'll quote dawkins:

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Natural Selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind, and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. (5)

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exactly. and probability arguments are insane. of course the specifics are unlikely. with lots of possibilities, each individual outcome is a tiny probability. but one of them WILL happen, not matter what. and lots of them look very similar.and when guided by some selecting force like natural selection, you can get very, very remote probabilities very very quickly.although i played dawkin's game for a while and couldn't get much out of it. a single dot seems the be the most succesful form of e-life. which, i guess isn't suprising: single celled organisms are by far the most plentiful kind of life on the planet. it was the fact that i repeatedly LOST structure and variation that disturbed me.

are the "whip" "motor" and "hook" composed of parts?that's a rather big logical flaw, wouldn't you say?

which of course makes even less sense. like i said, it reduces it to a tautology: a system without it's parts doesn't work.what a profound theory.

[edit] ok, LONG offtopic reply. i suggest we take SOME of this to another thread. if you can remove a component, and have the system still work, it's not ic. even by behe's twisted definition (that it must maintain the SAME function), human blood is not ic, because it still works minus one component. dolphins lack something humans have, but their blood still clots. therefore, human blood cannot be ic. maybe dolphins' blood can. i've studied the bible much more than i've studied biology (MUCH more). and i'd have to say that that statement is just plain wrong. it comes from a fundamental(ist) misunderstanding of the text, its nature and purpose. i strongly suggest taking a bible class at college. the bible is far from authoritative (covering everything), but it does not intend to be. books have specific purposes, authors (plural), and styles. they're trying to get across certain messages, and NOT convey the facts.for instance, we have a babylonian record of king shalmanesser iii defeating king jehu of israel. where is that mentioned in the bible? the bible LIKES jehu, because he works towards unifying israel and judah again. and so it doesn't record the bad things. but other kings who worked with surrounding nations to actually hold off the babylonian invasion only get the bad things recorded, and not the fact that they clobbered shalmanesser, which we also have some record of. i have too. but i don't think it has anything to do with biology. this is also a fundamental misuderstanding. i'm suprised at this after three years of bio. natural selection is not a loss, because things reproduce.suppose i'm selling posters. i have three posters for sale, britney spears, christiana aguilera, and celine dion. just for this we'll even the playing field: all my posters will be the same price, both to order and on the rack for sale.now, 50% of my sales are britney, 45% are christina, and a lowly 5% are celine. the next order i place, am i gonna order more celine's? or more britney's? yes, i'm losing celine, but i'm making more money by getting more of thing that does better.when the manufacturer sees that i'm ordering more britney posters, as is everyone else, what's he gonna make more posters of? is he gonna make more kinds of posters featuring britney or celine?evolution is like that in reverse. the ones that don't sell stick around to breed, which is profitable. then read the refutation of the refutation: Icons of Evolution FAQs when i read behe's book, the first thing i found was logical flaws, such as jumping to conclusions and straw men. no, by behe's definition, eveolution cannot account for the systems he describes. but evolution is not what he defines it as. and even if the current model for evolution is not supported by his evidence, evolution is variation in alleles from one generation to the next. it does not attempt to account for how ANYTHING got where it is today. define and quantify information. because thinking of animals and plants in terms of information is a creationist idea, designed to confuse people. it's obviously worked very well here. we can take a screen shot of solar static on a tv sometime, and play connect the dots at a microscopic level, if you want. or can i can find "hidden" information regarding the second coming of jesus in moby dick. we have precambrian fossils, you know. it's NOT out of the blue. the fossils we have from right before the cambrian "explosion" look very similar to the cambrian fossils, minus hard shells.it's an artifact of the process of fossilaztion. simple life with no hard parts do not fossilize very well. it's no suprise that we don't have very many organisms from before the point when hard parts developed. this doesn't refute evolution in the slightest.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-17-2004 07:39 PM