Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,819 Year: 3,076/9,624 Month: 921/1,588 Week: 104/223 Day: 2/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Behe's Irreducible Complexity Is Refuted
Nic Tamzek
Inactive Member


Message 152 of 223 (92147)
03-12-2004 11:46 PM


Behe inconsistent on scale
Well, just before leaving town for the weekend I stumbled on this fascinating thread. So here's my hit-and-run post.
1) I guess I am the infamous 'niiic' who convinced DNAunion that IC could evolve on IIDB. I had a recollection of this but could never rediscover the original thread. It appears that one of the Laws of the Universe is that one can never find a specific old thread on a UBB system, particularly if one really wants to find it. But anyway, I do much appreciate DNAunion crediting whatever influence I may have had on him. Someone changing their mind after an internet argument is an almost vanishingly rare thing on this topic!
2) Once one admits that IC can reasonably evolve by natural processes, it seems to me that definitional hair-splitting about the definition of IC is entirely pointless -- particularly since Behe, Dembski, and many followers have been egregiously inconsistent in their own definition and application of the term. This inconsistency can be found in ID literature on essentially every term that DNAunion expounds upon on the previous page, but I will just focus on scale.
3) Posters were right to point out that Behe is inconsistent in his application of his "molecular only" rule for IC. Exhibit #1 is the mousetrap. DNAunion attempts to defend the mousetrap as macro-but-still-IC because there is additional complexity within the parts of biological systems. But this applies to the mousetrap also -- the base is made out of wood, which took all manner of molecular machinery to build (photosynthesis etc.) and which requires all kinds of complex structure to function (cellulose, cell walls, etc.).
* DNAunion will no doubt reply that one could replace the wooden base with something with simple internal structure, like metal.
* Response: ditto for the middle earbones. Diseased earbones are often replaced by ceramic or metal replacements. Therefore, if the "replaceable by an internally simple part" is a valid move, then the ear ossicles are "in" the IC definition
Further examples of Behe using macro-systems that are IC in Darwin's Black Box:
* Bicycles
* Boats with oars (and motors IIRC -- certainly the rotary motor is now a ubiquitous macro version of IC for the ID movement, what with all the flagellum talk)
* Rube-Goldberg devices (including all kinds of little complex parts, like little animals IIRC)
* Snares in the woods/jungle made of natural parts, vines, sticks etc. (in the book he discusses snares made and sticks & vines explicitly; in his talks, Behe puts up a Far Side cartoon of a guy hanging upside-down, his leg in a vine-noose; this is part of his point about how the purposeful arrangment of parts in IC systems allegedly points to I.D.)
So, macro systems are clearly "in" on Behe's own examples. His attempt to restrict the discussion to molecular systems is basically a legalistic attempt to exclude by fiat a tremendous amount of traditional evidence for evolution (like the middle-earbones example), and restrict the discussion to systems where evidence is particularly poor (molecular systems are (a) small, moderately-well-understood only in phylogenetically isolated model organisms, (b) don't fossilize, and (c) are much, much older than morphological innovations). Unfortunately, too many people take this bait.
Objectively speaking, IC should be a scale-invariant concept. The parts that perform the function operate *at a particular scale*. It doesn't really matter what the internal complexity of those parts is, if we are discussing the origin of the system *at that scale*.
This can be shown by simple thought experiment. Define these two systems as IC or not-IC:
1) Behe's standard mousetrap
2) The exact same mousetrap, functioning exactly the same, but where all the parts (base, hammer, etc.) are made up of many living cells. (There are, BTW, many spring-loaded traps, spring-loaded seed dispersal mechanisms, etc. in biology)
If we take DNAunion/Behe's scale argument seriously, then #1 is IC and #2 is not. This is clearly an absurd result.
nic
PS: I should add that at least two of Behe's supposedly "molecular" example systems are not, actually, molecular. First, the immune system involves numerous cells as crucial parts, even with the subsystems Behe identifies none is truly just molecular in real life. Second, cilia in insects such as Drosophila reach the amazing size of several centimeters long (in the sperm). This is clearly a long ways from molecular, yet they are still cilia. Cilia are really "organelles" -- big enough and complex enough that they are a level or two above the molecular in terms of levels-of-organization. They operate at the microscopic, not molecular level. Since they probably evolved from the mitotic spindle, another very complex, microscopic-not-molecular organelle-like structure, understanding their origin is more like understanding the origin of an organ than it is like understanding, say, the origin of a metabolic pathway or the bacterial flagellum.
All MHO of course.
See ya!
Nic
PS: Just found out I made Carl Zimmer's Blog. More evidence for IC evolution there:
Corante – The Latest News & Trends
[This message has been edited by Nic Tamzek, 03-13-2004]

Replies to this message:
 Message 153 by DNAunion, posted 03-14-2004 10:59 PM Nic Tamzek has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024