Mutation

What do you all think of Dr. Michael's Behe's argument of Irreducible complexity, which he sets forth in Darwin's Black Box?To give anyone who hasn't read it a hand into what it says, he basically argues that any organ that couldn't be made by mutations is proof that evolution didn't occur. He uses Darwin's words,"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."If he could show that an organ, and he uses the examples of the human eye and the bacterial flagellum, could not have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications or mutations, then evolution would fall apart. He calls this irreducible complexity, where an organ was such that it could not have been made simple to complex, in other words, it is impossible to make it less complex and have it still exist.He later shows how the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex. Out of the 40 parts the flagellum is made up of, only 10 have those parts in common with others. The other 30 are unique, and so couldn't have been borrowed, and there isn't any evidence that those parts evolved. Behe agrees with Darwin, and shows how the theory breaks down.Does anyone have a way they have been responding to this objection?

Another question I have been wondering about:The 500 million years between the Cambrian Explosion and now has been said to be like the day before yesterday in the evolutionary timescale. How could man as we are today have evolved from the creatures we see in the Cambrian Explosion in such a short time period? Wouldn't it require a lot more mutations and time? Remember, a mutation is a single change in the line of DNA (or instructions), it can't change a frog into a dog. No one would believe such an incredulous thing anyway, but it is just as incredible to me how a brilliant, reasoning man could have come from the Cambrian Explosion creatures in such a short period of time. Why should hundreds of millions of years make the difference? If mutations take so long to be passed on, and so few seem to be beneficial, wouldn't 500 billion years be closer to how long it might take?

500,000,000 years is a "short time period"?
Wow.
Figure out what 500,000,000 seconds is in more manageable units, and then tell me again that 500,000,000 years isn't much time.

I think Dawkins talked about how many mutations in a set time were required ... might have been in Blind Watchmaker. Not many was his result (which of course is totally unbiased ... )

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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There are a couple of threads on this whole topic. Behe's Irreducible Complexity Is Refuted
and
Defence of Intelligent DesignThere are others of course.To summarize, the irreducible complexity argument seems to boil down to one of incredulity. That is, since the person suggesting IC can't imagine how something could evolve then it could not have.In all cases that I know of the examples have been shown to not be IC. Both the eye and the flaggelum have reasonable possible evolutionary pathways. He never shows this. He simply says they couldn't have, he doesn't show that they can't. Then others can show ways they could have.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 04-13-2004]

I think evolution has no problem with "irreducable complexity."Consider that the stone arch, the foundation of cathedral design, is irreducabl complex - remove any one stone and the arch collapses.Yet, arches are constructed one piece at a time. Reflect on how this is done and you will see that irreducably complex systems pose no particular challege to evolution.

I like that stone arch argument. It seems to be solidly logical, but when you think about it, there are ways around it. You would need to create the scaffolding to build the arch on. Things would need to hold the arches up. It's a good argument, but you still need to account for the contruction of the scaffolding. It kinda runs into the timing issue: There needs to be enough time for the arch to be built, and have the supports decay or be removed. Note that this is not for just one arch, but for the entire world as we see it today. Once you realize on what a large scale the universe is complex in, in living things and nonliving, you get the idea that it would take too long for it to happen.This probably isn't the appropriate thread to discuss this point, so I hope that after this objection is answered we can get back on topic.

Exactly! Scaffolds!Nobody says evolution has to be a straight path. It just has to be locally advantageous each time. The way you get an irreducably complex system is by starting with a reducably complex system that does the job poorly, adding elements that increase effectiveness, and then removing most of the now inefficient original system. Scaffolds are reducably complex. You can usually take parts out of a scaffold without it collapsing, and they're easily built piece by piece. Not everything is irreducably complex. For instance, eyes are reducably complex. I'd like to see your math, I guess. The only reason I think you come to this conclusion is because you don't want evolution to be true.

Whoa...hold it there pardner...
I wasn't necessarily using the lottery example as an analogy of mutations. It was a point about incredulity.Lest there be any more misunderstanding. I was using the example of what the odds or probability of someone winning the lottery more than once in a lifetime of say 100 years multiplied by 52 (the number of weeks in a year) would be. We have no evidence that winning it 3 times couldn't be accomplished within that time frame. BUT...wouldn't you agree that we'd both be incredulous to think that they could do this at least 3 times? It's incredulity based on probability when we consider the data. In that same way when I consider the data of what talkorigins is addressing concerning "beneficial" mutations, I conclude (based on that data) that these mutations resulting in all of what we see on earth today is highly improbable, even in 45 billions years time.

The only itty bitty teeny weenie itsy bitsy problem I see with the stone arch comparison is that it was built by conscience, living, breathing, thinking, humans. (Who so happen to also build the scaffolds) Of course any "conscience" person can build, as we've seen, pretty much anything. But we're talking about an "unconscious" process doing it. Are we not?

There are countless examples of naturally produced arches of rock brought about by erosion. The normal course of action is to post a picture of one as a simple illustration of this fact but I can't be bothered finding one and pasting in the relevant code. Even so I think you must recognise the existence of such structures. No human conscience is required, only the passage of time.

No. We're talking about how natural processes that have to be locally advantageous at each step can give rise to systems that fail if any piece is taken away.For purposes of analogy, it doesn't matter that it's humans putting the scaffold together, only that each step in building the scaffold is locally advantageous. We already know that natural selection and random mutation can accomplish, eventually, any step that is locally advantageous.

I wouldn't be. In a random world I would expect it to happen once. After all one guy has already won the lottery twice, and that's within my lifetime.The problem is that you're substituting your own incredulity for any kind of statistical guideline. How low do the odds have to be before you won't believe it could happen?

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The only itty bitty teeny weenie itsy bitsy problem I see with the stone arch comparison is that it was built by conscience, living, breathing, thinking, humans. (Who so happen to also build the scaffolds) Of course any "conscience" person can build, as we've seen, pretty much anything. But we're talking about an "unconscious" process doing it. Are we not?

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You may be missing one part of the analogy. A finished arch, with scaffolding removed, is an irreducibly complex system. Without the scaffolding, it is impossible to build the arch, even with human intelligence. Therefore, I could make the argument that space aliens built the arch since no known human could have made the free standing arch. The weakness in the alien argument, and also Behe's argument, is that I am ignoring the supporting structure that could have been around previous to my visit. Behe also ignores indirect routes of addtion and subtraction when commenting on biological systems. Behe claims that the systems could only have come about in one fell swoop via intelligent design, no different than me saying the arch had to come about in one fell swoop by space aliens. Behe must show that these systems have never undergone any change from what we find today in order to validate his claims. He has never and probably never will look for this evidence.

There are also arches formed by the 'non-arch' material falling away from the remaining arch by natural {weathering \ erosion} processes without the need of an intelligent scaffold entity, and not just solid arches but ones built of rubble where the bottom has been removed and the jumble above is interlocked ("bridged"). Such "natural" bridges sometimes allow people to be rescued from earthquakes.They are also at a lower state of energy from before, so entrophy has increased even though a simple structure (wall) has become a more complex structure (bridge).

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}