The Importance of Potentially Disconfirming Evidence

well, that and the fact that although the heart and eye and bacterial flagellum are complex, they are not irreducibly so. and even if they were, evolutionary algorithms routinely produce ic systems in computer simulations.basically, i don't see the point of argument anymore.

irreducibly complex systems may not have separable subsystems, and any such argument is flawed (see page 38 of behe's book) since that system can then be reduced to that subsystem of subsystems.the bacterial flagellum contains a type 3 secretory system. therefor, it is not irreducibly complex, as you can reduce it to the secretory system. qed. it's called a simulation. you program it with the rules of evolution, it produces ic systems all the time.however, if you want to believe something intelligently designed the rules of natural selection, go right ahead. i happen to believe so too, but don't try to call that science. it's religion. in science we observe the natural world and it's processes and laws, not onder how those laws got there (unless you're in grand unification...) no, but the fact that behe disproves himself before he gets 40 pages in kind of rules out his argument.

actually, anything with mass can be used as a mousetrap. in my experience, bricks work rather well. it just takes blunt force trauma to kill a mouse, not springs and catchs and doodads. the function is only dependent on one part of the system, producing force. but this is not my argument. the argument is that if you can reduce the system to any set of functioning components, it is reasonable to assert that through slight and successive modification, the system might have evolved.behe even states, on page 38, that arguments that only answer major systems but treat subsystems as whole components are flawed. he makes the analogy of the stereo system. he admits, yes you just add the amplifier and speakers to the cd player, but he's looking for the amplifier and speakers, not the overall stereo system.but, if even changing function and the fact that you can reduce his examples to components still doesn't statisfy you, maybe this will.http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/3991/Mousetraps.htmlhow to evolve a mousetrap, in six steps. i've seen a few others, but this works nicely. i'll quote kenneth miller: "STRONGLY homologous."it's called variation. get used to it, it's the basic concept of evolution, and easily demonstrated from observations of nature. and? no. random slight variation, most effective example is picked. this is also not stricly true in nature, because nature doesn't remove ALL EXCEPT the most suited. he says that an irreducibly complex system does not function if you remove any of the parts. he corrects himself in a debate with miller, to say that it no longer has the function of original system.well, duh!here's an example of an ic system. i'm into photography, so i'll pick a camera. it's clear a camera was intelligently designed, of course, in fact i can even tell you which company made mine and when it was designed.every part of the system is necessary to make a picture. you have the film, the film back, the body with shutter, the finder, the reflex mirror, and the lens. if you remove the lens, no recognizable image is made. if you remove the film, no picture is made. if you remove the film back, the film is exposed all over an no image is made. same with the body. without the finder and mirror, there is no way to compose the image. without the reflex mechanism, the mirror blocks the film.every part is needed. or is it? i take a lot of picture without looking through the finder at all, so we can rule those out. what about the lens? look into pinhole photography. lots of neat pictures can be made without a lens. the back? can be integrated into the body.turns out the only two parts we need are the film and the body. lots of great pictures can be made with a cardboard box, tape, a sheet of sensitized paper, and a hole. but what about that system? well, the hole and an area of darkness is all we really need, actually. the film is just there to record the image created, and the box to localize the darkness and make it portable.basically, my fancy irreducibly complex camera is just a glorified hole. and i could easily show you, step by step, how cameras would have evolved, had they been a biological system. however, in technology, the process is very similar. people reproduce technologies, add a little feature here and there, and repeat. very seldom is a new design created from scratch. it's almost always built on previous advancements. so the analogy plays.