Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / March 2006

["Followup-To:" header set to talk.origins.]

Actually, one biochemist.  And not a very good one.

[ snipped the description of the harbinger of God's glory, the bacterial
 flagellum ]

Hallelujah!

    Mark

Wow. One sentence at least six errors. Amazing.

<snip rest>

Wow, is that deceptive. It is a term invented and used by *a* (one, 1,
singular, solitary) biochemist by the name of Behe. It explains
nothing, it is just sort of an assertion, a classification.

That is *not* the claim that Behe makes. Which is good because it is
even more wrong than his claims.

Common as in the primary way Behe uses to obfuscate (almost the
opposite of explain) in his book.

Which is not an explanation and not an argument and says nothing about
evolution.

Did you even bother to look at Behe' book?

The concept of Irreducible Complexity is ignored or rejected by the
majority of the scientific community. This rejection stems from the
following: the concept utilises an argument from ignorance, Behe fails
to provide a testable hypothesis, and there is a lack of evidence in
support of the concept. As such, Irreducible Complexity is seen by the
supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist
pseudoscience, amounting to a God of the gaps argument.  

Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin have shown that systems satisfying
Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise
naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical
processes. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular
systems actually exhibit is redundant complexity-- a kind of complexity
that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that
Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because
his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions results in his taking
snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures and
processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in
which those features are naturally embedded and an overreliance of
overly simplistic metaphors such as his mousetrap. In addition, it has
been claimed that computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it
is possible for irreducible complexity to evolve naturally.

Elf

"On 3 Mar 2006 10:10:47 -0800, in article
<1141409447.677945.35170@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, ceb_luv_lotr stated..."

[...snip...]

   The concept of "irreducible complexity" long predates its use as
an anti-evolutionary argument.

   I've seen it used as early as 1712, as an argument against the
development of the embryo, and for the pre-existence of each
individual living thing (created, individually, back at the
beginning).

   This is just another example of a complaint which is advertised
as being anti-evolution, but - quite aside from whether it is a good
argument - is better recognized as having something like development
as its target.

   (Of course, development is real - just as real as evolution -
so the complaint must have some fatal flaw.)

[snippage]

  "Explain the complexity of the cell"? Hmmm... no, I disagree.
Irreducible Complexity isn't an *explanation* of "anything*; rather, IC
is a quality that some pieces of the machienry of life are supposed to
have. "The flagellum is IC" is no more an *explanation* of *anything*
than, say, "The sky is blue" or "Water is wet". Rather, "The flagellum
is IC" is, at best, an *observation*, and perhaps an observation which
*needs* an explanation -- but that observation, in and of itself, is
*not* an explanation.

  Ah; I see that you accept Behe's definition of Irreducible
Complexity. Dembski has a rather different definition for Irreducible
Complexity; if I may ask you, on what grounds do you accept Behe's
version of IC over Dembski's version of IC?

  Okay, fine, the flagellum is IC. So what? If you mean to imply "IC,
therefore Designed and not evolved", it's worth noting that *by
(Behe's) definition*, an IC system is one which stops working the
moment *any* of its parts breaks -- in other words, an IC system is
*brittle*. Not robust at all. Fragile and vulnerable, even.
   Imagine, if you will, that you're behind the wheel of an IC
automobile. There you are, driving down the highway, when suddenly the
engine dies! You of course step on the brake and steer towards the side
of the road, but -- alas! -- the brakes *and* steering *both* died with
the engine. You try to put your hazard lights on, but only succeed in
adding "hazard lights" to the growing list of functions which stopped
working when the engine died.
  Fortunately, everyone else on the road manages not to collide with
your disabled hulk of a vehicle, so you survive to (eventually) learn
what the heck *happened* which *made* your vehicle a disabled hulk: A
fuse burned out. Since your vehicle *was* IC, and an IC system is one
for which *all* parts *must* be functional in order for the the system
to work... well, *everything* stopped working. Thus, to the extent that
IC actually does imply a Designer, it implies that this Designer isn't
especially *competent*...
  The competence of the Designer isn't a problem for evolution, of
course. Neither is IC -- one general evolutionary pathway to IC is to
start with a *non*-IC system and lose parts of it until what's left
*is* IC.

Why do you suppose the trollbot added Miller's *rebuttal* of the IC
argument as a 'resource'?

CT

[... most of message snipped ...]

There is one very large problem with Behe's argument.  It implies
that the flagellum popped into existence complete and ready to
fulfill its current function.  This is not how the evolution of
complex devices like the eye or flagellum are thought to occur.

Rather they are thought to be created gradually as parts which
were initially used for OTHER purposes are gradually
accumulated by the organism over many millions of years of
evolution.

The flagellum is basically a hole, a rotating doorway around
the hole, and a tube sticking through the hole which is
rotated by the enclosing doorway.

- The hole is obviously not a problem.  If bacteria didn't have
  holes they couldn't "eat" or remove waste or eject poison
  etc.

- The hollow shaft sticking out of the hole is just as
  obviously not a problem.  It could have evolved as a type of
  foot, or stem for holding onto things.  Maybe it was used as
  a spear for sticking into other bacteria to kill them and
  suck out the contents etc.  Stick like appendages have all
  sorts of interesting uses, so lots of different types would
  have evolved in lots of different ways.

- So that leaves the rotating bit, and as it turns out, that's
  not a problem either.  Most cells already have rotating
  doorways to help transfer things across cell walls.

  So its just a matter of coupling together the shaft with a
  rotating doorway, a relatively minor mutation.  Initially the
  rotation would have been very inefficient, but 2 billion
  years ago (or whenever flagellum started to evolve) nothing
  had a good moveable arm/stick/flagellum so any bacteria that
  had even a poorly functioning one would have had an advantage
  over his completely stationary neighbours.

  After that you just add a billion years of evolution
  (bacteria have been evolving for more than 3 billion years)
  and you get the insanely beautiful flagellum that we see
  today.

  It is true that if you took out any part TODAY, the current
  version wouldn't work at all, but it got that way via lots
  of small changes over a very long period of time.

And remember, we've got about
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria on earth
right now and each day or so most of them will divide, and a
lot of them will have a small mutation that may improve their
performance.  Over billions of years, that many bacteria working
that hard are bound to accomplish some interesting stuff.

I hope this helps clarify things for you.

Cordially;

Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada  Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com

--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------

No, it's a term invented by drop-outs who didn't happen to show up for
class the day of the lecture on "scaffolds" and change of function over
time.

Are you talking about the basic essential functions (growth and
replication) needed by every cell, or the complete set of specific
functions a particular cell happens to have currently, which have
undoubtedly changed many times over the ancestral history of that cell?

The basic functions have been the same for at least 3.5 billion years,
carrying us back through the RNA-to-DNA takeover and all the way to the
start of RNA world and probably even earlier. So the fact we can't
quite see how they could exist without each other is no problem for
evolutionary theory.

The complete set of incidental functions don't have IC, so if that's
what you meant then you are flat-out liar.

How does this relate to IC? Some bacteria have flagella, and some get
by just fine without them. They are in no way essential to life.

Maybe the thing as a whole doesn't work in the current way, to provide
largescale motion through the water, but the remaining parts still work
in other ways, such as by pumping waste out of the cell.

Well if the part that makes the flagellum spin was broken, but the bulk
of the filament was still there, sure. But what if the bulk of the
flagellum was the part that was missing, or greatly shortened, and the
tiny base still spun just fine? Then the cell wouldn't have the problem
you cite. There are in fact some niches where that partial system is
optimal, and we see some cells adapted to that niche even today.

Why do you waste your typing energy beating this same dead horse again?
.

Quote:

"Anyone can state at any time that they cannot imagine how
evolutionary mechanisms might have produced a certain species, organ,
structure. Such statements, obviously, are personal – and they say
more about the limitations of those who make them than they do about
the limitations of Darwinian mechanisms."

Well lets try to turn that around:

"Anyone can state at any time that they can easily imagine how
evolutionary mechanisms might have produced a certain species, organ,
structure. Such statements, obviously, are personal – and they say
more about the vivid imagination of those who make them than they do
about the actual probable capabilities of Darwinian mechanisms."

One of the most common lies used by the IDiots is the claim that the
bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex.

quote:

"Irreducibly complex structures, we are told, could not have been
produced by evolution, or, for that matter, by any natural process.
They do exist, however, and therefore they must have been produced by
something. That something could only be an outside intelligent agency
operating beyond the laws of nature – an intelligent designer."

An intelligent designer does not have to operate beyond the laws of
nature, he could simply utilize them in his work (which is actually
what he does).

quote:

"Unfortunately for this line of argument, the claim that one
irreducibly-complex system might contain another is
self-contradictory. To understand this, we need to remember that the
entire point of the design argument, as exemplified by the flagellum,
is that only the entire biochemical machine, with all of its parts, is
functional. For the intelligent design argument to stand, this must be
the case, since it provides the basis for their claim that only the
complete flagellum can be favored by natural selection, not any its
component parts.

However, if the flagellum contains within it a smaller functional set
of components like the TTSS, then the flagellum itself cannot be
irreducibly complex – by definition. Since we now know that this is
indeed the case, it is obviously true that the flagellum is not
irreducibly complex."

comment:

Obviously, an intelligent designer can place as many IC systems nested
within each other, as he likes (we do ourselves, in our designs).
Their development can be programmed into the original DNA / gene
blueprints, just like anything else in the organism is.

Except that there's no agreement on the definition. Some scientists say
that certain biochemical systems are irreducibly complex, but can be
prodiced via evolution. Others say that those systems aren't really
irreducibly complex.

While the phrase was used before in biology, pseudoscientists have
hijacked it to pretend that IC invalidates evolution and is "evidence
for design." There's no reason that it would have to be both, of
course, despite the pseudoscientists' assertion to that effect. And in
fact it does neither. And it certainly provides no support for a
potential alternative theory.

But IC-speak fools the public, and that's all the pseudoscientists
really want. I don't know if it was intentional or just a bonus, but
they managed to get their critics to sound confused by not agreeing on
a definition and sticking to it. Nevertheless, it should be no surprise
that, after a decade of IC-speak, the pseudoscientists have not
published one iota of original research that would back up their
grandiose claims.

(snip)

*Bzzzzt* ... wrong. It is invented and used by creationists only.
Thanks for playing.

RS