| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
25 May 2006 01:40:45 AM |
| Object: |
David Horton: Irreducible Stupidity |
David Horton kicks some ID *****.
--
David Horton
Bio
05.23.2006
Irreducible Stupidity
READ MORE: Google, Intelligent Design, Evolution
The fundies keep coming at me - here's another one of the crowd of angry
bees that descends every time I mention evolution: "You don't even
address the concept of irreducible complexity. Darwin himself said that
if it could be demonstrated that an organism could not have formed
through small, successive changes that his theory would break down.
Irreducible complexity attempts to show that certain biological machines
could not have formed by small, successive changes. The bacterial
flagellum is the classic example given by Behe. It would seem that you
could silence the argument by giving a detailed, biological explanation
for how this biological machine could have evolved through small,
successive changes over long periods of time. Is there such an
explanation?"
Not sure the 'bacterial flagellum' is the first classic example, thought
that was originally the human eye - too easy to show all the steps in
that one I guess (so easy that Darwin himself did it for interest), but
it has since become one. In fact I guess you would choose examples like
bacteria because of the virtual absence of the fossil record for such
species - groups with good fossil records (because they have hard parts
which preserve well), like vertebrates and shellfish show all too
clearly the evolutionary steps for the most complex systems.
But before I have a go at the 'bacterial flagellum' (and this is not my
field of expertise), let me reverse the question to all the creationists
out there. Just imagine that one of your creationist gurus (I was
searching for a word there, these people are not scientists, and even
'gurus' flatters them, but I don't like being rude even about such
creatures of the primeval slime, oops, sorry) has finally, in triumph,
managed to come up with a structure of some kind whose evolutionary
origin for the time being baffles the experts on the species concerned.
What do you think that would mean?
Do you imagine that god, after the long lunch that he took after sending
a lightning bolt through the primeval ooze thus getting evolution
started, would get back to the office and say, 'oh...my...self, I forgot
about bacterial flagellae, no way they are going to get evolved through
natural selection, I'd better just whip (yes, a pun) one up, then I can
go and have a long dinner because everything else can get taken care of
by natural selection'? Or does he pop in every so often and have a bit
of a fiddle to keep his hand in so to speak? Or do you imagine that if
you found one example this would mean that everything else got done by
god too? But why would you think that, when natural selection was
working perfectly well? I ask in all seriousness, because I have a lot
of trouble understanding the minds that can believe this stuff.
Now back to flagellae. Several things the creationists forget to tell
you fundies about evolution. First natural selection works on function
not structure. Second a structure that is doing a particular job in one
organism may not have come into being through stages in which it was
doing the same job - this is perhaps the fundamental (yes, another pun)
flaw in irreducible complexity. That is each stage may fill a particular
function, and therefore be selected for, and then be subject to quite a
different selection pressure later on to take it in a different
direction. And finally, genes and structures and functions rarely have
one to one correspondence - a change in one gene that is responsible for
a particular protein may have effects throughout the muscular and
skeletal and nervous and circulatory systems for example, and therefore
produce an effect out of all proportion to the minor mutation.
Conversely it is possible to occasionally get major mutations that are
not lethal and cause a decided shift in function.
With all that in mind, take a look at:
www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html. This is one possible solution
(part of an ongoing debate - that is how science works) and introduces a
whole lot of literature on the subject. It illustrates the proposition
that the stages along the way can each be functional (for different
functions) and unrelated to the final structure (and function). And that
this, the classic case of intelligent designers, fails the test of
irreducible complexity because the flagellum demonstrably contains at
least one sub unit (actually more, but just one is enough to destroy the
argument) which has a different function.
But there is something broader that is puzzling me about all this. Even
in the bad old days of 20 years ago it was quite possible to go into a
library, look up Biological Abstracts, and start finding literature
relevant to the flagellum. Now, and I know this will come as a shock to
many people, it is possible to use, on something called the 'internet',
something called Google. A search on 'Bacteria - flagellum - evolution'
brings up, in half a second, 190,000 references. The one I pulled out
above is just one of the more recent ones, and a very detailed
scientific look at the evolutionary pathways which were probably
involved. On that very first search page we also find -
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html, a detailed
2004 scientific debunking of irreducible complexity, both in general and
specifically related to the flagellum, and of intelligent design which
rests on the idea of irreducible complexity. No one reading even this
article (and Dr Miller is a religious man it seems, as well as an
evolutionist) would have a moment's doubt that Behe and Dombski have
been deliberately misleading and that there is no such thing as
'irreducible complexity' in nature.
Given that, why would a poster raise the 'flagellum question' yet again
and pretend that it was an unsolved mystery? Now I am just a simple
country boy, but I suspect there may be one or two cynical posters on
HuffPo who might think that a fundy behaving in such a way might be
deliberately attempting to mislead his fellow fundies. He might for
example (and I shudder to be so cynical on the behalf of others) have
his own blog where he would refer to my article and pretend that
irreducible complexity was alive and well and rebutted what I was
saying. Such a blog, aimed at uneducated and trusting fundies would be
quite immoral of course, so I wouldn't suggest that anyone would behave
like that. Still, the inability to do a Google search and instantly find
an answer to a question you are pretending doesn't have an answer sure
makes even a simple country boy put one flagellum with another flagellum
to make three flagellae.
It is possible to reduce irreducible ignorance, but the leaders of the
ignorant have to want that to happen.
---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/irreducible-stupidity_b_21520.
html
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: David Horton: Irreducible Stupidity |
27 May 2006 11:51:32 AM |
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On Wed, 24 May 2006 23:40:45 -0700, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
David Horton kicks some ID *****.
--
David Horton
Bio
05.23.2006
Irreducible Stupidity
READ MORE: Google, Intelligent Design, Evolution
The fundies keep coming at me - here's another one of the crowd of angry
bees that descends every time I mention evolution
Yeah, but fundies don't have the requisite pain circuits to realize
they've been sliced and diced.
[]
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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