Jason Rosenhouse at www.scienceblogs.com explains how Behe's
"irreducible complexity" is being taken apart, one molecule at a time:
http://tinyurl.com/ytdza7
"A while back Michael Behe offered the following description of
what sort of evidence he would need before accepting the naturalistic
explanation over his preferred version of "God did it." Not only would
he need a step-by-step list of mutations...
"...but also a detailed account of the selective pressures that
would be operating, the difficulties such changes would cause for the
organism, the expected time scale over which the changes would be
expected to occur, the likely population sizes available in the
relevant ancestral species at each step, other potential ways to solve
the problem which might interfere, and much more.
"It sure looks to me like the authors addressed all of these
points in considerable detail. (With the exception of the population
sizes, which is hardly the major sticking point here. Behe only
included that one to make his list longer and more impressive.) But --
surprise! -- it still isn't enough. In fact, in Behe's world, when
scientists produce a comprehensive, step-by-step, well-documented,
evolutionarily feasible sequence of events through which a protein
attains a novel function, it somehow ends up being evidence for design
nonetheless. What a charming fellow."
I wouldn't have put it quite that delicately!
Budikka
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