Empty claims like Behe’s made with no evidence can be rejected with no evidence. 
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That you cannot or will not understand those arguments does not mean they are incoherent.
Biochemical processes that can be directly observed are not speculative proposals. What a strange idea.
Meanwhile, Behe’s “explanation”, as you have yourself confirmed, is that some god lined up a billiards shot 4 billion years ago, that ricocheted thru untold trillions of molecules, to eventually end up with human beings.
To call that so much as “speculative proposal” is a gross overstatement. But you’re perfectly fine with it.
This is not Behe’s argument. Its simply a speculation of what we are observing. He has created a challenge to the evolutionary attempts to show the properties of matter can explain life. So far there is no tested empirical evidence that the properties of matter are up to the task. You may notice that @Art claim is problematic for the simple to complex model.
Hi Bill,
Let’s try again. The article put the following words inside quotation marks
“An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.”
I found what I believe to be Behe’s original article written in 2000, containing only Behe’s words. Here is an extended quotation from that article:
Envisioning IC in terms of selected or unselected steps thus puts the focus on the process of trying to build the system. A big advantage, I think, is that it encourages people to pay attention to details; hopefully it would encourage really detailed scenarios by proponents of Darwinism (ones that might be checked experimentally) and discourage just-so stories that leap over many steps without comment. So with those thoughts in mind, I offer the following tentative “evolutionary” definition of irreducible complexity:
An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.
That definition has the advantage of promoting research: to state clear, detailed evolutionary pathways; to measure probabilistic resources; to estimate mutation rates; to determine if a given step is selected or not. It allows for the proposal of any evolutionary scenario a Darwinist (or others) may wish to submit, asking only that it be detailed enough so that relevant parameters might be estimated.
To me, it seems obvious that the original article I cited and I are both representing Behe’s genetic definition of irreducible complexity correctly. The fact that you disagree with some other aspect of my original citation seems quite irrelevant to the discussion we are having here.
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That’s a remarkable assertion to make without any documentation.
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While the origin of eukaryotes has not been entirely settled, biologists have identified several plausible mechanisms. This 2009 review article, though it suffers from aging, is a good popular description of where the question stood at the time.
You have just identified the off-ramp for ID as a scientific theory. ID provides no model with mechanisms that can explain the origins of species. We have already discussed this at length, and you said you would like some time to think about my argument that ID has no models. If indeed you have reached some conclusions since then, feel free to take up the issue. What you have done here, though–simply re-asserting the same things without taking into account the discussion we had–does not seem like a good strategy for convincing your critics.
Once you read Carl Zimmer’s article I think you will realize why I do not subscribe to the notion that evolutionary mechanisms have insurmountable limitations that can only be explained by ID.
Best,
Chris
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I didn’t say it was his argument. Pay attention. It is his proposed mechanism. I got that from a video you posted in which you asked him directly.
Please provide the empirical observations supporting Behe’s hypothesized billiard shot, since you are so opposed to mechanisms based on mere speculation.
This is not his argument. Just a speculation. What you are asking for is ridiculous. The proposed mechanism is a mind for irreducibly complex structures such as a flagellar motor.
It’s very relevant as you are committing a logical fallacy when you change his argument or are using references that change his argument. The tactic of evolutionists is to reduce the definition of irreducible complexity to something they can test or change the claim of difficult to evolve to can’t evolve thus creating a straw man. This is simply trying to defeat his idea with rhetoric and not substance.
The problem is that his argument is very strong and hard to refute without committing logical fallacies.
I think you are wrong with this assertion. We are seeing evidence that a mind is behind the universe with the observations we see inside cells. The mechanisms of physics are contained in matter where the mechanisms in biology include those mechanisms but the capability of a mind appears to be behind much of what we are observing in the cell.
Whats interesting is the physics appears to going in the same direction as models of quantum gravity include information processing by atoms.
Hi Bill,
It was Behe who provided a new definition, not I. I am incredulous that you assert otherwise. Allow me to quote Behe’s words again, bearing in mind that I already provided a link to Behe’s essay:
Envisioning IC in terms of selected or unselected steps thus puts the focus on the process of trying to build the system. A big advantage, I think, is that it encourages people to pay attention to details; hopefully it would encourage really detailed scenarios by proponents of Darwinism (ones that might be checked experimentally) and discourage just-so stories that leap over many steps without comment. So with those thoughts in mind, I offer the following tentative “evolutionary” definition of irreducible complexity:
An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.
That definition has the advantage of promoting research: to state clear, detailed evolutionary pathways; to measure probabilistic resources; to estimate mutation rates; to determine if a given step is selected or not. It allows for the proposal of any evolutionary scenario a Darwinist (or others) may wish to submit, asking only that it be detailed enough so that relevant parameters might be estimated.
Best
Chris
2 Likes
Hi Chris
Is this the essay you lifted it out of?
In Defense of the Irreducibility of the Blood Clotting Cascade:
Response to Russell Doolittle, Ken Miller and Keith Robison
That was the title of the essay that showed up in my browser when I clicked the link in my post #427.
Best,
Chris
1 Like
I got it and I found it. Thanks. The paper was an interesting discussion of the blood clotting cascade. He created a new definition here which was of a irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway. Do you agree with this? This is different than his definition of an irreducibly complex system.
In Darwin’s Black Box I defined the concept of irreducible complexity (IC) in the following way.
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Behe 1996, 39)
I agree that the definitions are orthogonal. I also agree with the point he made in the second definition–to wit, that a genetic definition with steps is more testable and therefore more helpful than the earlier definition.
Best,
Chris
I don’t think the discussion is about insurmountable limitations its about modeling and testing the mechanism against the claim. For forming variation in finch beaks and getting those fixed in the population your good 
Common ground. Thanks.
He does mention in the paper that not all irreducible systems are equal. Some are less problematic for the Darwinian mechanism than others.
Sure. But what about “evolutionary” mechanisms?
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They are all interesting but limited. They don’t have the power to explain what we are observing.
POOF! A MAGIC MIND DID IT! doesn’t explain anything Bill. Not without a physical mechanism.
Empty assertion backed by zero evidence.
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I have been providing evidence for a year since we have been discussing this but its being filtered by your bias. If you keep making arbitrary denials of the evidence I provide I don’t see why we should continue discussions.