# Has Intelligent Design some merit to get to new theories?

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Tags:** Design, Introduction, Communication\
**Created:** [February 21, 2025, 1:31pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058 "2025-02-21T13:31:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Dan\_Eastwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/dan_eastwood/32/2368_2.png) [@Dan\_Eastwood](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Dan_Eastwood)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/21 "2025-02-21T21:06:19Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Exactly. But to ‘see’ an improvement there has to be a function. If a system without all of its parts doesn’t have one, there is no possibilty to improve it by natural selection.

This is PRATT, and the solution is obvious. Copy a function, tinker with one copy so the original function is maintained. Dawkin’s Weasel was an example of genetic search and was not programmed for duplication - BUT biology does this very neatly.

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**Author:** ![sfmatheson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/sfmatheson/32/22811_2.png) [@sfmatheson](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/sfmatheson)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:07pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/22 "2025-02-21T21:07:01Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Do you want to start a flame war?

Love the 90s vibe! No I don’t want to fight and you are right to call me out for my rudeness. Much of what you wrote is plainly wrong (about fitness landscapes most notably), so I do think I am clearly justified in suggesting that you don’t read the literature. I hope you might accept my apology for gruffness. I haven’t changed my mind about whether you know what you’re talking about.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Post a list of articles about Dawkins’ Weasel-Program you’ve read.

Better than that, here’s one I wrote:  
[https://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2009/09/weasels-clouds-and-biomorphs-part-i.html](https://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2009/09/weasels-clouds-and-biomorphs-part-i.html)

My article includes data on how often the Weasel program has been cited or discussed in the scientific literature. I haven’t updated those data but I would on request.

EDIT: the data I include are not about the “scientific literature” but about a website. I will atone for this appalling error by doing some quick research on the extent to which the Weasel program has been mentioned or discussed in the literature, and compare that to the Biomorphs program.

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**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/23 "2025-02-21T21:08:13Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> However, it seems to me you are begging the question by assuming irreducibly complex systems or structures (according to Behe’s initial definition) actually exist in biology.

the initial definition concerned a property of a system. AFIAK at least for the bacterial flagellum Minnich showed that that’s correct.

Behe modified his argument quite a lot in his later books, but that’s another issue.

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**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/24 "2025-02-21T21:39:49Z")

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> [@Roy](#):
>
> Evolution can follow indirect routes, and being indirect doesn’t make something non-Darwinian.

please define ‘darwinian’. I mentioned the definition of Ernst Mayr. Do you know it?

> [@Roy](#):
>
> It’s only necessary to note that e.g. penguins evolved from marine to terrestrial to aerial/terrestrial to aerial/terrestrial/marine to terrestrial/marine to realise that evolution doesn’t go in straight lines.

I said in my posting that there are two issues in evolution: adaptation and novelties. Further on this line is the difference between pattern and process. You mentioned a pattern. The more interesting question concerns the processes. Even if you see evolution you don’t know how it works. Is it possible without design? some people ask and that’s not easy to decide.

> [@Roy](#):
>
> Evolution can produce ‘irreducibly complex’ systems by changing components until they are mutually reliant, rather than by adding components one at a time

If a system has no function before all its components are in place, selection never ‘sees’ an improvement.

> [@Roy](#):
>
> Irreducible complexity has never been a barrier to evolution, and in fact was anticipated long before Behe began writing about it.

That’s an interesting question. I’ve read through quite a lot of evolutionary literature ever since Darwin, specialising in heterodoxies. There are concepts like IC (e.g. correlation of parts, interlocking complexity), but not at the level Behe is discussing.

> [@Roy](#):
>
> Are you implementing IC in ‘weasel’ just by reverting it to a random search for the whole string, with no preferential selection of partially correct intermediates? If so, you’re just reinventing Dawkins’s original program.

If you’re interested I can mail you the source code or an exe-file demonstrating it. I modified the program only in that sense that some letters are only selectable if they come together. You see that the regions before and after that IC-part are found quickly by the program, but the IC-part isn’t.

That modification shows, what cumulative selection can do, but also what it can’t.

> [@Roy](#):
>
> P.S. ID is just a disguised version of creationism. It has no merit except as a deception, and gives no weight to anything.

I’m not so sure. Living in Germany the situation is quite different from the US. The best source conderning the difference between YEC and ID I know, is

> Ross, M.R. (2005) ‘Who Believes What? Clearing up Confusion over Intelligent Design and Young-Earth Creationism’ Journal of Geoscience Education 53 (3):319-323

or, more popular,

> Ross, M.R.; Nelson, P.A. (2006) ‘A Taxonomy of Teleology: Phillip Johnson, the Intelligent Design Community and Young-Earth Creationism’ in: Dembski, W.A.; (ed.) ‘Darwin’s Nemesis. Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement’ Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press S. 261-275

Ross and Nelson are YEC, but the arguments in these articles are convincing.

I’ve published quite some articles about the difference between YEC and ID and I’m quite sure that I know the difference between these positions. If you can read German I can send you an article I wrote showing what’s new about Behe compared with Paley.

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:40pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/25 "2025-02-21T21:40:42Z")

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> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> What is your definition of a ‘darwinian process’?

Natural selection acting on heritable variation. And I think you need to adjust your quoting a bit.

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> The definition is clear: there is a property of a system (‘take away any part and the IC-function is destroyed completely’) and a conclusion (‘an IC-system cannot be generated by certain mechanisms’).

The problems are that 1) the conclusion is often taken as the definition and 2) the conclusion doesn’t follow from the definition of the property.

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> A darwinian pathway (‘cumulative selection’ as Dawkins calls it) needs a function which selection can ‘see’. If that’s the case RMNS works fine.

What makes you think that this is not compatible with IC?

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> Cumulative selection works fine provided certain conditions. Not for IC-Systems.

Can you support this assertion?

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Did you read the discussion in Boston Review?

No, but please do explain, or at least cite something adequately.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> But the property of a system ‘is IC’ is an argument against certain mechanisms, especially darwinian mechanisms.

You contradict yourself. Scaffolding is quite compatible with a Darwinian mechanism, as are several other ways to arrive at IC by selection.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> If a system without all of its parts doesn’t have [a function], there is no possibilty to improve it by natural selection.

This assumes, again, that evolution must occur by the sequential addition of invariant parts. But that’s not at all how it works. I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the data.

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**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/26 "2025-02-21T21:41:02Z")

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Thanks for pointing this out.

I have been looking into this program very closely and thought that I might be able to contribute something that hasn’t been discussed here yet.

But no problem, if that’s not what you want, I’ll refrain from doing so.

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**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/27 "2025-02-21T21:42:05Z")

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> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> Copy a function, tinker with one copy so the original function is maintained

you know how Behe reacts to that?

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> Dawkin’s Weasel was an example of genetic search and was not programmed for duplication - BUT biology does this very neatly.

Yepp. But Dawkins never mentioned duplication and his program was intended do demonstrate what he wrote in the first lines in his _The Blind Watchmaker_.

If you agree that his mechanism without duplication doesn’t work, okay.

The real question is, **how** that happens in nature (biology isn’t an agent). You know, how genes get duplicated, there are gene familes, but how to get from a duplicated gene to a new function is interesting.

Do you agree that duplication is a ‘pattern’, no ‘process’?

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**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/28 "2025-02-21T21:42:26Z")

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> [@sfmatheson](#):
>
> No I don’t want to fight and you are right to call me out for my rudeness.
> 
> …
> 
> I hope you might accept my apology for gruffness. I haven’t changed my mind about whether you know what you’re talking about.

no problem.

Thank you for the link. I visited your website quite some times before and found it very interesting.

I’ll read your article and write some comments about it later.

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**Author:** ![Paul\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Paul\_King](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Paul_King)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/29 "2025-02-21T21:42:40Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> what certain mechanisms can generate or not.

This looks like deliberate evasion. Try again. What do you mean by this:

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> After the Evolutionary Synthesis direct darwinian routes were standard. But it ist tricky how to definie ‘darwinian’. Do you know the definition of Ernst Mayr? I’m not sure if there are indirect non-darwinian routes.

What exactly is Mayr supposed to be defining? Why doubt that there are indirect Darwinian routes when they seem to be inevitable?

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Exactly. But to ‘see’ an improvement there has to be a function. If a system without all of its parts doesn’t have one, there is no possibilty to improve it by natural selection.

Hence indirect routes.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> The problem is that darwinian evolution via direct route (a gradient of function, allowing small, selection positive steps) is plausible. If the conditions are met, it works.
> 
> The question is how indirect routes are working.

Change of function would be one example and that’s hardly new. And of course the parts themselves can change. A part that was only useful can become essential.

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**Author:** ![Dan\_Eastwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/dan_eastwood/32/2368_2.png) [@Dan\_Eastwood](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Dan_Eastwood)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/30 "2025-02-21T22:04:16Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> I have been looking into this program very closely and thought that I might be able to contribute something that hasn’t been discussed here yet.

AND maybe you can, but it wouldn’t hurt to look at what has gone before. You might discover something you hadn’t considered before.

PS: I’m a moderator, not the Thought Police. 😉

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
> >
> > Copy a function, tinker with one copy so the original function is maintained
> 
> you know how Behe reacts to that?

Who cares how Behe reacts - it is not relevant.  
_How do evolutionary biologists react?_

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Yepp. But Dawkins never mentioned duplication and his program was intended do demonstrate what he wrote in the first lines in his _The Blind Watchmaker_.
> 
> If you agree that his mechanism without duplication doesn’t work, okay.

The Blind Watchmaker was not a textbook on genetic algorithms. WEASEL was a demonstration of a basic principle, and it works for that purpose. If you think Dawkin’s had some other purpose, then please state what you think that is.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> The real question is, **how** that happens in nature (biology isn’t an agent). You know, how genes get duplicated, there are gene familes, but how to get from a duplicated gene to a new function is interesting.

It is very interesting, and there are whole fields of study dedicated to **how** that happens in nature. I’m not a biologist, but a mutation that duplicates part of the genetic code isn’t hard to understand. Once duplicates exist, each may accumulate new mutations independently. If the function is essential then one copy will tend to be preserved (conserved). _Surely you know this already?_

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Do you agree that duplication is a ‘pattern’, no ‘process’?

I would not agree to either without further details on what you mean.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Paul\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Paul\_King](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Paul_King)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/31 "2025-02-21T22:04:33Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Yepp. But Dawkins never mentioned duplication and his program was intended do demonstrate what he wrote in the first lines in his _The Blind Watchmaker_.

Oh dear. Perhaps you should inform yourself on the matter. Dawkins wrote the “weasel” only to illustrate that cumulative selection was much better than random guessing. It wasn’t mean to show anything more. It’s all in _The Blind Watchmaker_

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/32 "2025-02-21T22:22:23Z")

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> [@Paul\_King](#):
>
> Perhaps you should inform yourself on the matter. Dawkins wrote the “weasel” only to illustrate that cumulative selection was much better than random guessing. It wasn’t mean to show anything more.

I’m quite informed about that. Quite a lot of material for teachers used that program. I was taught the reason behind it in the 1970s studying biology, even before Dawkins wrote his book.

I got interested in that program many, many years later in connection with IC because it made a problem explicit.

Of course I know that there are a lot more and more elaborate models in evolutionary biology, but there are some problems never solved ever since Darwin.

I’m not arguing for Design, I’m just analyzing controversies.

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**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:29pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/33 "2025-02-21T22:29:04Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> But the property of a system ‘is IC’ is an argument against certain mechanisms, especially darwinian mechanisms.

What is that argument, really? It’s not clear.

I don’t see why natural selection acting to preserve variation that improves fitness should be thought incapable of producing an IC system. The function of the system can be different throughout it’s evolution, essentially involving steps of novel functions many times throughout.  
So the simplest system performs function A which enhances fitness. Next step is slightly more complex, and performs function B which enhances fitness further. Final step is more complex still and performs function C, which also enhances fitness. C can’t function without the parts added in steps A and B, so the system is IC and yet it evolved by a textbook Darwinian mechanism.

What is wrong with this scenario?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Paul\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Paul\_King](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Paul_King)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:29pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/34 "2025-02-21T22:29:28Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> I’m quite informed about that. Quite a lot of material for teachers used that program. I was taught the reason behind it in the 1970s studying biology, even before Dawkins wrote his book.

So you wrote:

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> Yepp. But Dawkins never mentioned duplication and his program was intended do demonstrate what he wrote in the first lines in his _The Blind Watchmaker_

Knowing that it wasn’t true? That Dawkins never intended the “weasel” to demonstrate any more than it did?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/35 "2025-02-21T22:39:52Z")

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> [@Paul\_King](#):
>
> hat Dawkins never intended the “weasel” to demonstrate any more than it did?

the program demonstrated two things: what cumulative selection can do, and why IC is a problem for that.

Does ist matter what Dawkins intended? What did Dawkins intend with his biomorph program(s)? What’s the difference between them and the Weasel-program?

What do you want to discuss: Dawkins’s intention or what I intend?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/36 "2025-02-21T22:46:47Z")

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> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> AND maybe you can, but it wouldn’t hurt to look at what has gone before. You might discover something you hadn’t considered before.

I responded to questions oder wanted to argue. But yes, I’ll do my homework.

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> PS: I’m a moderator, not the Thought Police. 😉

😘

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> Who cares how Behe reacts - it is not relevant.  
> _How do evolutionary biologists react?_

Hmmm, there is an argument from Behe (e.g. the IC-argument), and there are replies from naturalists or non-interventionists. Isn’t it important how Behe responds?

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> If you think Dawkin’s had some other purpose, then please state what you think that is.

As I wrote, it should show that cumulative selection is working. Not more, but not less.

But it is also a model to show the problem that IC is for that mechanism.

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> […]  
> Surely you know this already?

Of course. And I’ve studied biology and did quite a lot of work regarding history of evolutionary biology, specializing in heterodoxies. Because of that I’m not too impressed by arguments like “most evolutionary biologists …”. Tides are sometimes changing. I remembered in my posting that the Extended Synthesis unearthed theories from times before the Modern Synthesis was achieved in the 1940s and were regarded als refuted.

A ‘pattern’ is what you’re seeing in nature, e.g. fossils in different strata, homologies (morphological,genetical or whatever) and so on. Most ‘proofs of evlolution’ belong to this category. A ‘process’ is a theory explaining mechanistically how these pattern are generated.

The main issue between ID and evolutionary biology concerns ‘processes’. Don’t forget that e.g. Behe accepts all of evolutionary biology regarding patterns, even that man and apes have common ancestors.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sfmatheson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/sfmatheson/32/22811_2.png) [@sfmatheson](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/sfmatheson)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/37 "2025-02-21T22:46:59Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> But Dawkins never mentioned duplication and his program was intended do demonstrate what he wrote in the first lines in his _The Blind Watchmaker_.

This is false. If any program was written (by Dawkins) for this purpose, it is the Biomorphs program, which has been mentioned/cited in recent work (see esp. work from Ard Louis’ group, which I [discussed previously on the forum](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/bias-in-the-arrival-of-variation-can-dominate-over-natural-selection-in-richard-dawkins-s-biomorphs/16698)). I respectfully suggest that you read (or re-read) _The Blind Watchmaker_.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 11:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/38 "2025-02-21T23:36:38Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> > [@Paul\_King](#):
> >
> > Unlike the “weasel” program Darwinian evolution has no specific target, it only seeks improvements to evolutionary fitness, without any forethought
> 
> Exactly. But to ‘see’ an improvement there has to be a function. If a system without all of its parts doesn’t have one, there is no possibilty to improve it by natural selection.

Sure, but we can just dispute the assumption (which is all it is) that the system has no function if all it’s parts are not in place.  
In many cases where we look at the individual parts, or partial structures, we can see they are derived from other systems or functions, or how the partial structure would perform a useful function.

> [@Thomas](#):
>
> The question is how indirect routes are working.

By partial versions of the “final” structure still performing useful functions. Those functions might be different from the final one, so you’re not selecting for the _same_ function to just improve by tiny increments, instead you’re just selecting for “any novel change that increases fitness.”

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 11:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/39 "2025-02-21T23:36:41Z")

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> [@Thomas](#):
>
> > [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
> >
> > Copy a function, tinker with one copy so the original function is maintained
> 
> you know how Behe reacts to that?

I’ve seen various responses. All of them terrible. Which one do you have in mind?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/thomas/32/22719_2.png) [@Thomas](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Thomas)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 11:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/has-intelligent-design-some-merit-to-get-to-new-theories/17058/40 "2025-02-21T23:36:48Z")

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> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I don’t see why natural selection acting to preserve variation that improves fitness should be thought incapable of producing an IC system

how can fitness of a non-functioning system be improved?

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> The function of the system can be different throughout it’s evolution, essentially involving steps of novel functions many times throughout.

Of course, but that is non-darwinian. Even Darwin proposed a change of function, but it didn’t fit well into his theory. The concept was elaborated by Dohrn in

> Dohrn, A. (1875) ‘Der Ursprung der Wirbeltiere und das Princip des Functionswechsels’ Leipzig, kein Eintrag

The problem is that it’s easy to evolve a system if there is a gradient of function (e.g. an eye from a light-sensitive spot along a gradient of visial acuity). But if you have to change that function, pure chance (okay, there are concepts …) must do what selection cannot.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> So the simplest system performs function A which enhances fitness. Next step is slightly more complex, and performs function B which enhances fitness further. Final step is more complex still and performs function C, which also enhances fitness. C can’t function without the parts added in steps A and B, so the system is IC and yet it evolved by a textbook Darwinian mechanism.
> 
> What is wrong with this scenario?

This model was proposed by Orr in the Boston Review.

> Orr, H.A. (1996/97) ‘Darwin v. Intelligent Design (Again). The latest attack on evolution is cleverly argued, biologically informed - and wrong’ URL: [http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.6/orr.html](http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.6/orr.html), letzter Zugriff: 14.05.2008

Behe responded in some articles, e.g.

> Behe, M.J. (1997) ‘Michael Behe’s Response to Boston Review Critics’ URL: [http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=47&program=CSC%20Responses&printerFriendly=true](http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=47&program=CSC%20Responses&printerFriendly=true), letzter Zugriff: 27.09.2008

or

> Behe, M.J. (2001) ‘Reply to My Critics: A Response to Reviews of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution’ Biology and Philosophy 16 (5):685-709

The main issue is the first sentence:

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> So the simplest system performs function A

If A is the IC-Function there is no function A. If it has that function even in a minimal degree, it isn’t IC. If it has another function, it’s an indirect path.

If I see it correctly, even

> Thornhill, R.H.; Ussery, D.W. (2000) ‘A classification of possible routes of Darwinian evolution’ URL: [http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/~dave/JTB.html](http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/~dave/JTB.html), letzter Zugriff: 21.02.2014

concede that IC-systems are not evolvable by a direct darwinian pathway. But there are indirect ones …

Behe wants to see very detailed models for these pathways. As far as I know that would be the easiest way to refute him, I’m not sure if these exist. But Behe has changed his argumentation in his later books, IC isn’t of much importance for him now.

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