Behe's Irreducible Complexity Revisited by Dembski and by Gene
Irreducible Complexity Revisited (PDF)
by William A. Dembski
Abastract — Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, and in particular his use of this concept to critique Darwinism, continues to come under heavy fire from the biological community. The problem with Behe, so Darwinists inform us, is that he has created a problem where there is no problem. Far from constituting an obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection, irreducible complexity is thus supposed to be eminently explainable by this same mechanism. But is it really? It’s been eight years since Behe introduced irreducible complexity in Darwin’s Black Box (a book that continues to sell 15,000 copies per year in English alone). I want in this essay to revisit Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity and indicate why the problem he has raised is, if anything, still more vexing for Darwinism than when he first raised it. The first four sections of this essay review and extend material that I’ve treated elsewhere. The last section contains some novel material.
Irreducible Complexity ReVisited by Mike Gene (taken from his extinct website idthink.net)
From the Full Text:
by William A. Dembski
Abastract — Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, and in particular his use of this concept to critique Darwinism, continues to come under heavy fire from the biological community. The problem with Behe, so Darwinists inform us, is that he has created a problem where there is no problem. Far from constituting an obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection, irreducible complexity is thus supposed to be eminently explainable by this same mechanism. But is it really? It’s been eight years since Behe introduced irreducible complexity in Darwin’s Black Box (a book that continues to sell 15,000 copies per year in English alone). I want in this essay to revisit Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity and indicate why the problem he has raised is, if anything, still more vexing for Darwinism than when he first raised it. The first four sections of this essay review and extend material that I’ve treated elsewhere. The last section contains some novel material.
Irreducible Complexity ReVisited by Mike Gene (taken from his extinct website idthink.net)
From the Full Text:
IC rules out the Darwinian mechanisms that have been most firmly established and observed, change along a linear axis. Consider the examples of the evolution of the giraffe neck, the finch beak, or wing color in moths. None of these examples represent the evolution of IC. A pre-existing neck is lengthened, a pre-existing beak is reshaped, and a pre-existing wing is darkened. Thus, the most intuitive examples of Darwinian selection provide no basis to infer the same explanation for the origin of IC.
...because of IC analyses, we now know that the bacterial flagellum is a sophisticated molecular machine without any fingerprint of it having a Darwinian origin. Those who still insist on Darwinian explanations for the origin of such a system are drawing upon their expectations that all biotic features have a Darwinian origin. They are free to expect this, but they err in demanding others to think as they do.
posted by fdocc | 1:33 PM
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