Here’s an example of what Michael Behe is (actually) talking about in Darwin Devolves The evolution strategy “Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain”: Eleven authors writing in PLOS Biology found that “γ-proteobacteria eject their polar flagella under nutrient depletion, retaining flagellar motor relic structures.” When there’s […]
Irreducible Complexity
Paul Davies: The really tough question is how life’s hardware can write its own software
Davies, author of The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life thinks we overlook the difficulty and offers a solution: Nature got there first.
Here’s the film about Mike Behe
Or here. Note: Behe has a new book coming out. See New book from Michael Behe on how today’s DNA findings “devolve” Darwin See also: The bombardier beetle, the toad, and – after all these years – Mike Behe
Determining Irreducible Complexity Using Power-sets
Ever since Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, the concept of irreducible complexity has played a central role in the debate over Darwinian theory. I am proposing a new, theoretical method of determining whether a system is irreducibly complex using power-sets. First, however, it is necessary to define irreducible complexity. Various definitions of irreducible […]
Auto mechanic: Berra’s blunder splutters … yet again?
Some things can’t change. From a piece at ENST, A Classic Evolutionist’s Error, Berra’s Blunder Revs Up Again Tim Berra had tried to compare biological evolution to the evolution of the Corvette. In his book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Johnson aptly pointed out the intuitively obvious difference: Of course, every one of those Corvettes […]
Attempt to explain the assembly of the bacterial flagellum, “a complex process involving more than 70 genes”
From Phys.org: Many bacteria are equipped with a flagellum, a helical propeller that allows bacteria to travel. The flagellum is assembled in a highly organized manner involving the stepwise addition of each of its internal parts. However, there are many open questions as to how this orderly construction is achieved. In a study published in […]
Jonathan McLatchie vs. Keith Fox: Has ID stood the test of time?
Saturday 24th February 2018 – 02:30 pm Seems to be up now in EST. Audio:Premier Christian Radio: A bacterial flagellum acts as the outboard motor on a bacteria. But is the complex arrangement of parts that enable it to do its job a result of design or evolution? Michael Behe first opened the debate on […]
The bombardier beetle, the toad, and – after all these years – Mike Behe
From Susan Milius at ScienceNews: In a lab face-off, 43 percent of Pheropsophus jessoensis bombardiers escaped alive after being swallowed by toads, a pair of researchers at Kobe University in Japan report February 7 in Biology Letters. These lucky beetles were vomited up — in one case, 107 minutes after being gulped — covered with […]
Answering DiEb: Just what is “search” in a sense relevant to ID?
For some time now, objector DiEb has been raising the question, what do we mean by speaking of “search” in the context of evolutionary search. At 311 in the parody thread, she [IIRC] remarks: >>Search is a central term in the work of Dr. Dr. William Dembski jr, Dr. Winston Ewert, and Dr. Robert Marks […]
Recent paper: A serious consideration of pathway complexity in life forms
Abstract: (public access)One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random structures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial communities and multicellular structures, the material configurations in biology can easily be distinguished from nonliving material assemblies. Many complex artefacts, from […]
Another axe lying at the root of the Tree of Life
A brand new early eukaryote (“its own eukaryotic lineage”) From Katarina Zimmer at The Scientist: From an aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, scientists have identified a unicellular species that could shed light on how eukaryotes evolved, they report in Current Biology this week (November 22). The tiny organism—named Ancoracysta […]
Evolution as a Ralph’s Supermarket Store
Over at the The Skeptical Zone there’s a reference to a post from Larry Moran’s blogsite. The question of irreducible complexity is revisited, and, torn to shreds in the eyes of evolutionary thinkers. For them it seems sufficient to simply announce the “presence” of some needed ingredient of the putative IC system of proteins in […]
Flagellum gives bacteria a sense of touch. Behe is right.
Irreducible complexity. From ScienceDaily: Although bacteria have no sensory organs in the classical sense, they are still masters in perceiving their environment. … Swimming Caulobacter bacteria have a rotating motor in their cell envelope with a long protrusion, the flagellum. The rotation of the flagellum enables the bacteria to move in liquids. Much to the […]
Intelligent design and the origin of the visual cycle
From commenter Otangelo Grasso, some thoughts: The irreducible process of phototransduction, 11 cis retinal synthesis, and the visual cycle, essential for vertebrate vision http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1638-origin-of-phototransduction-the-visual-cycle-photoreceptors-and-retina#5753 William Bialek: More Perfect Than We Imagined – March 23, 2013 Excerpt: photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or […]
What is the term “surprisingly complex” doing in science PRs about life forms these days?
From ScienceDaily: Cell signals that trigger wound healing are surprisingly complex The researchers were testing two prevailing hypotheses for the wound-response trigger. One is that damaged and dying cells release proteins into the extracellular fluid which surrounding cells sense, causing them to boost their internal calcium levels. This increased calcium concentration, in turn, triggers their […]