Irreducible Complexity

From New Scientist: Behold – the only known example of a biological wheel. Loved by creationists, who falsely think they are examples of “intelligent design”, the bacterial flagellum is a long tail that is spun like a propeller by nano-sized protein motors. … Indeed, the diversity of the motors and the fact that they have evolved many times in different bacterial lineages, scuppers the creationist view that the machinery is “irreducibly complex”. More. Have a look. The New Scientist writer seems anxious to so mangle the idea of irreducible complexity that “irreducible complexity” means lack of diversity and “evolved only once.” People indulge in this kind of thing when their claims are so intimately a part of their readers’ lives Read More ›

I was asked today for a comment about a paper regarding irreducible complexity – Eliminating the Requirement of an Essential Gene Product in an Already Very Small Virus: Scaffolding Protein B-free øX174, B-free by Min Chen, Asako Uchiyama, and Bentley A. Fane, 2007.

I noted that despite this having been written in 2007, no one at all seemed to comment on it one way or the other. So, here is my short commentary on their criticism of Behe’s Irreducible Complexity. It is late, so I didn’t spend a lot of time reading in-depth, so please correct me where I am wrong.
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Science historian Michael Flannery kindly contributed this review: When I started reading Perry Marshall’s book, Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design, I must confess to some consternation almost from the beginning. While Marshall was quick to point out the shortcomings of the neo-Darwinian approach of common descent by means of natural selection through the undirected processes of chance and necessity, he oddly went on to claim that ID, while recognizing many truths about biology that old-school Darwinism denies, ultimately abdicates its responsibility by jumping directly to ‘God did it’. At least in its most simple forms, ID halts scientific inquiry by dismissing too easily the possibility that God may have used a process to develop life on Read More ›

Everywhere I go … Rats! This should have happened approx December 8, 2015, not January 8, 2016: A friend writes to say that an open access paper at eLIFE includes the words, Tissue organization, spindle orientation, and the GKPID complex itself are all examples of complexity, defined as the integrated functioning of a system made up of differentiated, interacting parts. More. Friend asks: Contrast this with what Michael Behe said years ago defining irreducible complexity: “A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system ” Note: The Brainyquote version adds, “wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” Hmmmm. Readers? See also: Is it Read More ›

The remarkable “powers” of evolution are now shown to degrade (aka “mutate”) the human genes essential to intelligence.

Remarkably, they found that some of the same genes that influence human intelligence in healthy people were also the same genes that cause impaired cognitive ability and epilepsy when mutated, networks which they called M1 and M3.

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Wants to shed “simple” schtick. Introducing C. elegans, the worm that survived the space shuttle blowup. Philosopher of Biology Paul Nelson describes the amazing process by which the worm C. elegans is constructed and how it points toward intelligent design. Also: Irreducibly complex behaviour in worms? and White space in evolutionary thinking (Where thought stops) See also: Information Enigma film online Follow UD News at Twitter!

In 1996, Lehigh University professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, published his first book Darwin’s Black Box, which famously advanced the concept of irreducible complexity (IC) to prominent status in the conversation of design in biology. In his book, Professor Behe described irreducible complexity as: A single system which is composed of several 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. In illustrating his point, Behe used the idea of a simple mousetrap — with its base and spring and holding bar — as an example of an IC system, where the removal of any of these parts would render the mousetrap incapable of its Read More ›

Bobby Conway, of One Minute Apologist, asks Jonathan McLatchie about the concept of irreducible complexity: Note: The term was not coined by Michael Behe, as often supposed or in creationist literature. Rather, here is where it originated: — Some say, of course, that the idea of irreducible complexity (IR) arose from creationist literature (also here.) Seriously, the term has so far been traced to Templets and the explanation of complex patterns (Cambridge U Press, 1986) by theoretical biologist Michael J. Katz. “Irreducible complexity” appears as an index entry in Katz’s book, and set forth as follows: In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but Read More ›

Rockefeller University researchers

found that part of a DNA repair protein known as 53BP1 fits over the phosphorylated part of H2AX “like a glove,” says Kleiner. This interaction helps bring 53BP1 to the site of DNA damage, where it mediates the repair of double-stranded breaks in DNA by encouraging the repair machinery to glue the two ends back together.

New findings shed light on fundamental process of DNA repair

What are the prospects of a DNA self replicating entity surviving with rapid cumulative DNA mutations until it assembles the DNA repair mechanism – by random stochastic processes? Read More ›

Says this German mag, in translation: Farewell to the World Formula The laws of nature are ephemeral Natural laws are in line with established opinion to immutable component of the natural sciences. A physicist and a philosopher now say goodbye to the idea. by Edu Why so and not otherwise? Until recently was Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo thinkers from Canada, expire this idea. But now he opposes her, along with the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger of Harvard Law School. They have a thick book published entitled “The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time”. In it they go from “most interesting feature of the natural world”, namely the fact “that it is what it is Read More ›

Remember that worm, C elegans, that survived the space shuttle blowup? At Evolution News & Views, Casey Luskin tells us, My master’s degree research focused on paleomagnetism and I’ve always been fascinated by the earth’s magnetic field. So naturally I was interested in new research by biologists at the University of Texas, Austin, published in the journal eLife, “Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans.” They explored how the nematode worm C. elegans (a favorite model organism for research) orients itself to the earth’s magnetic field. Many organisms have such an internal compass, which serves them as an aid in purposes like feeding and migration. But this is the first time that the molecular mechanism that’s involved has been Read More ›

Yesterday I watched a re-run of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. There. I said it. I love Star Trek. Notwithstanding the many absurd evolution-based plotlines. In this specific episode, Data referred to a particular characteristic of a newly-developing lifeform as an “emergent property.” I’ve looked into the “emergence” ideas in the past, and the related self-organization hypotheses, and have never been too impressed. But it has been a while, so I thought I’d quickly navigate over to the Wikipedia page on the subject to see what it says. Now I’m a big fan of the general concept behind Wikipedia and it is a very useful tool, if used properly. Yet everyone knows that Wikipedia is a questionable source Read More ›

Further for record* on the case for a designer: EL, here: >> . . . What undermines the “case for design” chiefly, is that there isn’t a case for a designer. If current models are inadequate (and actually all [the?] models are), and indeed we do not yet have good OoL models, that does not in itself make a case for design. It merely makes a case for “our current models are inadequate”. Even if it could be shown that some observed feature has no possible evolutionary pathway, that wouldn’t make the case for design. What might would be some evidence of a design process, or fabrication process, or some observable force that moved, say, strands of DNA into novel Read More ›

Andre just asked me: can you please embed a flowchart of how communication works for [XXXX] … You know the one that goes like this input encoder medium decoder output. I don’t think [XXXX] understands the problems such a system has with accidental processes nor does he understand IC. Please KF. With a little bit of luck a light bulb might go on for him. I don’t know how to embed an image in a comment here at UD, which — for cause — is quite restrictive as a WP blog. Here is my slightly expanded version of the classic diagram used by Shannon (a version of what I usually used in the classroom, sometimes with modulator/demodulator rather than encoder/decoder*): Read More ›

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