Taking apart ID's central arguments

[Timothy]

In reading lately to build a rigorously coherent argument, I wanted to examine what parts of ID can be substantiated, and which are no more than high-school debate with poor analogies. I revisited one of the central tenets of ID.

"Behe presents a powerful argument for actual design in the cell. Central to his argument is his notion of irreducible complexity. A system is irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts so that removing even one part completely destroys the system’s function. As an example of irreducible complexity Behe offers the standard mousetrap. A mousetrap consists of a platform, a hammer, a spring, a catch, and a holding bar. Remove any one of these five components, and it is impossible to construct a functional mousetrap."

I've heard this one many times, and as the author no doubt intends didn't give it much deep thought other than "Okay, where's it going in your overall argument?"

But I began to think about it. Is a mousetrap irreducibly complex? And is it made of five parts?

The standard Victor mousetrap does have the five parts listed. But is that it? No. And some of the parts have multiple functions.

Piece of wood -
platform to which other pieces are fastened
anvil against which the hammer strikes
Hammer
Hinge for hammer
Holddowns for hammer hinge (2)
Spring
Holding bar
Hinge/swivel for holding bar
Catch
Hinge for catch
(Bait)

So I get ten pieces (one duplicated) with ten separate functions, without including the bait. If any are removed the mosuetrap doesn't work.

(Someone going to one of Behe's lectures want to take a plastic bag with a disassembled mousetrap and ask him to reconstruct a working mousetrap using just five of the pieces?)

So what does this analogy tell us? Practically nothing. One could build a Rube Goldberg mousetrap with 100 pieces that was irreducibly complex. To what end? And a standard mousetrap is by no means the height of elegance in the realm of mouse-catching. I've got in a drawer at home a plastic mousetrap made of two pieces of plastic. Granted, each piece has multiple functions

1 (Holding cell, bait receptacle, gravity pivot, one half of door hinge, one half of door lock)
2 (Door to cell, one half of door hinge, one half of door lock)

And, even simpler than that is the type of trap that consists of

1 (Incredibly sticky stuff)
2 (Base on which to put incredibly sticky stuff)

So, what does all this mousing about mean? Simply that Behe has intentionally chosen a deceptive analogy, one whose sole purpose is to lull the slow into thinking in terms of one component = one function.

- Timothy

[delphi_ote]

Originally posted by Timothy
So, what does all this mousing about mean? Simply that Behe has intentionally chosen a deceptive analogy, one whose sole purpose is to lull the slow into thinking in terms of one component = one function.

Actually, the evolution of the various technologies in the "irreducibly complex" mouse trap analogy tear down his own argument. If such technologies only existed to catch mice, they never would've been built in the first place. They served other purposes before they were all put together to catch mice. The wood base could be used as a door jam, 1/6 of a box, or the sole of a shoe. The catches and hinges could also be used for boxes and furniture. The steel could be used for fences, chains, fasteners and the like. If the technologies didn't exist already, Henry Maxim would've had to invent capentry, metal working, and manufacturing just to catch mice.

Also, if I take some of the technologies for the mouse trap and put them together a different way (Piece of wood for a stock. Hammer, hinge, catch, swivel, and spring for trigger and ignition mechanism, etc.) and add gunpowder and flint, I can make a gun. Or I could make a clock. Or a radio. Or an astrolabe. Or a toy car. Evolution sometimes operates the same way, using a piece of another functional whole to create something which functions in a whole new way. It's not always easy to see (one structural component of a protein might be incorporated into anther protein with a completely different function, or a gene that serves a different purpose in a different type of cell might be activated by a mutation) but it happens.

"Irreducible complexity" is just a nonsense phrase bandied about by people who don't think very clearly.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by delphi_ote
Actually, the evolution of the various technologies in the "irreducibly complex" mouse trap analogy tear down his own argument. If such technologies only existed to catch mice, they never would've been built in the first place.

To be fair, the definition of "irreducibly complex" has been subjected to some changes over the years, in part because of refutations like this. I have seen attempts made to formalize the notion of "irreducibly complex" in terms of evolutionary precursors. The argument basically runs as follows:

Consider an object. Consider the set of all possible evolutionary precursers of that object (where an "evolutionary precurser" is basically an object that could in a single mutation or single evolutionary step turn into the original object of study). If none of those objects are functional, then the object itself is "irreducibly complex" and cannot have arisen through evolution.

None of the revised definitions have been entirely successful -- for example, if we define "evolutionary precurser" as the set of single-mutation neighbors, then we're excluding a priori the possibility that an organism could have two simultaneous mutations, something we know is possible and indeed likely. I would venture to suggest that the reason that the definitions of "irreducibly complex" haven't worked properly is because the entire concept is, biologically speaking, complete bollocks. But it may have applications in artificial evolution such as genetic algorithms or search methods.

[delphi_ote]

Originally posted by new drkitten
None of the revised definitions have been entirely successful -- for example, if we define "evolutionary precurser" as the set of single-mutation neighbors, then we're excluding a priori the possibility that an organism could have two simultaneous mutations, something we know is possible and indeed likely. I would venture to suggest that the reason that the definitions of "irreducibly complex" haven't worked properly is because the entire concept is, biologically speaking, complete bollocks. But it may have applications in artificial evolution such as genetic algorithms or search methods.

This idea of "single mutations" being point mutations is vastly oversimplifying mechanisms contributing to evolution. There are tandem duplications of genes, crosses, complete genome wide duplications (i.e. "woops I have two whole sets of chromosomes") viral insertions, and the like that could have far more complex implications than one tiny incremental change in an organism.

Take genome wide duplication or tandem duplication for example. The resulting organism now has multiple copies of some of the genes required for its parents' survival. That relieves selective pressure on one copy of the gene. Mutation and drift can happen in one copy freely without having much impact on the organism. These could be copied and copied for generations without having much impact. Just loose genes hanging on for millions of years. Genetic chaff, if you will. Genomes are very messy and create lots of waste, but what is waste today may be part of a gene 1 million years from now.

To imply that this would only allow for an immediate incremental change in the organism is to deny molecular biology altogether.

I've seen tandem and genome wide duplications in sequenced genomes with my own two eyes. Even found evidence for some of them myself with computer algorithms I've written. This isn't a "what if" scenario. Genome wide duplications are known to be major factors in plant evolution.

The "complexity" they're finding is a result of the process being more complicated than they understand. I say once again that "irreducible complexity" is just a nonsense phrase bandied about by people who don't think very clearly. They are literally saying, "I don't understand the mechanisms that produced what I observe, therefore it is impossible to produce this without God. Q.E.D."

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If you haven't already read it, don't miss Howard J. Van Till's analysis of ID:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/perspectives/vantillecoli.pdf

~~ Paul

[delphi_ote]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
If you haven't already read it, don't miss Howard J. Van Till's analysis of ID:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/perspectives/vantillecoli.pdf

~~ Paul

The most hilarious thing to me is Dembski's faulty application of "discrete combinatorial objects." He's just assumed for no reason that these things have independent probabilities. If we can always assume such a thing when we're too lazy to compute the dependent probabilities, we can make anything as "complex" as we want to (under his "definition" of complexity, of course.)

P=P1*P2*P3 ... Pn

Where n is the number of events I can think of, regardless of their actually being dependent or not. As n-> infinitiy P->0, unless P1=P2=P3=...Pn=1. He chose n=3: localization, origination, and configuration. Why not keep going? localization, organization, configuration, placement, distribution, conceptualization, depertinent factorial backweaving, trunculated hypersplining, intersection, recursion, amplification, distortion, phase, wah, tremlo... I guess he got the numbers he wanted when he thought of three things.

This silly and dishonest man needs to have his math PhD taken away (I'll let him keep the philosophy PhD as long as he stops pretending to be a scientist.)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ah, the Great Creationists' Multiplication Error. And note that it's applied to the strawman concept that a protein just fell together from a bunch of amino acids. If you ask an IDer why they think this calculation is relevant, he will say that it's a more generous calculation than the real calculation of how the protein originated, and so evolutionists should be happy with it. Then you ask how he knows this, because, after all, he doesn't know how the protein actually originated, because, like, that would mean he understood the full evolution (or other origin) and he doesn't even believe in the full evolution.

So the multiplication error is being applied to a strawman scenario of the evolution of the biological mechanism. It's crapola all the way down.

~~ Paul

[Mongrel]

Here is a marvellous set of animated GIFs that show the potential evolutionary path of a mousetrap, starting with a bent bit of wire :)

http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html

[Alkatran]

The thing creationists miss about irreducible complexity is the fact that you can add a piece, then remove one of the previously 'irremovable' pieces.

When something becomes unnecessary, evolution gets rid of it.

[Renfield]

Originally posted by Alkatran
The thing creationists miss about irreducible complexity is the fact that you can add a piece, then remove one of the previously 'irremovable' pieces.

When something becomes unnecessary, evolution gets rid of it.

Which nicely explains things like vestigal limbs, much better then special creation ever could. Its all so darn logical, isn't it?

[Soapy Sam]

Its pure Paley.
Why does anyone give it any credibility at all?

Has anyone ever met anybody who believes this nonsense?
I certainly have not.

Monsters from the ID indeed.