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To: Torie
Do I believe there is any empirical evidence for it that is testable by the scientific method? No.

Charles Darwin disagreed. He said, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Intelligent Design Theory can be tested by demonstrating that irreducible complexity exists in nature.

57 posted on 11/01/2005 7:34:19 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Intelligent Design Theory can be tested by demonstrating that irreducible complexity exists in nature.

If you can do that, you get the Nobel prize, and will be deemed the second coming of Sir Isaac Newton.

60 posted on 11/01/2005 7:36:35 PM PST by Torie
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To: Tailgunner Joe
I couldn't argue irreducible complexity better than this:

"The IC (irreducible complexity) argument also assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially. But something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary. For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the IC clotting cascade was later found to be absent in whales, demonstrating that it isn't essential for a clotting system. Many purported IC structures can be found in other organisms as simpler systems that utilize fewer parts. These systems may have had even simpler precursors that are now extinct.

Perhaps most importantly, potentially viable evolutionary pathways have been proposed for allegedly irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the immune system and the flagellum, which were the three examples Behe used. Even his example of a mousetrap was shown to be reducible by John H. McDonald. If IC is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution, it should not be possible to conceive of such pathways—Behe has remarked that such plausible pathways would defeat his argument.

Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin have shown that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular systems actually exhibit is redundant complexity — a kind of complexity that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions results in his taking snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures and processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in which those features are naturally embedded and an over-reliance of overly-simplistic metaphors such as his mousetrap. In addition, it has been claimed that computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it is possible for irreducible complexity to evolve naturally.
63 posted on 11/01/2005 7:39:20 PM PST by Roots (www.GOPatUCR.com - College Republicans at the University of California, Riverside)
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