Re:Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design?
by PebblesRox on Monday December 07, 2009 @03:03PM
(#981986)
I've heard claims that Behe's idea of irreducible complexity has been refuted. Does anyone know more about this?
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Re:Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design?
by mbrubeck on Monday December 07, 2009 @03:09PM
(#982003)
One counter-argument I've heard is the idea of "scaffolding": The system may have had other supporting parts in earlier stages of evolution; those parts have since disappeared. What's left behind is "irreducible" since you can't take anything away and still have a working system. But that doesn't refute evolutionary theories, because evolution itself is not purely additive. You might need to add parts (not just "reduce" them) to get from the current state to an earlier state.
Re:Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design?
by PebblesRox on Monday December 07, 2009 @03:18PM
(#982028)
This website addresses the scaffolding idea, but it isn't very well written. Do you know of any better resources? http://www.ccrnp.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/behe/
Re:Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design?
by PebblesRox on Monday December 07, 2009 @03:11PM
(#982013)
Do you know of any specific examples?
Re:Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design?
by mbrubeck on Monday December 07, 2009 @03:28PM
(#982060)
This page claims to give some examples: http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/evolve_irreducib...
However, since this forum is populated mostly by computer programmers and entrepreneurs (including myself) rather than biologists, I find it's not a particularly advantageous place for discussing such topics. I probably shouldn't have waded into this thread to begin with. Please forgive me if I flag and move on.