tgamble

In another forum Behe came up yet again and I pointed out Ken Miller's page refuteing Behe's claims about mousetraps and IC.

There could be other purposes for the different parts, but the separated parts in themselves cannot be used as a complete and functional mousetrap.

The portions could/might be used independantly but not in a "fully-functional" context, because those portions missing prevent the entire biochemical item from performing.

Comments? Responses?

The only thing I can come up with is that once you have all the parts (useing them for other fuctions) you can build the whole system. But I think I might need a more technical answer. My total knowlege of biochemistry consists of who to spell it. Thanks.

[ June 20, 2002: Message edited by: tgamble ]</p>

tgamble

Another claim is that the orbiting planets are an example of an IC system. If you take away one planet, will the others stop orbiting? I doubt it. He also asks why all planets orbit in the same direction. What this has to do with anything is beyond me.

lpetrich

Who claimed that the Solar System's major bodies form an irreducibly complex system? That is such an absurd opinion that I'd be very disappointed in Michael Behe if he holds that opinion.

It is absurd because the planets affect each other only very weakly, because they are much less massive than the Sun. Thus, the Solar System could easily do without any one of them, even Jupiter.

Also, why the planets orbit in the same direction is simple -- they had condensed out of leftover material from the Sun's formation, which had been in a big disk surrounding the Sun. It would be difficult for one of them to orbit in the "opposite" direction, because that would have produced too much friction and collisional force with the rest of the protoplanetary disk.

tgamble

Just the guy I'm talking to. I doubt Behe thinks the same way.

KeithHarwood

You could point out that within the cell all the components for all the functions are all mixed in together. They aren't manufactured and then kept separate, they are just thrown into the mix. There is nothing to stop different components from different functional systems interacting whenever they come together.

So, if you have ten different components from ten different functional systems and those components come from twenty genes (genes duplicate) and one of those genes has a point mutation that makes its component collect the other components into a novel functional system, bingo, there's your mousetrap.