From Clete:http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1155935#post1155935
If any one part of a bat's sonar system is missing the whole damn thing is worthless and the bat runs slap-bang into every tree it gets near and is completely unable to feed itself.
If a single tiny little piece of a bacterial flagellum isn't present performing its function flawlessly, the bacterium is immobilized and the flagellum is a big fat waste of biological resources which took 30 interacting proteins to build and 20 more to help assemble every one of which was essential to the task.
If any minute part of the blood pressure regulatory system in the head of a giraffe stops functioning all the blood vessels in the giraffe's head go POP the first time it bends over to take a drink.
THIS IS WHY THEY CALL THE SYSTEMS IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX!!!!
It means that the systems are complex (in some cases wildly so) but are at the same time as simple as they can possibly be and still function AT ALL.
If a biological system does not function then it gives no survival advantage to the organism and thus no way for natural selection to preserve the non-functioning system. A flagellum that is only partly there is totally invisible to natural selection and thus evolution cannot account for any such irreducibly complex biological system. It's not that it hasn't explained it YET, it's that it CANNOT explain it - period. The whole nature of evolutionary theory would actual predict that no such system exists, which is a point that Darwin spent some considerable amount of time talking about and even went so far as to say that if any such system where found in nature that it would falsify his theory. The problem is that modern science simply tweaks whatever part of either the evidence or the theory it needs to tweak in order for the problem to go away and have thus turned Evolution into an unfalsifiable religion instead of science.
"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." (Charles Darwin, 1872, p170)
Resting in Him,
Clete
NO!!!!!Johnny said:
If any one part of a bat's sonar system is missing the whole damn thing is worthless and the bat runs slap-bang into every tree it gets near and is completely unable to feed itself.
If a single tiny little piece of a bacterial flagellum isn't present performing its function flawlessly, the bacterium is immobilized and the flagellum is a big fat waste of biological resources which took 30 interacting proteins to build and 20 more to help assemble every one of which was essential to the task.
If any minute part of the blood pressure regulatory system in the head of a giraffe stops functioning all the blood vessels in the giraffe's head go POP the first time it bends over to take a drink.
THIS IS WHY THEY CALL THE SYSTEMS IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX!!!!
It means that the systems are complex (in some cases wildly so) but are at the same time as simple as they can possibly be and still function AT ALL.
If a biological system does not function then it gives no survival advantage to the organism and thus no way for natural selection to preserve the non-functioning system. A flagellum that is only partly there is totally invisible to natural selection and thus evolution cannot account for any such irreducibly complex biological system. It's not that it hasn't explained it YET, it's that it CANNOT explain it - period. The whole nature of evolutionary theory would actual predict that no such system exists, which is a point that Darwin spent some considerable amount of time talking about and even went so far as to say that if any such system where found in nature that it would falsify his theory. The problem is that modern science simply tweaks whatever part of either the evidence or the theory it needs to tweak in order for the problem to go away and have thus turned Evolution into an unfalsifiable religion instead of science.
"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." (Charles Darwin, 1872, p170)
Resting in Him,
Clete
