Irreducible Complexity

Hey everyone. I am a Christian who enjoys intelligent debates (not smearing) and I am hoping to find some folks to have intelligent debates with on this site.

I saw a video on youtube in which a man by the name of Dr. Kenneth Miller uses a mouse trap in an attempt to disprove irreducible complexity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_2lLG9EZM

To sum the video up, Dr. Miller states that a mouse trap is still useful even if it doesn't have some of it's most essential parts. It just isn't useful for trapping mice. Dr' Miller uses parts of a mouse trap as a tie clip.

Maybe I'm not understanding the argument here but to me, this doesn't disprove irreducible complexity and furthermore, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept.

The eye consists of many different parts, all of which are necessary. The eye minus the retinal nerve, for example, is utterly useless and would, in time, be thrown out by evolution. Remove any other single part of the eye and it is useless.

Hands without thumbs can still clap and a mouth without teeth can still eat but the eye, the reproductive system, the lungs, etc. are all irreducibly complex.

Originally Posted by halfrican1878

Maybe I'm not understanding the argument here but to me, this doesn't disprove irreducible complexity and furthermore, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept.

Yes, it sounds like you're not understanding the argument.

Irreducible complexity is, at its core, a logical fallacy: the argument from ignorance. "I can't see the evolutionary process from A to B, therefore it doesn't exist."

Ken Miller is illustrating one reason why it never works: system functions can change over time. For instance, half an insect wing might not allow flight, but it's still an excellent body heat regulation device... which is what the insect wing actually evolved from.

Another reason why irreducible complexity doesn't work is the "evolutionary scaffold": elements of a system don't only arise over time; sometimes they disappear over time, too. If there's no direct evolutionary path from a system made up of elements A & B to one made up of A, B & C, there can still be one that goes through A, B & D and A, B, C & D before resulting in A, B & C.

But all this is just icing on the cake, because when it comes right down to it, the whole concept of irreducible complexity is based on a logical fallacy.

Originally Posted by halfrican1878

Hands without thumbs can still clap and a mouth without teeth can still eat but the eye, the reproductive system, the lungs, etc. are all irreducibly complex.

No, they're not, actually. The evolutionary sequences for the reproductive system and the lungs are well-known and well-understood.

For instance, half an insect wing might not allow flight, but it's still an excellent body heat regulation device...

Ok, what is the purpose of the eye without the pupil? The lungs without the trachea or vice versa? If something isn't necessary or even beneficial at all to survival, it will not be retained by evolution. It isn't a logical fallacy at all.

By the way, evolution does exist. I just don't think it explains how organisms got to the point that they're at today.

Originally Posted by halfrican1878

Ok, what is the purpose of the eye without the pupil? The lungs without the trachea or vice versa? If something isn't necessary or even beneficial at all to survival, it will not be retained by evolution. It isn't a logical fallacy at all.

The logical fallacy comes from assuming that because you can't see a benefit, that there must not be one.

BTW - do you even know what irreducible complexity means? It doesn't mean you can just chop parts out of a body and it'll continue to function. It's the idea that evolution is actually incapable of giving rise to a trait through gradual changes because one of the links in the chain wouldn't work.

If you actually do care about learning more about this issue, I suggest you check out the articles linked to on this page: Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe on Intelligent Design

Just in case none of these fine answers do it for you, let me try to put it in more layman's terms for you. You mention the complexity of the eye, so let's go with that. The argument assumes that there was a "poof" and "We have a retina!" Evolution doesn't work like that at all. The retina did not simply "pop" into being immediately. An entire eye wasn't built from spare eye parts. Like all of these arguments, they greatly oversimplify the nature of that against which they argue because if they didn't their argument would be idiotic.

Take starfish, for example. Not a species you would generally notice had eyes, but they do. These eyes are, you might be surprised to learn, without retina. They can't see as you and I do, but they can distinguish between light and dark. An eye without a retina is not completely useless after all. Squid from the oegopsida family have no corneal covering over their eyes. An eye without a cornea is not useless. A spookfish has no lens in its eyes. An eye without a lens is not useless. I fact, they compensate for the lack of a lens with mirrored surfaces.

Now let's assume that we had eyes like the spookfish, not like humans. What would this argument look like then? Someone would say, "What if you took away the mirrored surfaces? The eye would be useless!" Yes, it pretty much would. That's why it didn't evolve that way.

These people, as with all evolution deniers, are preying on the fact that evolution and biology are immensely complex and far beyond the comprehension of most people. All you, the individual, get is argument points from both sides. I assure you, if you saw evolution as the whole that scientists see it as, you would understand that all of these arguments fall apart. And what is this argument REALLY about, anyway? Are they arguing against some portion of the theory of evolution because they've studied it and found it to be wrong or did it go against their religious beliefs so they studied it looking for something wrong? In EVERY case these people drew their conclusions AND THEN researched their arguments. If you start with a conclusion, I don't care how smart "sounding" the argument is, it's total garbage. Science starts with a question and comes to a conclusion. Religion starts with a conclusion and turns it into a question answered by the starting conclusion. "How can evolution explain something so complex as the human eye? It can't", for example.