DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

Systems failing at their current purpose as a consequence of removal of a part is not irreducible complexity.  Systems degrading by removal of a single part is a counter-example to the contention that the system is irreducibly complex.

You don't even understand what irreducible complexity is, much less what it would take to establish that something is irreducibly complex.

Wrong.  My definition matches the definition at the website below:

http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~rogers/evi...index.html

All you've shown is that Behe doesn't understand irreducible complexity either. The ambiguity inherent in his definition, and an appropriate disambiguation of that ambiguity reveals that Behe's definition here is simply wrong, a fact which has been pointed out by many people. All you are showing is that you don't know what you're talking about and are relying on representations that have already been shown to be in error.

I'll point out to you the following statements from your own source.

First, "As Darwin went on to point out, a single function may be served by several organs, and a single organ may have several functions at the same time or at different times. This allows selection to construct organs that exhibit irreducible complexity." This is simply bollocks. The whole point of the concept of irreducible complexity is that such systems cannot be approached through stepwise selection. To say that a system which can be approached through stepwise reflection is irreducibly complex is oxymoronic because then it is not either irreducible, nor does it align with the way the concept of irreducible complexity has been used by design theorists to attempt to prove the necessity of design. Behe, your source, and design proponents are simply being inconsistent in their terms and arguments.

And finally, the following:

The idea has been used many times in the years since Darwin, especially with reference to the vertebrate eye. The first person to use the eye in this context seems to have been Charles Pritchard, the schoolmaster who taught mathematics and botany to Darwin's sons. (In later years, Pritchard went on to a distinguished career in astronomy.) Pritchard put the argument like this:

I cannot understand how, by any series of accidental variations, so complicated a structure as the eye could have been successively improved. The chances of any accidental variation in such an instrument being an improvement are small indeed. Suppose, for instance, one of the surfaces of the crystalline lens of the eye of a creature, possessing a crystalline and a cornea, to be accidentally altered, then I say, that unless the form of the other surface is simultaneously altered, in one only way out of the millions of possible ways, the eye would not be optically improved. An alteration also in the two surfaces of the crystalline lens, whether accidental or otherwise, would involve a definite alteration the the form of the cornea, or in the distance of its surface from the centre of the crystalline lens, in order that the eye may be optically better. All these alterations must be simultaneous and definite in amount, and these definite amounts must coexist in obedience to an extremely complicated law. To my apprehansion then, that so complex an instrument as an eye should undergo a succession of millions of improvements, by means of a succession of millions of accidental alterations, is not less improbable, than if all the letters of the "Origin of Species" were placed in a box, and on being shaken and poured out millions on millions of times, they should at last come out together in the order in which they occur in that fascinating and, in general, highly philosophical work. (Pritchard, Charles. 1866. The Continuity of the Schemes of Nature and Revelation, p 33.)

Although Pritchard did not use the term, he is claiming here that eyes are irreducibly complex and therefore cannot evolve by natural selection.

This argument is less persuasive than it may seem at first. First, it is not all that hard to imagine how eyes might have evolved by natural selection. On pp pp 39-42 of my book, The Evidence for Evolution, I describe a sequence of small, individually-adaptive steps, which leads from a simple eyespot to the complex, camera-like, vertebrate eye. The ideas there are not mine, but go back to Darwin. Although this argument shows that eyes might plausibly evolve, it does not show that they actually did evolve. This, however, is a hypothesis that can be tested using modern evidence on the molecular constituents of eyes (see pp 42-48 of my book). This evidence supports the view that eyes evolved by natural selection.

This history illustrates an important general point. Pritchard was wrong to claim (in effect) that eyes are irreducibly complex. Yet this claim was persuasive to many people for over a century, until modern molecular data showed that Darwin had been right all along. In the end, it turned out that Pritchard's conviction rested on nothing more than a failure of imagination.

Is there a more reliable way to use the principle of irreducible complexity? The answer seems to be no. All such arguments begin with the claim that some organ is irreducibly complex. Such claims are inevitably justified by arguing, as Pritchard did, that change in any single component of the system is bound to be harmful. Yet the example of the eye shows that this is not enough. Such systems can evolve by natural selection. There is no reason to find such an argument convincing, even when no one can imagine the sequence of evolutionary steps involved.

It is conceivable that irreducible complexity is a real phenomenon--that there do exist organs that cannot evolve by small, individually-adaptive steps. The trouble is that we have no way to recognize them. It is not enough to show that the organ cannot function with one or more parts removed. For this reason, there is no valid way to employ the argument from irreducible complexity.

So, even if your claimed definition of irreducible complexity were valid (it's not), it would be useless as an argument for intelligent design because by defining it as you, Behe, and the quoted author have defined it, irreducible complexity doesn't show that a system could not have evolved through natural means, and even more, you can't even show that a system is irreducibly complex in that sense to begin with. So the definition you have provided fails in not just one, but two ways. You've been successfully cock-blocked!

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@CDF

Still waiting on an answer to this.

Based on the fossil record, it does not appear that there were small changes adding to huge changes for humans or animals.  The intermediates do not exist.  See the article I posted in a prior post above.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/