How do Irreducibly Complex Structures Evolve? Part One

David Horton puts on a show in an effort to convince the reader that he is answering a question posed by one of his readers. He is not. Instead we see an obfuscation tactic frequently in evidence when critics confront the issue of irreducible complexity. Comments follow the referenced URL.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/keeping-it-simple_b_21313.html

"Two great questions about evolution in recent posts in response to my evolution blogs, and here is the second one. One of my readers asks 'How does an irreducibly complex structure appear in the first place? It can't evolve up from from something simple, right? How does a functioning whole come into being from parts?

Aren't even the simplest building blocks complex structures? How did the first one come into being?'

This is another one of those cases where you read something and a light bulb goes off and you think, ah, that's the problem, that's the reason for the lack of comprehension. And then you think, yes, and this lack of comprehension is why children all over the world are being taught 'intelligent design' in the year 2006, a concept so simple minded that it was discredited 150 years ago."

[Bradford]: This is the first indication that something is seriously amiss in this analysis. Behe, who coined the phrase irreducible complexity, applied it to different biomolecular complexes that were not even dreamed of 150 years ago. Darwin and his contemporaries had no clue as to the make up of cells to say nothing of proteins and their encoding genes. Irreducible complexity is a descriptive term describing biochemical systems consisting of multiple proteins. Let's continue and find the real simple mindedness on display in this paper.

"Is the human body 'complex'? You betcha (but no more 'complex' than the bodies of gorillas and chimps and whales and sheep and bears and kangaroos and mice, and arguably less complex, in some ways, than the bodies of birds and snakes and fish). Did the 'complex' bodies of humans (and all other modern animal species) evolve directly from the 'primeval slime'? Of course not. Did they evolve from it indirectly over a long period of time? Of course."

[Bradford]: We are treated to the standard argument by assertion. Horton is holding a gun filled with blanks. Noone is contending that animals evolved from primeval slime. But Horton does not treat us to an explanation as to how a single cell did evolve in a prebiotic environment. Not surprising. Horton doesn't have a clue. To be fair neither does anyone else. But then why are we told that indirect evolution of course occurred. Horton is hoping for simple minded readers who do not pose questions he cannot answer.

"One big problem is the word 'complex'. Evolution doesn't work to make bodies more complex but more functional. Sometimes this might result in increased complexity, sometimes in increased simplicity. If by complexity people mean bodies with a lot of different organs then a human body is less complex than sheep or cattle which have very complex 'stomachs' or rabbits which have a functional caecum where we only have the remains of a non-functioning reduced caecum (an appendix). Birds have arms modified for flight, and bones modified to be light, fish have swim bladders instead of lungs, and so on. Fish can also analyse pressure variations in water, and some can analyse electrical signals, bats can send and receive very high frequency sounds in a process like radar, snakes can taste the air and receive vibrations through the ground, we can't do any of that stuff. The complexity concept makes no sense at all."

[Bradford]: What drivel. The author is saying nothing that has any relevance to points made by Behe or the questions posed by the reader. Evolutionists like to make the point that evolution has no direction. This fits in with their no intelligent causality position. But in fact the natural history of life on earth (the only planet known to have life) would entail a history of increasing complexity from organic chemicals to unicelluar organisms to eukaryotic organisms. Any legitimate model should explain events that actually took place. In this case increasing complexity would be an observable phenomenon in need of explaining. It makes no sense only to ideologically blinded Darwinists.