RE: Irreducible Complexity

Pim van Meurs (entheta@eskimo.com)
Sun, 20 Sep 1998 17:51:47 -0700

Stephen<<Behe does not AFAIK dispute that there are similar components in other
systems. He disputes that these components got put together stepwise by
fully natural processes.>>

He presumes that they could not have gotten there.

[...]

TI>The track record is not promising. Not too long ago Mike and Phil J.
>wondered where the fossil intermediate forms for the whales were
>to be found. As it turned out, they had been buried but now some
>have been unearthed. Haven't heard much about this from either of
>them since then

Stephen: <<Johnson's argument is not that the whale did came from a land mammal but
that Darwinian `blind watchmaker' natural processes are inadequate to do
it.>>

Johnson's personal incredility is of little relevance here.

TI>Well, Michael at least seems to have finally
>accepted the more rational position of common descent.

Behe has AFAIK *always* accepted common descent. He says so in
Darwin's Black Box:

Stephen: <<"For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions
of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common
descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing,
and have no particular reason to doubt it." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black
Box," 1996, pp5-6)>>

and yet he doubts that certain functions could have gotten there through common descent ? So how where these changes implemented ?

TI>It's still progressive creationism but at least that's a step in the right
>direction for establishing any sort of reasonable dialog on the subject.

Stephen: <<Not really. Darwinists rule out "progressive creationism" (and even theistic
evolution for that matter). Julian Huxley, a co-founder of Neo-Darwinism,
said that any "idea of God as the creator of organisms" was not even in
"the sphere of rational discussion":>>

Indeed, within science there is no such reason to incorporate an unprovable, invisible Creator.