Reasonable minds and irreducible complexity

In my ongoing quest to discover truth wherever it may be found, specifically relating to the ID vs. Darwin debate and more specifically related to Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, I have discovered more information than I can either take in or understand. But, I am becoming more educated and hopefully a better thinker in the process.

So, for your consideration, here is a critique of irreducible complexity by someone who writes under the pseudonym Mike Gene (clever, eh?) titled Irreducible Complexity ReVisited . Mike reveals the flaws of IC, but points out what IC does in fact give us. Here is his conclusion, which sums his thoughts up nicely:

Hordes of IC critics have appeared since Behe published his book. A few books, many review papers, dozens of web pages and thousands of forum messages have dissected Behe’s concept in every way imaginable. Yet despite all this effort, the non-teleological payoff has been meager. They have successfully prevented IC from being used as a proof of the impossibility of evolution. But that’s about as far as they have gotten. Because of IC, they have lost the most powerful Darwinian mechanism (change along a single axis) and must appeal to indirect explanations, two of which likewise fail to explain the origin of IC, leaving only one mechanism which turns out to be an appeal to raw chance. For example, because of IC analyses, we now know that the bacterial flagellum is a sophisticated molecular machine without any fingerprint of it having a Darwinian origin. Those who still insist on Darwinian explanations for the origin of such a system are drawing upon their expectations that all biotic features have a Darwinian origin. They are free to expect this, but they err in demanding others to think as they do.

In my reading, the one thing that is the most clear is that reasonable minds can disagree.

And, speaking of reasonable minds, Steve Petermann recently posted in Telic Thoughts this piece about Kurt Gödel and the rationality of faith.

Finally, in The ID Report, Denyse O’Leary has a post, Non-materialist neuroscience: “Mind does really matter,” which is worth perusing.

Enjoy!

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