Thread: Irreducible Complexity

Plenty here are no doubt familiar with Darwin's quote from Origin of Species: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."

What initially troubled Mr. Darwin was the human eye. Of what benefit is a partial eye to a creature? Of course, Darwin apparently "reconciled" this with himself, basically concluding that any amount of vision, no matter how slight, would be of particular advantage to any creature who otherwise did not possess it. Therefore, he would argue that in small increments a species could evolve from blindness to sight. (Can't help but smile at the atheist's version of "I once was blind but now I see")

Well, I'm sure we all see a tremendous amount of absurdity here. Whether we are discussing eyes, wings, or whatever, the idea that evolution gradually and successfully produced these things across a myriad of species (as the vast majority simultaneously became extinct, mind you) is simply preposterous.

But what I am looking for here is a particular atheist argument and I was wondering if anyone has seen it expounded. I've read Dawkins and some of his peers as they try to defend this idea that everything in nature can indeed be reduced to incremental evolution. However, I can't seem to find any atheist explain just how such a thing as an eye or wing as we know it today would ever have begun to develop without any concluded purpose? The closest I can find is Dawkins suggesting that partial wings may have evolved as an advantage to creatures falling out of trees. Is that really it? Is that the best the Godless community can imagine?

Surely there is something more to their argument as this subject has been debated ad nauseam. Can anyone help me graduate to the next level of atheistic rebuttal?

ID proponents use the mousetrap analogy to argue that the components of a system could not be assembled without a purpose in mind. But evolutionists argue that as the components are being assembled, they are being used for different things, until its final purpose is realized that maximizes survivability. For example, they say that the mousetrap could be used as a paperweight or tie clip before it is used as a mousetrap.

In terms of speciation, the flying squirrel's flap under his arms that allow him to glide would be an example of the missing link. also, the sea lion's legs that also function as swimming fins.

Attempting to debate evolutionists from science is an uphill battle, with many academic casualties falling by the wayside. They need to be taken to task on their philosophical presuppositions first.

-----Added 10/1/2009 at 10:21:45 EST-----

Basically, evolutionists own the monopoly on the sciences. The terminology is their terminology and the method is their method. As a science, their findings may actually make sense and could be argued rationally. But even if evolution were to be proved to be true, it doesn't displace God's existence one bit. That question does not belong to science and is out of science reach to explain.

Science offers the best model of how things work, according to inductive experiments. it can only measure what it is able to measure: natural occurrences.

But God and religion is not natural. This realm belongs to theology, philosophy, and the human experience, and on this turf must the atheist meet to do battle.

C.S. Lewis' Miracles, probably still one of the best apologetic treatments of this subject.

I think that Dawkins's "Climbing Mount Improbable" tries to suggest possible "evolutionary pathways" to these things. I haven't read it myself. See online reviews by creationists and evolutionists.

In the absence of fossils for an evolutionary pathway, the next best thing for the evolutionist is to try to show the possibility or plausiblity of a pathway.


If a creationist or an IDer has not written a full orbed rebuttal to the above Dawkins book they should, even although they may think Dawkins's attempts to be so insubstantial that they don't need a rebuttal.

Macro-evolution (Darwinism) must be shown to be the insubstantial lie it is. Otherwise Darwinists will continue peddaling their highly effective version of the emperor's new clothes.

Originally Posted by steadfast7

ID proponents use the mousetrap analogy to argue that the components of a system could not be assembled without a purpose in mind. But evolutionists argue that as the components are being assembled, they are being used for different things, until its final purpose is realized that maximizes survivability. For example, they say that the mousetrap could be used as a paperweight or tie clip before it is used as a mousetrap.

Thanks for the input, Dennis.

I understand the rhetoric but don't see scientists coughing up any practical application. Where has the attempt been to share some actual substance on this? Let's take a peek at what the atheist must answer for--say in the case of an eye:

Anterior Chamber
The space between the cornea and iris filled with Aqueous Humor.
Aqueous Humor
A water like fluid, produced by the ciliary body, it fills the front of the eye between the lens and cornea and provides the cornea and lens with oxygen and nutrients. It drains back into the blood stream through the canals of schlemm.
Brain
The brain is where the electrical signals sent from our eyes are processed into vision. Damage to the brain can lead to vision loss if the visual cortex or optic pathways are damaged. The majority of nerve fibers in the optic tract connect to the LGN. Several nerve fibers leave the optic tract before the LGN to connect to sub cortical structures through out the brain. These parts of the brain regulate things like: eye and head movements, pupillary light reflex - (pupil size), and circadian rhythms - (light/dark cycle). Damage to these parts of the brain often leads to vision disorders too.
Canals of Schlemm
These canals are located around the perimeter of the iris. They allow aqueous fluid to drain back into the blood stream. The Trabecular Meshwork along with the Canals of Schlemm regulate the eyes internal pressure. In the eye disease called glaucoma, these canals become blocked leading to increased pressure. The increased pressure, from this condition, destroys the optic nerve.
Choroid
The choroid is a layer of blood vessels between the retina and sclera; it supplies blood to the retina. In the disease called Macular Degeneration, abnormal blood vessels grow into the space between the retina and choroid damaging the macula.
Ciliary Body
This is where the Aqueous Humor is produced.
Ciliary Muscle
The eye can bring the fine print in a phone book into focus, or focus in on the moon over ¼ million miles away. The ciliary muscle changes the shape of the lens - (this is called accommodation). It relaxes to flatten the lens for distance vision; for close work it contracts rounding out the lens. Everyone will develop an eye condition called presbyopia. As we age, the ciliary muscle and crystalline lens lose their elasticity. This is why most people need reading glasses by their 40's.
Conjunctiva
The conjunctiva is a thin, clear membrane covering the front of the eye and inner eyelids. Cells in this lining produce mucous that helps to lubricate the eye. This is the eyes first layer of protection against infection. Inflammation of this membrane is called conjunctivitis, or pink eye.
Cornea
The cornea is a clear, dome-shaped surface that covers the front of the eye. It is the first and most powerful lens in the eye's optical system. To keep it transparent the cornea contains no blood vessels. Tears that flow over it and aqueous humor in the chamber behind it keep it nourished. When you hear of eye banks and eye transplants, it is the cornea that is being replaced. The cornea can be damaged from: accidents, infections, and genetic defects.
Crystalline Lens
The eye's crystalline lens works like the adjustable lens in a camera. Positioned just behind the cornea; it is responsible for keeping images in focus on the retina. It is adjustable for distance and close work. A cataract is the lens clouding up. This happens to most people as they age. A few people are even born with cataracts. Modern surgery has all but eliminated cataracts as a cause of blindness in the developed world.
Eyeball
The eye is like a little video camera measuring about 1 inch or 2.5 cm. in diameter. If someone's eyeball is larger then this, they will be nearsighted (myopic); if it is smaller then this, they will be farsighted (hyperopic). Having two eyes gives us binocular vision - (depth perception). This is due to the fusing of both images in the visual cortex.
Eyelashes and Eyebrows
These specialized hairs protect the eyes from particles that may injure them. They form a screen to keep dust and insects out. Anything touching them triggers the eyelids to blink.
Eyelids
Our eyelids protect and lubricate our eyes. Small oil-producing glands line the inner edge of our eyelids. These oils mix with tears when we blink, keeping the eye moist and clean.
Eye Socket
The orbit or eye socket is a cone-shaped bony cavity that protects the eye. The socket is padded with fatty tissue that allows the eye to move easily.
Fovea - (small pit)
The fovea is an indentation in the center of the macula. Its diameter is only 1.5 mm or about 1/16 inch. This small part of our retina is responsible for our highest visual acuity. It is the center of our central vision.
Lacrimal Gland - (Tear Duct)
This gland continually releases tears and other protective fluids onto the surface of the eye. It lubricates and keeps the cornea from becoming dehydrated.
Lacrimal Sac
The lacrimal sac is a tiny pump that drains tears and other debris from the eye. The fluids flow down the nasolacrimal duct into the nose where they help keep the nasal linings moist. This is why your nose runs when you cry.
Lateral Geniculate Nucleus - (LGN)
This part of the brain acts as a relay station; it decodes visual information from the optic tract before sending it to the visual cortex for final processing.
Lens Sack or Capsule
During modern cataract surgery the outer membrane of the lens is left in place. The artificial intraocular lens is placed in this sack.
Iris
This is the colored part of the eye: brown, green, blue, etc. It is a ring of muscle fibers located behind the cornea and in front of the lens. It contracts and expands, opening and closing the pupil, in response to the brightness of surrounding light. Just as the aperture in a camera protects the film from over exposure, the iris of the eye helps protect the sensitive retina.
Macula - (yellow spot)
This part of the retina is the most sensitive. Its diameter is only 7 mm or about 1/4 inch. It is responsible for our central, or reading vision. This part of the retina gives us 20/20 vision. Without the macula, you would be blind - Legally Blind that is. People with eye diseases like Macular Degeneration have vision from 20/200 to 20/800.
Optic Chiasm
This is the first part of the brain to receive visual input. Each eye takes a slightly different picture of the world. At the optic chiasm each picture is divided in half. The outer left and right halves continue back toward the visual cortex. The inner left and right halves cross over to the other side of the brain then continue back toward the visual cortex. See Drawing of optic pathways.
Optic Disk
The optic disk is the spot on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye. There are no sensory cells here, creating a blind spot. Each eye covers for the blind spot of the other eye and the brain fills in the missing information.
Optic Nerve
Each optic nerve has about 1.2 million nerve fibers. This is the cable connecting the eye to the brain.
Optic Tract
The nerves that connect the optic chiasm to the LGN are called the optic tract. If one of these tracts is damaged, vision will be lost in one side of each eye.
Orbital Muscles
Six muscles are in charge of eye movement. Four of these move the eye up, down, left and right. The other two control the twisting motion of the eye when we tilt our head. Defects in these muscles and the nerves that control them lead to conditions like Nystagmus and Amblyopia (Lazy Eye).
Photoreceptor Cells
The retina is composed of two types of photoreceptor cells. When light falls on one of these cells, it causes a chemical reaction that sends an electrical signal to the brain.
Cone cells give us our detailed color daytime vision. There are 6 million of them in each human eye. Most of them are located in the central retina - macula fovea area. There are three types of cone cells: one sensitive to red light, another to green light, and the third sensitive to blue light.
Rod cells are about 500 times more sensitive to light then cone cells; they give us our dim light or night vision. They are also more sensitive to motion then cone cells. There are 120 million rod cells in the human eye. Most rod cells are located in our peripheral or side vision.
Posterior Chamber
The space between the iris and the front of the lens filled with Aqueous Humor.
Pupil
The pupil is the hole in the center of the iris that light passes through. The iris muscles control its size.
Retina
The retina is the film of the eye. It converts light rays into electrical signals and sends them to the brain through the optic nerve. The sides of the retina are responsible for our peripheral vision. The center area, called the macula, is used for our fine central vision and color vision. The retina is where most the problems leading to vision loss Occur. Three of the leading causes of blindness, from retina damage, are Retinitis Pigmentosa, Macular Degeneration and Diabetic Retinopathy.
Retinal Blood Vessels
A doctor can see the blood vessels that supply the retina when he looks into your eyes. These vessels are in the choroid just beneath the retina. Abnormal blood vessel growth and leaking blood vessels are the cause of vision loss in eye conditions like, Diabetic Retinopathy, ROP, and Macular Degeneration.
Retinal Pigment Epithelium - (RPE)
The RPE is a layer of cells between the retina and choroid. The inside of a camera is panted black to absorb scattered and reflected light. The black pigment known as melanin in the RPE dose the same job for the eye. The RPE gets rid of waste products produced by the photoreceptor cells. As we age, the RPE can sometimes lose its ability to process this waste. Deposits of this waste, called drusen, can distort and damage the retina leading to an eye condition called dry macular degeneration.
Sclera
The sclera is the white, tough wall of the eye. It along with internal fluid pressure keeps the eyes shape and protects its delicate internal parts.
Uvea
The uvea is the middle Vascular layer of the eye. It is made up of three parts: the iris, ciliary body and chorid. Uveitis is the inflammation (or swelling) of these parts of the eye.
Visual Axis
The Visual Axis is an imaginary line drawn through the center of the pupil to the center of the Fovea. The orbital muscles keep the visual axis of both eyes aligned on the center of what you are looking at (fixation point). An eye condition called Strabismus - (misaligned eyes) results when the orbital muscles fail to keep the eyes in alignment. Any damage to eye structures along this axis leads to severe vision loss.
Visual Cortex
The part of the brain that processes and combines visual information from both eyes and converts it into sight. Damage to the visual cortex results in a condition called cortical blindness.
Visual Fields
The retina of each eye has two sections the nasal retina - (nose side) and temporal retina - (ear side). For example: with your right eye, you see the right half of the world with your nasal retina; you see the left half of the world with your temporal retina. The picture your eye takes is flipped left for right and upside down; its up to the brain to sort things out.
Vitreous Cavity
The space between the lens and retina filled with the gel like Vitreous Humor.
Vitreous Humor
The vitreous humor is a jelly like liquid that fills most of the eye (from the lens back). As we age it changes from a gel to a liquid and gradually shrinks separating from the retina. This is when people start seeing floaters, dark specs in their vision. This is a normal sign of aging, but in a few cases the retina can become detached as the vitreous separates.
Zonules
Zonules are hundreds of string like fibers that hold the lens suspended in position and enable it to change shape for near or distant vision.

We are well beyond mousetraps here (and keep in mind we are only currently dealing with ONE organ). If evolutionary propaganda is going to be assumed as fact and taught in our schools, someone surely has stood up and attempted to explain how something like the human eye came into being so perfectly and intricately without any preconceived purpose whatsoever.

In terms of speciation, the flying squirrel's flap under his arms that allow him to glide would be an example of the missing link. also, the sea lion's legs that also function as swimming fins.

I've heard this as well. Does the argument go any deeper? Squirrels are mammals, for crying out loud. Yet even if we pretend, at what point does the flying squirrel evolve into a creature capable of taking off from the ground and coming down as it pleases? That last step in the process demands a massive explanation because, again, it had no purpose to do so in the first place.

Attempting to debate evolutionists from science is an uphill battle, with many academic casualties falling by the wayside. They need to be taken to task on their philosophical presuppositions first.

I agree that their presuppositions are lacking. We want cranes afterall, not skyhooks. And of course we should have no qualms with science itself. But I seem to be having a hard time finding an evolutionist mind who can even explain his own findings or convictions without sweeping half the required evidence under the rug. But then again, maybe I'm just not that well read. Hence the OP...

-----Added 10/1/2009 at 09:14:05 EST-----

Originally Posted by Richard Tallach

I think that Dawkins's "Climbing Mount Improbable" tries to suggest possible "evolutionary pathways" to these things.

I've read it. I left feeling as if Dawkins was sort of entry material for atheism. But if he is as good as it gets, you are right, someone needs to put him in his place with a solid rebuttal. The arguments are incredibly lacking and ultimately just based on a shallow contempt for God. And yes, he skirts the substance of my question altogether.

From what I understand though, Dawkins refuses dialogue with creationists. Highly suspect for an author of his rank.

I hear that Dawkins is an embarrassment to many atheist philosophers. God delusion is one big straw man argument, Alister McGrath did a rebuttal called the Dawkins Delusion - love the title!

Haven't read it but apparently one atheist work that is actually worth the read is Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity by John W. Loftus. It is respected by many Christian apologists, including Norm Geisler.

Vox Day does a witty and intelligent response to Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris in his book, the Irrational Atheist. Free ebook download here. enjoy!

The single most improbable event that is for any logical mind impossible is origin of life itself. In order to get evolution to start in the first place, it takes a single celled organism with self-replication to exist. Given that it takes approximately 200 amino acids, which can either be "left" or "right" oriented, and the exact combination has to occur (the exact 200 "correct" orientations) for a cell to be formed, then having that occur would require 2 to the 200 possible permutations with a single correct outcome (flipping a coin 200 times and get "heads" all 200 times). The number is beyond comprehension: 2 raised to the 200 is about 1 times 10 to the 60 (a 1 with 60 zeros behind it). The total number of atoms in the earth is only 9 times 10 to the 49.

What that means is that it is beyond credible that life could start in a mere trillion years (and that is way more than the 4 or 5 billion that is the currant estimate of age for the earth). It is more than the currant estimate for the age of the universe.

It just isn't going to happen by natural mechanical means.

-----Added 10/2/2009 at 12:14:18 EST-----

Originally Posted by steadfast7

I hear that Dawkins is an embarrassment to many atheist philosophers. God delusion is one big straw man argument, Alister McGrath did a rebuttal called the Dawkins Delusion - love the title!

Haven't read it but apparently one atheist work that is actually worth the read is Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity by John W. Loftus. It is respected by many Christian apologists, including Norm Geisler.

Vox Day does a witty and intelligent response to Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris in his book, the Irrational Atheist. Free ebook download here. enjoy!

Another excellent book that refutes Dawkins is "The Devil's Delusion" by David Berlinski. He is an agnostic Jew, but he is somewhat funny, and pokes so many holes in Dawkins & company (the scientific atheist community) that it becomes a good read for the fun of it. Like I said, he isn't a Christian, but he takes the scientific community to task for their pontification and blind faith in their reasoning that it becomes a easy to see not only the fallacies of their logic, but the blindness of their thinking.

FWIW, I used to almost completely dismiss "evidential" apologetics, in favor of "presuppositional" apologetics...however, very recently, I discovered that an older gentleman in our church, lost his wife to death at a young age (36) and that didn't bring him to faith; however, when he was 39, he was shown that Evolution couldn't be true, and confessed Christ, and has been walking with him almost 40 years since! Alternately, a well-known "Christian" leader at work has, just this week, renounced his faith after coming to believe in Evolution.

May God bless all ways of conveying His truth!

Brian

I saw a gentleman debate Michael Behe on irreducible complexity on a TV show once and I can't remember his name. He did a good job from the Atheist position although he was so intellectually deep in biology that I couldn't determine if he was correct or full of it.

The problem with irreducible complexity is that once intelligent design is inferred, the scientific community will hear nothing more, and the whole discussion is reduced to a non-science.

On the issue of the improbability of life, atheists argue that given the near infinite nature of possibilities in general, it is no longer improbable that some form of order and structure should appear within that random system. For example, the snowflake appears to be meticulously crafted, but is simply ice crystals behaving in a random fashion, in accordance with their physical properties. Furthermore, they argue that God must be even more improbable than his creation.

I still think that the atheist needs to be confronted philosophically and presuppositionally before the evidence can make any sense. But in the end, a mix of the methods is probably correct.

Am I to understand they base their own explanation on the sheer number of hypothetical possibilities in order to reduce the unliklihood of their explanation to nil or close to it, and then at the same time claim God is highly improbable because of said innumerable impossibilities.

Hypocrisy at its height.

Originally Posted by Zenas

Am I to understand they base their own explanation on the sheer number of hypothetical possibilities in order to reduce the unliklihood of their explanation to nil or close to it, and then at the same time claim God is highly improbable because of said innumerable impossibilities.

Hypocrisy at its height.

I think it was Kai Nielsen that came up with the possibilities thing, and Dawkins et al that made atheists look stupid.

The hypocrisy is certainly there though. Much like the typical atheist mantra:

1. Religion creates war and terror
2. Atheists like Stalin, Mao did not do their deeds in the name of religion
3. By the way, Hitler was a Catholic.