> Russ, you tapped another fine answer on the question of how we decide there is
> a reasonably high probability that one biological system did not evolve from
> simpler systems. You went at it from the backside (figuratively speaking!) and
> did so with your characteristic clarity.
>
> >From the frontside, the situation seems equally clear. As Behe explains in
> DBB, "There is no publication in the scientific literature--in prestigious
> journals, specialty journals, or books--that describes how molecular evolution
> of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have
> occurred." Pg. 185.
>
> In light of that glaring lack, how can it be plausibly maintained that we can
> still "imagine" some "selective advantage" that can explain the gradual rise
> of all this complexity? On what basis do we maintain that it is a reasonable
> supposition? If there is no reason or data to back it up, what drives the the
> sort of recalcitrant intractability that maintains the position? I believe the
> utlimate answer lies in the religious--psychological--philosophical matrix
> that is the sum of the complexity of that system known as man.
Ok time for one of my favorite molecular biologists quotes:
"The intuitive feeling that pure chance could never have achieved the
degree of complexity and ingenuity so ubiquitous in nature has been a
continuing source of scepticism ever since the publication of the Origin
of the Species; and throughout the past century there has always existed a
significant minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to
bring themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims...
Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the
extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent
than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell...To grasp the
reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must
magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in
diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city
like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of
unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we
would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship,
opening and lcosing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in
and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves
in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...
...Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a
reality, the smallest element of which-a functional protein or gene-is
complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very
antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the
intelligence of man?"
-From Evolution: A Theory in Crisis