>Donald: <<Please explain. Why do you say this?>>
>For instance lungs appear to not have started off as such.
Donald: <<I previous post you have told me we know very little about lungs because
they aren't preserved as fossils. Now you know that they started as
something else and then someone got the great idea of breathing, and so
used them for this......>>
Please read my remarks again. I have shown your assumption to be dangerous, not need to be childish about it.
Dona;d: <<It doesn't make any difference however, because they had to have been lungs
for a while before being in their present state, and what they started as
has no significance.>>
Nonsense. Your argument was that organs always must have had this function. Now I show this to be potentially erroneous and you consider it 'making no difference' ? Perhaps you should first determine what your argument really is and then stick to it ?
>Not necessarily. What about a football stadium with a vaulted roof. Even
while the roof is being built, the stadium can serve its purpose, just no
roof and when it rains, the field gets wet.
>Irreducibly complex presumes that there is no use for intermediate steps.
But that can easily be shown to not be a requirement. Note that it might
still be correct but it should not presume but show that intermediate steps
could not have a purpose
>
Donald: <<What is the use of the roof? Does it serve a purpose while it is being
built? That's like saying that if you already have one arm, then having a
half made arm is fine because you can still do things with the other arm!>>
You could not have made my argument better. If everyone has one arm and you have one and a 'hald made' second arm then this might be an advantage.
Donald: <<I have a friend who's little finger on his right hand didn't work. Even
though in a few generations this finger may have started to work, he had it
amputated. Do you know why? Because it was useless, and it got in the way.>>
Now you are reversing the argument dear Donald. You are now having perfectly good items turn into bad items,
Donald: <<If you had the start of a roof, with all the scaffolding and supports there
but it didn't protect you from the weather, and you weren't going to finish
building it, I think you would tear it down, becuase it would be useless
and would get in the way, and would probably not be safe.>>
It might or it might not. The additional scaffolding might make maintenance easier, might help providing additional support.
>Donald: <<I didn't see anything that showed a pathway, there was a bad
example of a
>mouse trap as a irreducibly complex system, that turned out to be not
>irreducibly complex. Does this mean that there is no such thing as
>irreducibly complex? >>
>
>Nope but it shows that something 'irreducibly complex' can still have its
origin in small steps.
>But I was refering to the example of the chemical pathway. Perhaps you
should look again ? It shows how using small steps the end result is
irreducibly complex, yet it was reached through small incremental steps
which weren't. That shows that Behe's argument does not hold.
>
Donald: <<It showed something that wasn't irreducibly complex!>>
Hurah and yet it ended up being such. So it was shown that something which in the end appears to be irreducibly complex, could have emerged in small steps. And that puts an end to Behe's arguments.
Donald: << There were two people throwing a ball to each other. Then another person
asked to join in, so now the ball is moving in a triangle. If now one of
the people leave, and the remaining people still try and throw in a
triangle, it won't work, the system falls down.
This seems to me like a trick. It's an addaption of you enviroment by a
chain of events, but if it can adapt one way, it should be equally able to
adapt in the opposite way. So that if you remove one player, it should be
able to change just as well as it did to include that player to start ain, this is not implied but presumed by Behe. Behe's argument is
inherently flawed as it presumes that it could not have had any function
until completed. The talk.origins page as well as others have shown this
argument to be 'meritless'.
>Behe might want this to be the case but his argument becomes circular in
that he considers a system irreducible if it could not have gotten there
through small steps and then calls something irreducible because removing a
part makes it fall apart and concludes that therefor it could not have
gotten there through small steps.
>
Donald: <<Well, lets ignore Behe for a moment and ask these questions. Could a very
complex system, such as a lung, arrive at the state it is currently in, through a series of small steps?>>
Possibly. Unlike Behe I am not going to deny this possibility beforehand
Donald: << If so, was it useable throughout the process? If it wasn't useable throughout that process, when did it become useable? If not untill near completion, how did it progress to a useable
state, and what drove it?>>
Usable as what ? It might have been usable all the way through, just different functions ?
Donald: <<My logic here is that in all the examples you have given, the object is useless untill completed, if that is the case, then I see that as a fundamental flaw in the theory of evolution on a large scale.>>
So the stadium is useless without a roof ? But I am glad to hear that at least you are willing to 'drop Behe's argument'. As you have seen that argument has remained without little support in logic and reality. So now your argument is: "It might have happened, but I do not understand how it could have been useful all the way through". That's a good first step. Now however you are back to the old creationist assumption that something cannot be useful until it is fully completed. I guess you should read up on the 'evolution on the eye' to understand the logical fallacy in this argument ?
What good is half an eye ? Well, it's better than no eye ....