Donald: <<I read your remarks again, you said that you think lungs might not have been lungs to start with. >>
Indeed there is some evidence that points to the evolution of lungs from gills.
Donald: <<I'm not sure how that makes me saying that systems are probably for the same function now as they started out as, dangerous. But I guess that doesn't really matter....>>
Let me explain it to your once again:
You presume that systems are probable for the same function now as they started out as.
I showed you evidence that for lungs this need not be the case.
Ergo the presumption my be 'dangerous' as in illogical, not supported by facts.
>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: <<But we are talking about an arm, not a body, the arm isn't helpful if it
doesnt work. >>
But that does not mean that half an arm 'does not work'. You are using some faulty logic here. Half an arm might not work as a complete arm but it could still 'work'.
Donald: <<We are not talking about a system where one lung is fully developed, and we are watching the other one grow. This is the whole system growing at once, that's the whole point.>>
In case of the gills and lungs that might have been the case though. Gills were fully developed and lungs developed in parallel. And yes the whole system is growing at once through its parts.
>
>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: <<what?>>
You claim that since half an arm is worse that an arm, it is better to have no arm. I am stating that half an arm can be better than no arm.
>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: <<Maintenance of what? Support to what? We don't want to maintain a roof that
does nothing, or support it. To do so would be nonsense.>>
Again you are presuming that it does nothing. But perhaps it does need little maintenance and does allow us to have access to it. You presume that half a roof can never have any benifits.
>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: <<It wasn't irreducibly complex, because you took away one bit and you could still get it to work. It may have appeared to be irreducibly complex, but it wasn't. That's what you showed. Therefore, it could have gotten there is small steps. >>
So why does Behe refers to cascades as irreducibly complex ? And why to you now suggest that it was not irreducibly complex ? You still presume, contrary to evidence, that irreducibly complex systems could not have arisen through small steps, then you find such a system and conclude that it could not have evolved. Too bad that actual reasoning has shown that something can evolve into an irreducibly complex system. You take away a part and it stops working.
Donald: <<I have never seen any evidence of this. If you mean the lung thing, it
became a lung at an early stage, so lets just count from there, then I
think we will be looking at the real problem. Unless you have some good
evidence for something else.>>
That you have not seen evidence for it does not mean that it does not exists. So let's count from the lung being a lung. What next ?
Donald: <<A stadium isn't useless without a roof. A roof is useless if it doesn't do
anything.>>
Fine but how do you know that it doesn't do anything ?
Donald: <<My problem now is that I see no reason to believe that these things evolved
when looking at them in this context. All I see are reasons not to believe,
and some attempts to try and show that it might be possible. >>
Yep,that makes for a good example of argument from personal incredility. I don;t think it happened, and although others have shown it could have happened, I still don't believe it did.
Donald: <<Heres a question about the eye. What came first, the part of the brain to recieve the signals, the nerve to transmit them, or the light sensitive patch? And how were these things useful before the others were there?>>
Trying to avoid the obvious ? That Behe's arguments do not hold ?
Please explain why we should believe in Behe's presumption that irreducibly complex systems could not have evolved gradually because removing a part destroys it ? Especially since there are plenty of examples to show him wrong here ?
But let me address this by quoting from the following website which reflects my answer quite well:
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/eye_brain.html
The Answer
The eye came first. In a fairly real sense, the brain is an outgrowth of the eye, and not the other way around.
Originally, an eye spot in a single celled created just generated some chemical signal. Multicellular creatures eventually developed nerve cells, which connected sensors (such as an eye spot) to effectors such as contractile sheets. Later, there were true muscles, and eye cups, and some actual nervous wiring. After that, eyes and nervous system wiring could co-develop. But notice that a fish has quite good eyes, and not much of a brain. Clearly the original co-development mostly wired for simple behaviors and simple reactions. "Seeing," as we do it, involves understanding images. By that standard, fish have eyes but don't "see".