In a message dated 10/1/00 11:16:05 PM Central Daylight Time,
FMAJ1019@aol.com writes:
>FMAJ1019: From Behe's Empty Box
(http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/box/behe.htm):
"But read this argument carefully. Behe is not offering a way to detect
design, he is offering a way to falsify gradual Darwinian evolution, and by
elimination, conclude design. But there is one big problem- his falsifier
has been falsified. The conclusion that an "irreducibly complex system cannot
be produced gradually by slight,
successive modifications of a precursor system" is simply wrong."
DNAunion: But how exactly has Behe's falsifier been falsified?
I visisted the site a while ago and looked around some, and found three
examples/methods that supposedly countered Behe's IC concept. The first was
the putative reduction of an IC mouse trap to a single piece. However, this
fails as all the original pieces and functions were still present, they had
just been merged into a single "multi-part piece" performing multiple
functions. Another was the IC system of the Bolas spider, consisting of
pheromone, single strand web that is swung by the spider, and the glue
globule that catches the moth. However, this does not qualify as an IC
system according to Behe's original definition. The one possibly-legitimate
concept I ran across was gene duplication followed by diveregence (it occurs,
but does it really produce new IC biological systems?).
Anyway, could you provide more material as to how Behe's concept of IC has
been refuted?
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