Challenge: Show me an organ, joint, or anything that is irreducibly complex

the title pretty much sums it up.

i'll just tackle the two most common "examples" of irreduciable complexity

what good is half an eye?
well, just ask a nautilus or various worms. they have eyes that are much less effective than ours, and they find them to be pretty damn useful.

what good is half a wing?

well, it can help you glide.

ir·re·duc·i·ble (r-ds-bl, -dy-) KEY

ADJECTIVE:

Impossible to reduce to a desired, simpler, or smaller form or amount: irreducible burdens.
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How about the SKIN?

www.hsh.k12.nf.ca...

The skin is concidered an organ by any definition?

We can't have 1/2 of the skin we have on our bodies and survive?

What about the brain? Wouldn't that send us back to the monkey age? I would not want to give up my complex mind for one like an animal, sorry.

skin, well, half of our skin would mean skin that is half as thick

and our brain, sure, we'd be lesser apes with half a brain, hence evolution.

Maybe everything together, as a whole, The human body, mind and soul? is Irreducibly complex, rather than looking at one organ at a time?

[edit on 21-3-2007 by _Phoenix_]

[edit on 21-3-2007 by _Phoenix_]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
skin, well, half of our skin would mean skin that is half as thick

Our skin LAYERS are in direct proportion to our own bodies and 'keep everything contained on the 'inside'.

We have to have skin covering ALL of the body; not haphazzardly (in some places and not others) or else other organs/muscles/etc. would be exposed.

We can not 'thin-out' the layers (3 layers) i.e. using 1 or 2, we need ALL skin layers.

The outer epidermis in a 'barrier' to the outside world. We have cells that are semi-permeable (allowing only certain things to traverse between the outside world and inside our bodies) i.e. sweating, topical ointments absorbing)

The middle layer bonds between the outer epidermis and the 3 layer (closest to muscles/tendons/organs/etc.

Each layer is DESIGNED to work in CONJUNCTION with the others for maximum performance.

Strip layers away...and we're asking for trouble.

That's why skin will create 'scars' to bridge the gap between damaged/missing cells.

Hey madness, how are ya?


From: www.iscid.org...

Michael Behe's Original Definition:
A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Darwin's Black Box, 39)



William Dembski's Enhanced Definition:
A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. (No Free Lunch, 285)



Michael Behe's "Evolutionary" Definition
An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway

The first two are not controvercial, or new, ideas at all; all/many sytems/components fit the bill.

Three leads to the design argument, which is what I assume your after, ie "For discrete physical systems - if there is not a gradual route to their production - design is evident when a number of separate interacting components are ordered in such a way as to accomplish a function beyond the individual components. The greater the specificity of the interacting components required to produce the function, the greater is our confidence in the conclusion of design." - M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, p. 194

Not to put words in your mouth I'll stay on topic.

Challenge: Show me an organ, joint, or anything that is irreducibly complex

My Irreducibly Complex anything is:




And, lest we forget, every IDers favorite...






FYI, madnessinmysoul, only a couple more months 'til the big dog gets to eat again.





I know you want to be the first on your block with a copy.

Regards,
-Rob

The Krebs cycle, electron transport chain and oxidative phosphorylation pathways in prokaryotes.

I'd say eukaryotes too, but arguably that is a derivation of the prokaryotic solution. And actually may have done so by "eating" a prokaryote in the form of the mitochondrial ancestor.

But in the prokaryote, it requires a pile of very specifically crafted proteins, none of which looks particularly useful without the entire set. Oh, and it requires an intact cell wall and membrane so that the electron chain can use the "juice" between the membrane and wall as temporary storage.

I'm not a big fan of ID but it's hard to look at that structure and come up with a way that it just happened.

first, i apologize for the belated responses. i just started spring break, so i'm going to be quite inconsistent for this next week.

tom, i don't know enough to answer your question, but i've heard a response to that one. i shall try to research enough to answer it.

rren, the flagellel "motor" you demonstrated has earlier cousins in secretion mechanisms.

Hi Madness,

rren, the flagellel "motor" you demonstrated has earlier cousins in secretion mechanisms.

I think you're not understanding Behe's argument. Or I'm missing yours.

Try this link from Behe, responding to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Madness, if you're interested, ALL this stuff is covered in Darwin's Black Box. Check the source first, no?

(emphasis Rren)
That’s what often happens when people who are adamantly opposed to an idea publicize their own definitions of its key terms--the terms are manipulated to wage a PR battle. The evident purpose of Miller and others is to make the concept of IC so brittle that it easily crumbles. However, they are building a straw man. I never wrote that individual parts of an IC system couldn’t be used for any other purpose. (That would be silly--who would ever claim that a part of a mousetrap couldn’t be used as a paperweight, or a decoration, or a blunt weapon?) Quite the opposite, I clearly wrote in Darwin’s Black Box that even if the individual parts had their own functions, that still does not account for the irreducible complexity of the system. In fact, it would most likely exacerbate the problem, as I stated when considering whether parts lying around a garage could be used to make a mousetrap without intelligent intervention.


[...]

The irreducible complexity of the flagellum remains unaltered and unexplained by any unintelligent process, despite Darwinian smoke-blowing and obscurantism.

Also there's no need to put motor in quotes. It's a motor by ANY definition, except, that it out-performs anything man has built to date. Got a link to the 'cousins pathway' you mention? Co-option?

i just started spring break, so i'm going to be quite inconsistent for this next week.

Have fun! Be safe, man.

Regards,
-Rob

no, i know behe's argument. hell, i even know richard dawkins has destroyed it several times over (he's not the only one, he's just the most recognizable name i could think of).

hm, i'll look for his specific refutation of it

I was thinking about Irreducible Complexity, and I was wondering about the tail. Many if not most animals have tails, the main reason being balance.

But, the reason that the tail gives balance is because it is so long and flexible. A long and flexible tail can be controlled to balance an animal's weight. But, if evolution is correct, the tail must have began as a strange extension of the spinal cord. In the earliest phases, it must have been an extremely small extension only inches long which would give no balance whatsoever.

A small stub of a tail could not give any balance to an animal, so what use would it be to have one? For example, if you had a large tumor on your butt, would it give you any balance? And if it did, it would have more negative consequences than positive. One of the main driving forces of evolution is to make it easier for an animal to find a mate (hence the Peacock's colorful display). Animals naturally have an affinity towards other normal, healthy animals of the opposite sex.

An excerpt from an article relating to the Uncanny Valley

According to evolutionary psychology, throughout millions of years, natural selection would have logically favored features in the brain that provide a high capacity to sense and be repulsed by macro and micro-anomalies in the overall appearance of a member of the same species that reveal genetic disorders or a lack of genetic fitness. So, we might be alarmed by the potential impact that these abnormal humanlike entities could have on the human gene pool. This could explain why it is particularly disturbing for the human eye to see these humanlike entities engaging in sexual activity (see below).

Wouldn't an animal with such a strange anomaly as a stub sticking out of its butt (which by the way gives no balance, which defeats the purpose of having a tail to begin with) have a hard time finding a mate, therefore lessening its chances to reproduce? And yet, many animals have tails which are, in my opinion, an example of Irreducible Complexity.

Edit: To extend last paragraph

[edit on 4/10/2007 by TheB1ueSoldier]

IDer's tried using the flagella as an example of "irreducible complexity" and failed

[edit on 10-4-2007 by DarkSide]

Darkside, how about the tail?

I think perhaps you have the evolution of the tail backwards. For example: think of a snake, evolving into a lizzard. Wasn't the tail, all ready there to begin with? No animal evolved with a useless stub first, then over time it evolved into a useful tail. You are looking at the picture incorrectly.

Originally posted by Terapin
I think perhaps you have the evolution of the tail backwards. For example: think of a snake, evolving into a lizzard. Wasn't the tail, all ready there to begin with? No animal evolved with a useless stub first, then over time it evolved into a useful tail. You are looking at the picture incorrectly.

So, monkeys evolved from snakes? Lions, cheetahs, tigers, horses, rats, and wolves all evolved from snakes? What about these animals?

And, the tail is known to be an extension of the spinal cord (in both mammals and reptiles) so how would the early version of the tail be useful?

Originally posted by TheB1ueSoldier
And, the tail is known to be an extension of the spinal cord (in both mammals and reptiles) so how would the early version of the tail be useful?

To swim with?

Tetrapods evolved from fish. They already had the tail.

If someone is looking for an organ that is irreducibly complex, the mammalian ear can be viewed this way. A system with interacting parts - remove one of the middle ear bones and hearing is lost.

However, it actually evolved, these bones were previously part of a jawbone. Fetal development shows the same thing, bones moving up to the middle ear.

Another is the Krebs cycle - remove an enzyme and it doesn't work. Problem is we know this isn't IC as well - various alternative forms of this cycle exist (a bit like blood clotting). Thus, IC is generally applied to a complex system we cannot yet explain, until we can show it to not be truly IC.

So IC is really 'design of the gaps'. I know Rren won't like this, heh.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by melatonin]

Monkeys from snakes?? Huh ... well actually ... sorta kinda, yes indeed. Think flatworms, fish, amphibians, snakes, reptiles, mice, squirrels, tamarins, monkeys.

If you look at flatworms, fish and snakes, you will notice that they all create motion by a sideways oscillation along the brain, tail axis. (although in the case of flatworms one can't really say brain.) Lizards do this too. Then things change into a gate motion with the spine oscillating vertically along the axis. The function of the tail changes from a side ways oscillation, providing thrust, into one of stabilization of the vertical gait. In monkeys the tail further evolves for the use of stabilization, and in the case of new world apes, evolves one more step to become prehensile, or having the ability to grasp.

This is a very simplistic explanation and not necessarily an accurate description of the evolutionary tree, but it is close enough for this discussion.

Here is a shot in the dark.
the red blood cell.
Ill try more tomorrow
Good night

Why pick such a simple cell. Surely there are more complex cells that people would wish to utilize for such a complex argument as IC.

The evolution of the cell is quite fascinating and in my view the mitochondria is where the coolness begins. Hemoglobin is just too simple a chemical, and the shape of the red blood cell is remarkably understandable.