Half a Mousetrap Doesn't Work

In the beginning was an unexplained puddle of goo. Suddenly, an electric arc shot out of nothingness, creating amino acids. These acids, through pure chance, developed into proteins and eventually the first single-cell organism came into being. Over the course of time, chance favored this cell, and eventually its offspring became every mammal, fish, bird, amphibian, reptile, microbe, and plant on earth today. According to evolutionists, this is the most likely scenario for our existence today. If this were the case, we should be able to go backwards in time and conceptually deconstruct every organism to get to this original cell. However, in nature, certain things defy this deconstruction. Some biological structures are irreducibly complex, which means this theoretical devolution cannot work on them. Irreducible complexities are one of many evidences in nature against Darwinian evolution. In this article, we’ll look at some examples of irreducible complexity, and explore why they indicate a Creator, rather than a slow evolutionary process.

Charles Darwin, in his Origin of Species, said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”[1] The breakdown of Darwin’s theory may well have come at the hands of biochemist Michael J. Behe, Ph.D. As Behe explains, “…a system or device is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that all work together to accomplish the task of the system, and if you were to remove one of the components, the system would no longer function. An irreducibly complex system is highly unlikely to be built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes, because the system has to be fully present in order for it to function.”[2] To illustrate this concept, Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap. The common mousetrap consists of a flat wooden base, a metal hammer, a spring, a bar to restrain the hammer, and a catch for the bar and placement of bait. If you remove any one of these components, you’re not left with a mousetrap that is only half as effective – you’re left with a useless collection of materials. Using this analogy, the mousetrap could not have evolved with “successive, slight modifications,” because without all its components, the mousetrap is nothing, and not likely to be passed on to another generation. Let’s look at some examples of irreducible complexity in nature.

A High Performance Motor: It is one of the most efficient motors ever contrived. It spins at a staggering 10,000 revolutions per minute. It can stop within a quarter of a turn, and immediately spin in the opposite direction at 10,000 rpm. At less than a couple of microns in length (a micron is one millionth of a meter), it is too small to see without very expensive electron microscopes. This motor powers the bacterial flagellum, which acts as a rotary motor to propel the bacteria. It takes approximately 30 to 35 proteins to form a functional flagellum. If we remove a few proteins, we won’t have a flagellum that rotates at only 5000 rpm, we have a flagellum that doesn’t work. Looking at a diagram of the flagellum makes one think of mechanical device that was designed by an intelligent creator. This is one example of irreducible complexity. Evolutionists have tried to refute this characterization, but have come up with nothing more than unproven hypotheses. One popular argument is that many of the proteins that make up the flagellum are also found in a cellular pump. Proponents of this argument contend that this pump picked up (co-opted) other proteins over time until it formed the flagellar motor. This hypothesis is analogous to a tire rolling through a scrap yard, picking up parts as it rolls until it forms a car. However, this argument fails when you consider that many of the proteins in the flagellum are found nowhere else in nature. That being in nature.

[edit on 22-4-2008 by XIDIXIDIX]

Not more of this rubbish.

You might want to click here for a New Scientist article describing just how the bacterial flagella came into existence, and how they're not at all irreducibly complex.

But I guess New Scientist is some sort of demon-worshipping racist genocidal periodical for budding Hitlers, right?

I love the thought that goo turning to life thanks to the power of electricity is outlandish...

while the idea of a big white guy in the sky who is at once his own father and son, with no mother, who has always existed without any explanation, waved his hand and made stuff happen - such as plants before there was sunlight - and who will at some point utterly destroy all of it for not worshipping him properly... Isn't the least bit bizarre.

Swamp muck vs. tent god. Round thirty thousand... FIGHT!

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
I love the thought that goo turning to life thanks to the power of electricity is outlandish...

while the idea of a big white guy in the sky who is at once his own father and son, with no mother, who has always existed without any explanation, waved his hand and made stuff happen - such as plants before there was sunlight - and who will at some point utterly destroy all of it for not worshipping him properly... Isn't the least bit bizarre.

Swamp muck vs. tent god. Round thirty thousand... FIGHT!

I think the swamp muck wins by virtue of actually being present at the fight.

To the OP: try not to think of it as "chance". It's more like trial and error - who knows how many thousands or millions of failed evolutionary steps it took for the first proto-bacteria got it right and formed a cohesive multi-cellular organism?

Infinite monkeys write Shakespear, don't you know.

Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
Infinite monkeys write Shakespear, don't you know.

Actually, probably not. Since there are an infinite amount of combinations of things you can type it is possible that they never write Shakespeare or even a simple nursery rhyme like "Mary had a little lamb." For every extra monkey you throw in I can show you an different thing they can type without ever even making a complete sentence.

Take just the alphabet. There are 1*2*3*4*5...*24*25*26 = 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000 number of possible combinations of things they could type with a simple 26 letter combination. Add in a space and it grows even more. Add in the possibility of a repeated letter and you get more options. It never ends.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


Actually the first person that thought that we all came from goo was burned by the church for heretic and he wasn't even a scientist just a farmer back in the middle ages.

Interesting that even back then people used to be killed for having foresight and imagination.

WARNING: In the post below, I am not arguing for or against the existence of any god or god-like personage. I am arguing against the validity of the irreducible complexity hypothesis. Please enjoy.

Half a mousetrap would be a spring. Guess what, a spring is still a machine. It still does something. It still has a use. Nature acts like a billion children and will attach all sorts of stupid things to the spring in an effort to make it do something else. Eventually, a plank and a latch might be attached and we begin to have the makings of a mousetrap once again. Like magic.

Sure, the part may not be as purposeful as a mousetrap, in isolation, but that isn't the point that the hypothesis of irreducible complexity tries and fails to make. Irreducible complexity is a red herring in the intelligent design discussion because it makes ID appear to take a stand against evolution. Evolution and ID are mutual friends in this scientific endeavor to discover exactly why we are here.

Because isn't that the point? Don't we struggle to take apart the universe with the hope that we can once day understand our purpose for existing? Is not the scientific world with its hierarchy, institutions, special peoples and unquestionable tenets, merely a religion of rationality?

I made a blog post a while back that expands on this very topic :
www.voxclandestina.com...

Jon