July 21, 2009
Fallacies of the “Reducibly Complex Mousetrap”
Virtually every introduction of Intelligent Design invokes Michael Behe’s idea of “irreducible complexity”, which states that some systems depend on multiple parts to work together and missing any one piece results in no functionality at all, rather than reduced functionality [1]. This all-or-nothing nature of such systems, Behe argues, cannot be developed through “numerous successive, slight modifications” as Charles Darwin theorized.
Among more complicated biochemical systems, Behe cites a mousetrap as an example. On his website [2], a picture of the mousetrap illustrates the five essential parts, a hammer, a spring, a catch, a holding bar and a platform. He argues that any missing piece renders this mousetrap useless. Therefore, in order for random mutation to produce such a system, it must come up with all the necessary parts and assemble the system at the same time. This becomes prohibitively difficult for complex systems. For example, the flagellum of a bacterium has more than 30 parts, and it is just a small part of the organism.
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June 26, 2009
The Religion of Science
It is conventional wisdom among the secular world that people who believe in any religion must possess a considerable amount of “blind” faith, and the only basis for such faith is words of some divinely inspired figure. The truthfulness of this notwithstanding, many who do not believe in religion display precisely this “blind” faith in science. Case in point, most non-scientists who argue in favor of the man-made global warming disaster inevitably cite the “fact” that most creditable scientists believe in such theory. For many, this is their only basis.
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