Posted by J.H. [JH] on November 27, 1999 at 03:57:54 {nwG7wj0NI.wxcT1WLj/AHR5JhS9/hc}:
In Reply to: Irreducible Complexity posted by Snowball on November 26, 1999 at 20:00:00:
Snowball,
Behe's major problem is that he has not offered any methodology whatsoever for deciding which feature would be "irreducibly complex". What he does and says, over and over again in his book and other works, is to say "I can't imagine how this has developed through darwinian selection, so therefor it hasn't." Well, duh!
Richard Dawkins calls this "the argument from personal incredulity." It is totally worthless. It is also a fancy new word for the oldest argument there is against evolution, and one solidly refuted by Charles Darwin himself in 1859.
Add to this the fact that Behe chosean analogy with a non-biological object, a mouse trap, to popularize the claims. Why did he do this, when the one single important thing about life, what makes evolution possible, is that it reproduces, something a mouse trap does not. That allegory is not only weak, it is flawed, misleading and worthless. Even worse, evolutionists with a sense of puzzle-solving were able to provide examples of a "reduced" mousetrap that would actually work. If that was the best Behe could come up with, how should we expect his say-so for the irreducibility of much more complex biological mechanisms?
More seriously, Behe often makes claims that certain things have not been subject to scientific research. Microbiologists have been able to, after seeing such amazing claims by Behe, provide countless references to many scientific articles dealing with the subjects Behe claims were never addressed. And Behe never makes any attempt to deal with it. In fact, Behe, like Johnson, does not argue with scientists. He uses "scientific" jargon and writes for an audience of christian fundamentalists who are very eager to believe what ticles their ears, and who grasps for the rare opportunities when someone with a PhD actually gives in to the temptation to fill up his bank account by doing so.
It is an amazing fact, and one totally demolishing for Behe, that the whole issue of "irreducible complexity" was published as a book to a lay audience before a single technical paper was ever published for peer review. If Behe had any expectations for his arguments to be convincing to any other microbiologist in the world, why didn't he use the accepted, standard scientific form of communicating his ideas to the scientific community for debate? Instead he chose to preach to the choir, which tells us a lot.
Consult the link below for a solid list of refutations of Behe's arguments.