

Irreducible Complexity or mutantdidit - leebowman

"I've heard claims that Behe's idea of irreducible complexity has been refuted. Does anyone know more about this?"&#60;p&#62;You'll hear that alot, but in reality, you can neither affirm nor disaffirm by a hypothesis as easily as citing one or two examples.  I feel that IC is one of the foundational principles underlying ID.  I see it as 'unrefutable', since refuting one example doesn't rule out other examples.  Further, I don't feel that Miller has come close to refuting it.  I just discussed it here (beauLeeman):
http://onlineathens.com/stories/120709/let_532782940.shtml#mdw-comments
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dasht
Here is a hypothesis which can be refuted: "There does not exist any naturally
occurring genotype whose existence is not explicable by a process of natural
selection in the context of non-directed mutation." Let's call that the
DarwinWins hypothesis.

The DarwinWins hypothesis is logically equivalent to the statement that all
naturally occurring genotypes are explicable by a process of natural selection
in the context of non-directed mutation. It's useful, though, to state it as I
did the first place... the "there does not exist" form, because:

If the DarwinWins hypothesis is true, then the hypothesis of intelligent
design is false. This is a problem for intelligent design advocates because so
many genotypes have been reasonably explained as the result of natural
selection and non-directed mutation. If you want to prove that intelligent
design even has a _chance_ of being true, then you must prove the negation of
DarwinWins. That negation is:

There exists a feature, Y, inexplicable by natural selection and non-directed
mutation. You could call that hypothesis, DarwinLoses. Proving that
DarwinLoses is true would not prove intelligent design true, but it would
prove that DarwinWins is false. And intelligent design can only possibly be
true if DarwinWins is false. So if you want to argue for intelligent design,
you must provide some proof that DarwinLoses is true.

In other words, you must come up with an observation of a single, naturally
occurring genotype, Y, which can not be accounted for by natural selection and
non-directed mutation. That would be your "black swan" (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability> ) that disproves DarwinWins.

In your comments on that other blog, you offered one suggestion: the eyes of
higher animals. Unfortunately for your case, the complexity of the eye is
hardly a surprising outcome in the DarwinWins case. (E.g., c.f.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/> )

Now, it is true that DarwinWins is as impossible to prove with absolute
certainty as hypotheses such as "No elves with magical powers exist." However,
the NoElves hypothesis is a very effective and simple theory of why no direct
or indirect evidence for magical elves has ever been observed in a controlled
experiment. We would say that the YesElves counter-hypothesis lacks any
evidence whatsoever to support it. Elf believers might be upset and say "But
you haven't yet proved with absolute certainty that there are no magical
elves!" and they would be correct - but they are being unscientific when they
say "I'm pretty sure there are those elves!"

Similarly, intelligent design fans, who must embrace DarwinLoses if they have
even a chance to be correct, have yet to show one single piece of evidence
against DarwinWins. Meanwhile, lots of evidence in support of DarwinWins has
been collected, again, and again, and again.

We don't teach the YesElves hypothesis in biology or physics class as an open-
minded alternative to NoElves. We don't regard YesElves as a viable scientific
theory. I.D. (DarwinLoses) has about as much logical and empirical support as
YesElves... it is hard to take I.D., in the form you are arguing for it, any
more seriously than YesElves.

