Originally Posted by
Seraphim
My understanding of irreducible complexity is somewhat diferent. You are focusing on one componenet, or organ, and if a change were made to it, it would no longer function. Simple light sensors work too, as you say.
But, the key argument I find of irreducible complexity is not focussed on ONE organ, but rather, how do you explain the fact that for a living creature to exist, it takes a number of very complex organs to do so?
i.e.- say a organism with a heart were to have evolved on it's own, but what good is a heart without lungs to oxiginate the blood that the heart pumps? And then you need a liver to filter and clean the blood that is circulating around. And a stomach that is capable of feuling all of this action. You need ALL of these components all at once for an organism to function. And this goes for "simple celled" organisms as well, as I mentioned- the nucleus needs the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria, et al.
If life is created by chance, or rather by the simple natural combining of elements, this seems rather implaussible. OK, if even ONE organ (or endoplasmic reticulum if you want to keep it simple), were to be created in this manner it would be stupendous beyond belief, but the fact is that it takes alot more than one organ/component for an organism to function. So, by chance ALL of the neccessary components came into being at once?
I will add this as well- I myself have been on both sides of this debate. For most of my life I bought into the idea of evolution, etc. (isn't that what they taught me in school?) I was into the whole idea that given enough time anything is possible, and all that, and that creationists are just blindly marching in lock-step to the edicts of their religious leaders. I shook my head at how simple minded they seemed. Science! Don't these people understand science?
Well, now I'm on the other side. I'm an engineer, so I feel that I do have a solid understanding of science. But one thing that needs to be said about science is that it is not as "pure" as its proponents make it out to be. If you make an assumption you can then gather data to support that assumption instead of letting the data speak for itself. Garbage in, garbage out.
You find a 3 million year old skeleton. True science would look at it as itself. A skeleton that bears some resemblance to both humans and apes.
Assumption science however, makes the leap by saying "aha! A 3 million year old gorilla skeleton, this MUST be where WE came from!"
Just because a claim is made by someone in the scientific field, that does not make it scientific fact.
Anybody else out there switch sides at one point or another?