Thank you for visiting our weblog, and congratulations on the acceptance of your paper.

Salvador

Well, maybe he’s really a secret Wedgie agent. He realized the only way to infiltrate the establishment is to use token criticisms of ID as cover while sneaking Wedge literature into the mainstream in attempt to subvert all of science and public education, and establish a theocracy just like Barbara Forrest said. (just kidding)

Glad to hear form you johnnyb.

Sal

Behe cannot appropriate this term and substitute his own intuitive understanding of the words.

Behe certainly can define the words according to his understanding, as long as he tells his reader how he is defining them – which he does.
This is a perfectly legitimate practice, as Dawkins, for instance, tells us when he defines “gene” for his own purposes.

Irreducible complexity refers to something different, but it could be that the flagellum is an “irreducible” phenomenon in the sense that it does not follow from natural law or some genetic algorithm, but by design inference.

You asked:

“Can you say more about Turing’s coining of “Irreducible Complexity” and any analog it has with Behe’s term? I can imagine an irreducibly complex computer program that is the minimum goto-loop. But it sounds like Turing had a different meaning in mind. ”

Indeed Turing had something completely different in mind. Take a look at:
Irreducible Complexity in Pure Mathematics and compare that with Behe!

Yockey, argued against Behe’s IC using Turing’s definition of IC. A classic equivocation. I kept thinking when I read Yockey’s book, “huh?, how does that show biology does not have IC?”. It was when Yockey posted on his website that it made sense when he mentioned Turing.

Anyway, Yockey only gave 2 paragraphs regarding ID in his book….The following is about as much as you’ll find in his book regarding ID. His website actually has more about ID.

http://www.hubertpyockey.com:

First, Behe did NOT coin the term “irreducible complexity,” he hijacked it from Alan Turing and stole its identity. Turing defined “irreducible complexity” as a computation that runs indefinitely. Cellular processes start and stop, therefore they do not run indefinitely, therefore they are not irreducibly complex.
…
The correct definition of “irreducible complexity” in information science is a computation whose result can be computed for eternity and never reach its final answer. Behe cannot appropriate this term and substitute his own intuitive understanding of the words.

Biology is not irreducibly complex because the bit string in the genome that describes a protein is finite and stops after it produces the protein (so the computation does not run indefinitely).

A summary of another proof of why biology is not “irreducibly complex” is as follows:

As Dr. Yockey’s work shows, the genome is digital, linear and segregated. “Digits” in this case means the letters of an alphabet, each one different from the other. The letters of the alphabet of the genome are the 64 codons of DNA and RNA. The letters are in a sequence in DNA and RNA, so they are linear. And they are separate and distinct from one another, so they are segregated.

Claude Shannon showed that information can be measured in any sequence that is digital, linear and segregated. Therefore the information in the genome can be measured. Therefore the genome—the critical element for evolution in biology—is not “irreducibly complex.” Therefore, there is no requirement in evolution for an Intelligent Designer.

Sal

http://www.hubertpyockey.com

with a P between Hubert and Yockey

All the best.

hbenkeshet

Avida also protects against random mutation the code the digital “organisms” require for replication. In real living things nothing is protected against deleterious mutation, not the replication machinery and not even the environment. But I’ve said before that Avida really does emulate the theory of evolution which is to say it demonstrates a mechanism producing the laughably simple and extrapolates that into being able to produce the hideously complex. -ds