One precedes the other.

Is anyone else aware of anything Behe has written on Muller?

@jerry,

Behe’s definition should be used in any discussions of IC. His ideas on this have been misused a lot both on this site and elsewhere.

Hear, hear.
Does this affect the question of Muller’s having “refuted” Behe? As far as I can see, Theobald uses an inaccurate definition of IC according to Behe’s Amazon blog post (although it is apparently the definition Behe gave in DBB p. 39: “wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”; yet we should use his most up-to-date definition).

Yet I think Muller’s/Orr’s point still applies in theory, that a system’s being IC (by the most refined definition) is not a 100% barrier to its arising via RM+NS, because an IC system can be built by “slight, successive modifications“, not just additions. Can anyone more knowledgeable comment on that?

On the other hand, as others have already pointed out, all this gives evolutionists is a loophole to wriggle out of one point of logical impossibility. It does not give a very robust theoretically possibility, let alone a workable theory of how an IC system could arise via NDE. It’s interesting that the examples given of Mullerian interlockingly complex (MIC) systems, a bridge and an arch, (a) are both intelligently designed systems; and (b) lack any suggestion of how they could arise “(by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system”.

In the case of the bridge, for example, the addition of the top stone does not seem to improve the bridge’s function. Theobald dismisses this shortcoming, saying “Whether this improves the functionality of the bridge is irrelevant — it may or may not, the bridge still functions.” But how can a mutation that does not improve function become established in the population, so that a successive mutation can build upon it? Theobald says “Orr has emphasized the adaptive possibilities in the Mullerian two-step (i.e. improvement of function at each step).” But I have not looked to see whether Orr offers examples, nor have I digested the examples in nature that Theobald links to. Regardless, the bridge and arch examples do not refute Behe’s claims about IC systems because Behe claimed IC systems “cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function…)”.

Would it be accurate to say then that MIC shows a logical loophole in Behe’s IC claim, but the examples examined so far fail to show IC systems that really could arise via evolution (defined as requiring continuous improvement)?

Incidentally, I’ve been following ID for several years now, and thought I was mostly down to hearing the same points over and over. But I hadn’t heard about MIC till this post.

Muller was talking about organisms, but the idea he described is just as applicable to individual biochemical systems.

How can that be when Muller didn’t even know the inside of the cell?

Now if Orr can take what he says on paper and actually demonstrate it he may have something.

Until then all you have is a bunch of hot air without a balloon to put it in.

Allen Orr’s explanation is nothing but guesswork. It is a rumination on what is perecieved to be possible, not what has been observed to actually take place.

You guys are always in conjecture mode, never in empirical mode.

Can you tell us when will be able to make the switch?

Behe has never been refuted. What has happened is that some people play make believe and then use their “make believe” as evidence. Orr’s scenario should be visible in the genomic structure someplace. If it isn’t then it is just a “just told story.” If it is, then it is an interesting structure to study.

Muller was talking about organisms, but the idea he described is just as applicable to individual biochemical systems.

Here is how Allen Orr explains it:

An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become — because of later changes — essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn’t essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.”

The upshot is that Muller refuted Behe before Behe was even born.

MikeGeene:

You are correct in noting that Muller’s discussion is not directed towards the behavior of proteins at a molecular level. He is not talking about the type of complexity I describe on page 216 in The Design Matrix. In fact, we know that Muller’s description of evolution did not lead scientists to anticipate this type of complexity (see p. 13). Muller is talking about the whole organism as the “machine” (which, as seen from pp. 101-103 of TDM, is not relevant). What he is essentially describing is a whole organism as an interlocking mass of complexity such that lethals should have been “among the commonest forms of mutants” and “we should expect very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least disadvantageous in the struggle for life.” In other words, a non-telic view of evolution would lead us to expect that organisms should be a Rube Goldberg machine, a hodgepodge of factors tightly connected through a long history of co-evolutionary selection. What Muller and early views of evolution did not expect was what we found ““ that life is more rational than this; than life is built around the design principle of modularity (see pp. 167-169).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/....._blog_blog

Behe’s definition should be used in any discussions of IC. His ideas on this have been misused a lot both on this site and elsewhere.

To the best of my knowledge, Behe has never acknowledged Muller’s work on interlocking complexity or responded to it.

What work?

Did Muller even understand the internal workings of the cell? No.

So what work should Behe respond to?