What if we DID find irreducibly complex biological features?
| August 30, 2007 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
In any debate on Intelligent Design, there is a question I have long wished to see posed to ID opponents: “If we DID discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex, to your satisfication and to the satisfaction of all reasonable observers, would that justify the design inference?” (Of course, I believe we have found thousands of such features, but never mind that.)
If the answer is yes, we just haven’t found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated philosophical arguments that “ID is not science” immediately fall. If the answer is no, then at least the lay observer will be able to understand what is going on here, that Darwinism is not grounded on empirical evidence but a philosophy.
(Added later)
To make the point more concretely: In my 1985 Springer-Verlag book ( here ) I gave as an example of irreducible complexity (though I didn’t use the term, of course) a carnivorous plant which catches small animals like this: an animal touches a trigger hair, which causes a double-sealed, valve-like door to open, and a water-tight vacuum chamber suddenly expands, sucking the victim into the trap, where it is digested, then the trap is reset for the next victim. Now, any reasonable person would say: this trap couldn’t have evolved through a single random mutation, and none of the parts seem to have any use whatever until all are in place, and until the vacuum chamber is water-tight, and the abilities to digest insects and to reset the trap are functional. A gradual development of this trap through useless stages toward usefulness would be no easier to explain–through natural selection or any other natural mechanism–than a sudden development. (See also the section “The origin of carnivorous plants” in the reference here )
Naturally, any Darwinist can come up with some far-fectched senario whereby the trigger hair had some earlier use, the vacuum chamber had some function before it became water-tight, etc.
My question is: what if we found another example, even more spectacular, so spectacular that every reasonable person would be forced to admit it could not have evolved through small improvements. Then would you consider the design inference justified? If you say yes, then you are admitting that design is a possible, even if currently unjustified, scientific hypothesis. If you say no, then everyone will finally understand that, as W.E.Loennig has stated, today’s evolutionary theory is completely unfalsifiable.
66 Responses to What if we DID find irreducibly complex biological features?
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He’s a molecular biologist, not a botanist. And I suspect he’s pretty busy what with teaching, writing and sorting through hate mail.
See the section “origin of the carnivorous plants” in the reference here .
#60 bornagain77
A great post and selection of quotes. This is my own cut at this:
Very many examples in developmental and comparative physiology, genetics and the fossil record overwhelmingly indicate some form of evolutionary process having occurred over billions of years, leading to ever more elaborate and sophisticatedly “designed” living forms. This seems to show a contingent process dependent on each previous stage of development. This is from the “big picture” standpoint at the level of classes and families and hundreds to scores of millions of years.
It seems to me that not considering probability/time constraints and ideological biases this data could most reasonably be considered as having resulted from any of several processes: (1)natural (reproductive) fitness-based selection fed by random variation, (2) periodic injections of intelligently influenced or created variation to existing forms, followed by natural selection and microevolution, (3) direct redesign at periodic intervals, or (4) some permutation or combination of these. The periodic interventions or input of creative variation or innovation could in principle have been “front loaded” or already somehow preexistent in the genome, but to me this is unlikely.
These models were selected for consideration because they appear to fit the data in a general sense, especially in that each stage must be based on the previous stage. The Cambrian Explosion, however seems anomalous still – like a special case.
These models result automatically in common descent, and almost all the available evidence clearly points to it though not proving it, including the fossil record, comparative genetics and comparative physiology of living organisms.
The first concept (some version of Darwinism) seems plausible but only on the surface. Much of the actual fossil and genetic data seems to show a general pattern of development with a long, intermittent series of individual innovations cumulatively leading to present forms. It also seems to be confirmed as the mechanism for microevolution of various sorts in nature and demonstrated in human breeding of animals and plants and in experiments with microorganisms. It seems that very modest amounts of real specified information in the sense defined by Dembski can be accumulated by Darwinian processes. However, one of the major problems with this model is the persistent extreme sparcity of intermediate forms which would be expected to dominate the fossil record, if it were the only mechanism behind macroevolution over deep expanses of geological time. But the most severe problem is probabilistic, which makes Darwinian natural selection very unlikely to be more than a small part of the actual process of macroevolution. This statistical problem is the one so well explicated by Dembski, Behe and others.
The second and third models are in some ways reminiscent of human technological development, except where some Divine or other supremely powerful and intelligent force has been periodically intervening in the process. However, because it has been so slow, jerky and contingent on chance events of geology and Nature (such as asteroid impacts and continental drift), the pattern shown by the data doesn’t look like what would most likely be expected from creation by an omnipotent and omniscient God, or by other entities postulated to be in a practical sense close to omnipotent. However this must be qualified by realizing that we don’t really know what God (or any other being(s) postulated to be extremely powerful) can do – presumably whatever He or they choose.
To me this is a mystery with no satisfactory solution at this point.
Magnan,
The main problem with the Theistic postulation is that the starting (common sense)presumption of the Theistic position would expect instantaneous creation of perfection for everything from an infinitely wise, powerful and perfect Creator (How many times have unbelievers pointed this out to you?). Thus since the common sense Theistic postulation is clearly seen to be false we must dig deeper to find if the Theistic hypothesis is correct. In Genesis, we have God’s creative actions being broken into different periods of creation. And This is really the only option left for the Theistic hypothesis since its primary position is clearly invalid.
Many reasonable and logical insights have been written about reconciling Genesis of the Bible with science, Dr. Gerald Schroeder and Dr. Hugh Ross being excellent sources for reconciliation, yet the overriding fact is that any Theistic postulations must default to God stepping out of His timelessness and introducing creative acts into this creation. I believe the fossil record best reflects this postulation of Theism better than it reflects any of the other postulations of a purely Materialistic hypothesis. That is Theism explains the sudden appearance and overall stability of fossils better than materialism does. Yet we still see limited speciation away from a parent species with an apparent loss of information (variability) for the sub-species (most likely due to genetic entropy). Thus It seems that a fusing of the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy would be the best remedy for the evidence we find. That is the best explanation for the evidence we have would have God suddenly introducing a species and then materialism explaining the species adaptations from then on.
This postulation satisfies Dembski’s CSI and also explains the (very) limited evolution we do witness in nature.
bornagain77, thanks for the reply. In response to your comment:
“Gareth I will I have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that the fossil record does not allow a objective analysis and explanation.”
Please don’t misunderstand me – I do consider that the fossil record allows for an objective analysis. But I also recognise that we need to be aware of the fact that it doesn’t represent the whole story of life because of the sampling limitations.
bornagain77: “That is the best explanation for the evidence we have would have God suddenly introducing a species and then materialism explaining the species adaptations from then on.”
I would just contend that this is one of several candidate explanatory concepts, all of which have problems at this point.