[DC Bound]

Your irreducible complexity example doesn't quite make sense. I get your point about about having an "aim" and having a designer. Function is integral to the concept of IC in that the whole machine performs that function, and is in a sense defined by its capacity to perform the function. You state that IC is a circular reference to ID. The same logic would mean that natural selection is a circular reference to evolutionism. Is that significant?

The example of a block of ice bridging a ditch doesn't quite rise to an irreducibly complex machine. Unless you refer to the atoms in the ice, the block of ice has no components. It is not complex. The argument for IC is that multiple components of a complex machine can't be accounted for by sudden, direct evolutionary paths (evolutionists don't dispute this) and cannot be accounted for by small successive steps (evolutionists do dispute this.) The block of ice idea just isn't an adequate example of IC. Try to make your argument with flagellum.

[MHalblaub]

"Function is integral to the concept of IC in that the whole machine performs that function, and is in a sense defined by its capacity to perform the function."

Between function or aim is in this context no difference. So with a function a designer is introduced to IC or IC is impossible without a designer.


"The same logic would mean that natural selection is a circular reference to evolutionism. Is that significant?"

No. Evolution happen through natural selection. Selection is the process of evolution. IC is a lemma or corollary to support ID. Because ID also could happen to non-IC systems but you won't be able to detect it there. So you need IC to detect ID. But IC needs some D. So you see the circle?


"The example of a block of ice bridging a ditch doesn't quite rise to an irreducibly complex machine."
My ice block is a very simple IC machine. I think that atoms count as components as in the flagellum. The real problem with IC is the way to the solution. IC would split the block in two or more pieces and argue they would be to complex to evolve.

"Try to make your argument with flagellum."
If you like, you can compare my arguments with research about the flagellum.
The Flagellum Unspun

[Louis Foxwell]

,I>Try to make your argument with flagellum.

Suppose a flagellum was bridging a brook....