KM: So the point stands that a subset of these proteins is functional in a different context. Now that's the bacterial flagellum, let's look a couple of the other guys. Let's look at the clotting pathway, this is the way in which blood clots, you call this the Rube Goldberg in the blood, great stuff, and the clotting pathway is extremely complex. It produces a clot around the red blood cell, and what you wrote is, in your book is that none of the cascade proteins, these proteins, are used for anything except controlling the formation of clots, that's very clear. Yet, in the absence of any of the components blood does not clot and the system fails. Now here's the, the hard part for me. Remember you said, in the absence of any of the components, blood does not clot and the system fails. One of those components that you've talked about is called factor 12 or Hagemann factor, and you'd think, if we take it away, the system should fail, so there shouldn't be any living organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, but it turns out, uh, lo and behold, that there are some organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, I've crossed them off up there, and those organisms turn out to be, dolphins and porpoises, they don't have, um, I assume that statement therefore is incorrect and has to be changed?
MB: Well, first of all let me express my condolences for the dolphins. Umm...[laughter]
KM: You don't have to have to do condolences they do fine. That's my point. It's the theory of irreducible complexity that needs condolences at this point, [laughter/ applause] because that's what's happening.
MB: Well, if you read my book a little more closely, you'll see that I talk about both the intrinsic and extrinsic pathway, I say that they can use both of them. And, uh, you'll see that when I talk about irreducible complexity I say, the details of the pathway, beyond uh christmas factor and so on, are rather vague, so let's uh, so I said I'll, we'll confine my argument to those. But nonetheless...
KM: Yeah but your own words are up here and you point out Hageman factor, factor 12 and so forth, so they're part of that system.
MB: Well, um, nonetheless, let me point out that if you do delete prothrombin if you delete tissue factor, you end up with this.
KM: I'm asking you about Hageman factor. I'm not deleting those. My question is straightforward. You said you couldn't delete them, nature's done the experiment, it deleted them, doesn't that disprove the hypothesis?... and you're talking about deleting other ones?
MB: You're right there are redundant components in the blood clotting system...
KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?
MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?
MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
Ouch.
There's a question needing to be attended to in that exchange and it may be multipart. 1. is Hageman replaced in the two instances cited by some other modality? 2. Clotting may ocurr; but, to the extent it does absent Hageman, what is the loss that isn't accounted for? Hageman obviously provides some mechanism involved in clotting or it wouldn't be part of the discussion. So the fact that hageman plays no role in clotting elsewhere doesn't seem to discount whether it would make the same mechanism fail where it is included if it is absent.
I don't understand this because I'm not a biologist. I have no problem admitting this. But, this seems to be a gotcha in that Behe doesn't have before him all the relevant data needed to properly answer the posed questioning IMO. To the extent that Miller made a viable point, it doesn't undo irreduceable complexity. It merely takes clotting off the table as an example of it. I wouldn't grant that.
Given the mechanism "clotting", the question arises, how does the body know that clotting exists as an option. How does the body understand it, call upon it and direct it. Orville and Wilbur Wright, who I love to invoke, may have proved flight. But absent understanding of the machine - heck even understanding it, some of the best pilots on the planet have a hard time controlling the Wright flyer and getting it off the ground, much less flying it. The existance of the system doesn't explain how it becomes useful when, no matter how hard one thinks about causing a clot to occur in the body, one cannot make a clot by thinking about it.
This would seem to put clotting into an immense list of things done by the body which are never needed to be thought about - similar to breathing. You don't have to think about breathing. From moment 1, you don't have to think about doing it. It's automatic. How does that happen. If all of these things are undirected, how do these things seem to know what is required of them? It defies logic.