You're attempting to conflate Behe's "irreducible complexity" with Intelligent Design.
The statement was:
The claim is bacterial flagellum was "irreducibly complex" and an evoluntionary sequence was impossible.Behe's benchmark Eschericia coli has 40 proteins to produce a functioning flagellum.
A evoluntionary pathway has been shown, so Behe's claim fails.
This clearly demonstrates that flagellum with 40 proteins (Behe initially wrote 240) is not the lower bound of complexity.
Since lesser number of proteins are possible, it is not "irreducibly complex" as claimed by Behe.
I posted a link in #680 that contains a lengthy, very detailed critique of Matzke's model.
Ah Yes. I've read "Mike Gene" and his straw-men stories.
BTW, If you know his real name please Freepmail it to me. I'd love to look up his papers on PubMed.
Not to mention that Behe completely ignores the possibility of cooption or subtractive processes.
If you want to make some hay, complain to Dreamhost (the registrar) and ICANN that the domain registration info for idthink.net (his/her website) is fake, which it is - ICANN is cracking down on that kind of thing lately, and demanding that registrars get real info from people.
This clearly demonstrates that flagellum with 40 proteins (Behe initially wrote 240) is not the lower bound of complexity.
Since lesser number of proteins are possible, it is not "irreducibly complex" as claimed by Behe.
Would you agree that there is a difference between a conceptual and a physical precursor?
The logical point Professor McDonald wished to make was that there are mousetraps that can work with fewer parts than the trap I pictured in my book. Let me say that I agree completely; in fact, I said so in my book (see below). For example, one can dig a steep hole in the ground for mice to fall into and starve to death. Arguably that has zero parts. One can catch mice with a glue trap, which has only one part. One can prop up a box with a stick, hoping a mouse will bump the stick and the box will fall on top of it. That has two parts. And so forth. There is no end to possible variation in mousetrap design. But, as I tried to emphasize in my book, the point that is relevant to Darwinian evolution is not whether one can make variant structures, but whether those structures lead, step-by-excruciatingly-tedious-Darwinian-step, to the structure I showed. I wrote[3]:
To feel the full force of the conclusion that a system is irreducibly complex and therefore has no functional precursors we need to distinguish between a physical precursor and a conceptual precursor. The trap described above is not the only system that can immobilize a mouse. On other occasions my family has used a glue trap. In theory at least, one can use a box propped open with a stick that could be tripped. Or one can simply shoot the mouse with a BB gun. However, these are not physical precursors to the standard mousetrap since they cannot be transformed, step-by-Darwinian-step, into a trap with a base, hammer, spring, catch, and holding bar.Since I agree with Professor McDonald that there could be mousetraps with fewer parts, the only relevant question is whether the mousetraps he drew are physical precursors, or merely conceptual precursors. Can they “be transformed, step-by-Darwinian-step” into the trap I pictured (essentially the same structure as the fifth trap shown below), as some people have been led to believe? No, they can’t.
Michael Behe
A evoluntionary pathway has been shown, so Behe's claim fails.
No it hasn't, and Matzke himself refutes this contention from his survey of the existing literature, as I pointed out.
Cordially,