Kenneth Miller makes Michael Behe his new little pony

Nature vol. 447, pages 1055-1056 (28 June 2007)

Behe's "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism" debunked.

In a few paragraphs, Miller basically demolishes Behe's arguments. Behe's basic argument is that microevolution readily occurs (using chloroquine resistance in Plasmodia as an example) but then argues that this is the limit of evolution. Behe extrapolates the reported observation that 1 parasite out of 10^20 spontaneously acquire chloroquine resistance to human evolution and states in his book:

Behe Wrote: "On average, for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would need to wait a hundred million times ten million years. Since that is many times the age of the universe, it's reasonable to conclude the following: No mutation that is of the same complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years."

Miller wrote in response: "Behe, incredibly, thinks he has determined the odds of a mutation 'of the same complexity' occurring in the human line. He hasn't. What he has actually done is to determine the odds of these two exact mutations occurring simultaneously at precisely the same position in exactly the same gene in a single individual. He then leads his unsuspecting readers to believe that this spurious calculation is a hard and fast statistical barrier to the accumulation of enough variation to drive darwinian evolution. It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics. Behe obtains his probabilities by considering each mutation as an independent event, ruling out any role for cumulative selection, and requiring evolution to achieve an exact, predetermined result."

Miller goes on to compare the similar faulty logic in "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism" to that in "Darwin's Black Box".

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[LoricaLady]

Cont. After all, each is usesless w/o the other, in fact useless until both are fully functional & fully attached. (But if you can show that is not true be sure and provide real data.) Then there's the egg. 4) Why & how would evo prepare an egg over aeons to be ready for the sperm to hit it before the sperm & whip (and of course the entire thing) are fully connected and fully functional? You're looking at irreducible complexity. Evo only gives you dataless theories tha defy science & logic.

[Desertphile]

@LoricaLady ; Why don't you answer the question? Give just one example of "irreducible complexity." Be the first on the planet to do so.

[LoricaLady]

@Desertphile I just gave you an example, the sperm with its flagellar motor and whip and the egg it has to be implanted into. Did you see all my posts that I left today? There are 3 preceding this one. There are more Qs for you to answer within them.

[Desertphile]

@LoricaLady ; I asked for an example of something that is "irreducibly complex."

[Sdrewski84]

Lady - I would like to debate. In fact I've received many compliments on my hard yet fast style of debating. Sometimes I debate many times a day, but this can leave one somewhat drained. Of course I have built up a solid stamina being a Master debater. Master debaters such as myself are always looking for something stimulating to get us going. Just watch out, because when I Master debate, I come on all over the place and I come on hard!!

[LoricaLady]

ANYONE: If you see no reply to transatlantic & possibly some other posters who come on this string - he has become one of several folk who follow me (& others) around YT with personal insults, name calling, accusations of lying and sometimes worse. I am happy to debate with those who are civil & objective, i.e. where true debate is possible. Only.

[transtlantic]

@LoricaLady

There are plenty of ways to explain how a molecular structure is what it is today. if you understand evolution. Ken Miller explained that quite well at the Dover trial. If you have any sort of evidence to oppose his claims, why didn't you presented them at the Dover trial?

"useless"... there are fish deep in the ocean, with no eyes, but they have the eye sockets. you can't explain such phenotype, without understanding evolutin theory.

Evo explains Modern Medicine.

[transtlantic]

@LoricaLady

2) again: observable, testable and repeatable: anyone trying to explain Plant speciation, with the observed transitional forms across the ages, plus the clear change of a population of individuals into new distict populations, clearly show evolution.

Where are the "assumptions"?

3) what "completion"? when there is variety? you can't even claim a "point of reference". to sustain your position of "IC". point us to one single human that is an example of what defines ALL human beings.

[transtlantic]

@LoricaLady

"all of life...is IC". which is a pure lie. There are humans with 3 chamber hearts, 3 kidneys, two pancreas,...ergo...variety disproves IC. There is variety to the "rotary motor" of the sperm cell, there are even sperm cells that have more than one "rotary motor". the point here is that there is no "rotary motor" at all. There is a structure formed by molecules. it's chemistry, not machinery.

Evolution explains how such structures evolved by looking to the diversity and the genes.

[LoricaLady]

@Desertphile Is this a game? I gave you an example of irreducible complexity. I;ve given this ex. to quite a few evo fans on the net before. All of them understood it was my ex. of i.c. so I am puzzled byyour repeated request. There is 0 way that evolution could synchronously build a rotary motor along with the whip it must move, and along with the egg that is going to be its eventual target, while all are "emerging" & useless in the aeons before completion. Evo can't prepare for the future.