Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Hey there kids, it’s time again for some enlightenment in the form of juxtaposition. Today we’re going to talk about the argument from ignorance entitled irreducible complexity and how science disproves it.

The argument about irreducible complexity is simple, an organ like an eye for example couldn’t be of any use if it were half of an eye so the eye is irreducibly complex because if you make it any less of an eye it would not function. Similarly if you took a brick bridge that used only stone and no mortar at all it would require that all the stones in the pile rely on the others, remove one and the whole thing collapses ergo irreducibly complex.  In the way that an organ that has one purpose, and couldn’t serve that purpose well if it were any less than it is, it must be irreducibly complex.

The scientific refute of irreducible complexity is obviously more scientific, logical and straight forward without obvious logical fallacies. Irreducible complexity is an easy claim to make because of the fact that it requires little or no research to make a statement that something is irreducibly complex. Science however has to research and painstakingly work to fight the false allegation that anything is irreducibly complex. Using the scientific method we have found that things like our brains which may be considered irreducibly complex because of the functions that it accomplishes but it has been changing along with homo sapien evolution. It is more logical of an argument because it is based on study and theory (not theory in the mainstream sense which is closer to hypothesis but actual theory) and is peer reviewed. The peer review process for any scientific theory is a harsh one, a scientist wants to state a claim on something. so first he goes out and tests a hypothesis refines it into a theory and then he’s done right? wrong! he then needs to write on the study he had done and send it to peers. the peers then tear apart his theory, his hypothesis and probably his pride and then after a long process of rewriting and deleting parts of his life (or so it seems) then he can publish in a peer reviewed journal. And that’s for non controversial theories. Anyway i don’t point this out to prove that science is hard, though it is, i point it out simply to show that things need to be reviewed in science. However in non scientific fields it is not required to do anything but shoot your mouth off! The bacterial flagella motor is one of the common things that a ID (Intelligent design is the main belief behind irreducible complexity) believers will put forth, however if you do a google search on the bacterial flagella motor or if you read “the god delusion” by Richard Dawkins it will clear that one up real good, and will definitely be worth your while even if you’re a believer.

Wings, eyeballs and brains.

There have been irreducible complexity purveyors who believe that things such as wings would not be useful at all if they were anything less of a wing… this is SILLY TALK simply because penguins have wings that they use under the water as well as some other birds do in the air, it could be considered less of a wing than that of the other flying birds but it is perhaps more useful for a bird in this area of the world because flying has no evolutionary advantage for penguins. There are also the ‘flying squirrels’ who have well less of a wing than say a bat. but still the wings do their job for gliding, though the squirrels can’t flap their wings and fly long distances the gliding that they can accomplish is well enough for their species to accomplish whatever tasks are required by them.

Eyeballs, this is another one of those things that the woo guys over in the magical world of irreducible complexity like to put out there that humans have the most advanced eyes of all creatures and that they are irreducibly complex because if you cut an eyeball in half it wouldn’t work. Well let me just throw out there that humans don’t have the most advanced eyes and if a God made us and wanted us to be the best at everything wouldn’t he have given us the best of everything? like eyes? well i guess that’s another mark on the evolution side because the Mantis Shrimp has THE most advanced eyes of all the animal kingdom, it can move both eyes separately and can see three kinds of polarized light. We need glasses to see polarized light, these guys are born with it we should complain to god for better eyes, or perhaps you’re playing with yourself too much — you’ll go blind you know! And now to confront the irreducible complexity. C’mon, seriously you think that an eyeball that couldn’t see as good as our current eyeball would be as bad as not having an eyeball at all? well why don’t we ask the animal kingdom, there are animals out there like moles who have horrible eyesight but still have eyes, though their eyes are not as good as ours, and they can’t really see anything above blurred shapes and light and dark. I would consider that a lot less than a human eye, so irreducibly complex? i don’t think so!

Brains, this is an easy one. Our brains are not irreducibly complex because we have proof that our brains evolved along with us. look at prehistoric hominids, they have much smaller brain holes in their heads and yet still functioned enough to reproduce and even evolve into us eventually.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 2:11 am and is filed under Whatever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.