| Subject: Mousetraps |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 10/ 9/04 10:14pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "I never said the problem was ignored, but..." on 10/ 9/04 1:24pm
>
>I never said the problem has been ignored, but what
>Behe claims is that it hasn't been satisfactorily
>accounted for, that there does not (yet?) exist
>rigorously developed explanation of how blood
>cascading could have evolved or how the problems of
>gradualistic development could be solved.
Let's do some thinking on our own here, about how seemingly irreducible systems might come to pass. We'll consider a mousetrap, because that's the example Behe is fond of using arguing that the entire trap is "irreducibly complex".
Let's suppose that roughly two billion years ago, we start construction of our mousetrap, but we've got one teeny problem; we don't know what a mousetrap is. We don't even know the word "mousetrap" or even what the function will be at the end. Nonetheless, as outsiders, suppose you and I know that this process is going to yield a mousetrap.
To start with, we have a spring. The spring has come to be through various combinations over time, as the spring gives a slight edge to those who have a predisposition to have it. We take our spring, and we at first combine it with a cog. We find that that creation immediately dies. The cog isn't compatible with the spring.
Next, we try a sprocket, with similar luck. We try pogo sticks, and daffodils, and shovels, and some of them sort of work, but we know that these mechanisms are not going to yield us an ultimate mousetrap. Finally, something resembling a bar with a little hook comes into existence, and when coupled with the spring, we find that our creation still lives. So far, so good.
Next, we fight around for let's say 500 million years with the next part; say the piece of wood. Then we fight around for 200 million years with a lure piece. All of our mistakes disappear, but we have the advantage of throwing combination after combination at our creation keeping only what seems to work.
Finally, we get all the fundamental pieces present. The problem then is to get those pieces to work. For that, we need another 100 million years, and some shuffling of the ordering of information.
At long last, though we've spent almost a billion and a half years, we see the result; our glorious mousetrap. Will the mousetrap work without any of the other pieces? It might be able to, but it wouldn't do as good of a job. Are all the pieces interdependent? Sure. Did they START that way? Of course not. We are only observing the end picture after all of our other mistakes have been thrown away.
That's how cascading blood clotting systems COULD have evolved. Finding the evidence of such a thing after nearly all of our mistakes have been thrown away is going to be very difficult if not impossible.
Yet, it isn't a problem for us that something appears so interdependent on the pieces that the missing of one piece would screw it all up, because we know how we got there; by brute forcing all of our mistakes and ideas until the thing was eventually made. It wasn't "dropped in" at once just chomping at the bit to do its job. The puzzle pieces were simply made to fit because they had no other choice but to get along.
And...we had two billion years to get the job done.
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