Just like a mousetrap

The Mousetrap Rev. Andrew Paton Michael Behe is Professor of Biochemistry at the Department of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University high on a hill above I-78. From the many articles critical of his work you can see he touched a raw nerve in the scientific community 5 years ago. Michael studies cells. He observes highly complex factories filled with processes that have to serve each other in absolute precision. Without this synergy, life is impossible at the micro level. In 1996 he published a book called "Darwin's Black Box - the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" In it he coined the idea of "Irreducible Complexity." By this he meant a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to fail. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to such a system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there were such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. While everyone around him was scratching their heads as to what he meant he came up with the Mousetrap illustration. Michael says a mousetrap couldn't have slowly evolved because each of the parts has no purpose other than the one they serve in relation to the whole. He suggests that cell components are the same. In other words Behe is claiming that, like the mousetrap, a single living cell had to have been thought out and constructed all at once before life on the cellular level could be possible. You can imagine the annoyance among those who don't want to see intelligent design in the universe. 12 of the top Darwinian Scientists have each published rebuttal arguments. Some contradict each other but most lean towards H Allen Orr's summation: "Behe's colossal mistake is he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become, because of later changes, essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required." Simple when you put it that way eh? No? Ok let's go back to the mousetrap. Behe critic, Kenneth Miller of Brown University, said of the Mousetrap: Take away 2 parts - the catch and the metal bar and you still have a fully functional machine that makes a functional tie clip. Take away the spring and you still have a 2 part key chain. The remaining catch could be a fishhook and the wooden base a paperweight. Science understands that the bits and pieces of supposedly irreducibly complex systems may have originally had different but useful functions. Here's what they are saying: One day there was this wooden paperweight in a drawer. Somehow by wind or earthquake (natural causes) the drawer would open and close by itself and each time a new object would fall in. A fishhook fell in and after many years a helpful relationship developed whereby the paperweight helped the fishhook do a better job. They had no inbuilt desire to become a mousetrap. Many years later they met a spring and together the 3 of them found they could abandon their erstwhile functions and do better work as a tie clip. A long time later the metal bar showed up and, hey presto, the mousetrap was born. You can, with much faith, believe that about the origin of cells - a million times more complex than a mousetrap - or you could believe that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth:" ...the Bible's first words. Read similiar articles like The Mousetrap