kaos said:
We are all just tiny bacteria on peanuts in this giant turd of a universe.
But really...I never really went by the whole supreme being creating everthing idea.
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Tiny bacteria? simple even?
Take a look at this picture of the eubacterial flagellum. The flagellum is an ion-powered rotary motor, anchored in the membranes surrounding the bacterial cell. This schematic diagram highlights the assembly process of the bacterial flagellar filament and the cap-filament complex.
An irreducibly complex structure is defined as ". . . 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 effectively cease functioning." (Behe 1996a, 39) Why would such systems present difficulties for Darwinism? Because they could not possibly have been produced by the process of evolution:
"An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. .... Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on." (Behe 1996b)
The phrase "numerous, successive, slight modifications" is not accidental. The very same words were used by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species in describing the conditions that had to be met for his theory to be true. As Darwin wrote, if one could find an organ or structure that could not have been formed by "numerous, successive, slight modifications," his "theory would absolutely break down" (Darwin 1859, 191). To anti-evolutionists, the bacterial flagellum is now regarded as exactly such a case an "irreducibly complex system" which "cannot be produced directly by numerous successive, slight modifications." A system that could not have evolved!
It is the simpleist life yet it is very complex. A motor that if one part did not work, the whole operation falls apart!