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Permalink Reply by Reggie on October 19, 2009 at 6:38pm

The car analogy is fine, but like most analogies, can only go so far before it breaks down. For one, we are comparing the evolution of inanimate objects to biological objects. There is enough difference there to kill any analogies between the two with only minor scratching of the surface, no matter which side is using it.

Bottom line is that modern biology can and does account for complex features arising from more simplistic forms.

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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on October 19, 2009 at 5:14pm

quoting myself: "i don't see the connection between a carriage and a car other than it's a more sophisticated form of transportation."

the fault is mine for not explaining myself better. of course they're similar- and of course it's a horseless carriage.

but what makes a car a car- is the engine - which did not evolve from the horse or carriages, but rather from other, more primitive engines. "Cars" were born as a fusion between two distinctly separate realms of ideas- just like any good innovation- carriages and engines.

if you say they're descendant from one another in the sense that sometime in history someone looked at a carriage and said "gee i wonder if i can make that thing propel itself"- then yes, engines came from carriages.

but i'd throw a wild guess in saying that the thought process that led to the first engine was probably more related to chimneys and cooking than to automobiles- and that the two were only fused together much later on.

this discussion could not have digressed more :)

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on October 19, 2009 at 6:34pm

Irreducible complexity has beat up badly since Michael Behe brought it to the spot light at the Dover trial (maybe even before that).

This video is my favorite though:

It usually shows its flaws quite early on, because removing parts could make it function as something else. I've not seen "smallest simplest cell" used before this video; but I think Dave and Doone cover fairly well; just because we are looking at the simplest we know of doesn't mean something simpler doesn't exist. Although we have labs that have started producing abiogenisis-like conditions and results, we have not yet observed full abiogenisis, so we don't know what the most simply cell might look like.

A third question I might add to the end of your original post there: why did the designer allow so many flaws in the things he designed?

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