...How about for and against evolution of the human eye and 'just' 3 parts of the function the iris, lens and retina. You can leave out the optic nerve...etc., and focus, no pun intended, on an argument for or against.
'My' assertation: There is not enough time in the universe (given 7 to 10 billion years) to accomplish the formation of the different organic materials that are all but useless without each other (that is the lens retina or iris)
W&P. yes, this is the standard build up to the notion of irreducible complexity. The problem is that all it consists of is an argument from personal incredulity. The hypothesis for irreducible complexity is offered in a form that is unfalsifiable. Its basic form is:
1) Structure X is too complex to have evolved via natural processes.
2) Therefore, Intelligent Design.
When one asks an ID salesman how one tests the hypothesis, they issue what is called a Tu Quoque. It is a simple device that shifts the burden to the opponent by issuing a challenge to disprove the hypothesis.
So when you ask an IDer how one tests the notion of Irreducible Complexity, they say, "Simple, all you have to do is show how X evolved. Then you have falsified Irreducible Complexity.
The basic problem besides the Tu Quoque is that it is also offered in an argument form called an Appeal To Ignorance. This is a logical fallacy that seeks to prove a proposition by appealing to the fact that no one happens to know if an alternative proposition is true.
It has the form: "there is no evidence against P, therefore P." Or, "there is no evidence for P, therefore Not P."
In this case it also relies on proving the negative, which is impossible when it comes to science. For example, the hypothesis: "There can be no green swans." In order to prove that, you would have to examine every swan that ever lived, every swan that is living now, and every swan that will ever live.
And we are still on step 1. Notice that there is no logical connectin between #1 above, regarding what evolution cannot do, and #2, the conclusion of Design.
This is also a logical fallacy called the Excluded Middle. It has the form, "If not A, then Z." The problem with this is that it leaves out all the other letters, B through Y, but provides no support for doing so. It assumes but does not support the false dichotomy that the answer must be either A or Z.
Here is an example of why this is fallacious. I put $100 on my kitchen table last night. This morning it was gone. I can prove that W&P stole it. It turns out that my wife had a good alibi for last night, so it must be W&P who stole it.
As you can see, there is an "excluded middle" here which consists of the entire rest of the world's population. Not to mention other explanations, such as wind from last night storm came through the open window and blew the bills under the stove.
As you can see, the leap from A to Z (not evolution, therefore design) is a false dichotomy which is a special case of the excluded middle.
For me to prove that W&P stole my $100 I would need something more than an alibi for my wife. I would need to demonstrate that other pieces of evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that W&P stole my money and that evidence would need to be unique to that hypothesis and not jsut evidence that any old person may have stolen it.
The notion of Irreducible complexity is offered within this cloud of 3 or 4 basic logical fallacies with nothing more than just a dare for someone else to disprove it. They look for something in biology for which all the research on its evolution has not been done yet and declare it Irreducibly Complex. If someone happens to figure out the evolutionary pathway, they just cross it off their IC list and look for another thing to declare as IC.
...There are other eyeball 'growth rate' arguments with extrapolated mathematics behind it that are for and against evolution, but I prefer an example as this.
Same here. The eye could not have evolved, but nothing testable about the hypothesis except a dare for someone to demonstrate how the eye evolved. I can't comment on the math you mentioned since you didn't provide a reference.
The simple cell, functionality being vastly more complex than any of our most advanced computers, interesting fact, does it prove anything?
Yes it proves that humans fall very short compared to nature when it comes to making complex stuff. We seem to have trouble making suns, planets, and galaxies, too.
This is a simpler one that has the same problems but also appeals to laymen more directly through an appeal to personal incredulity. Besides having the same problems as Irreducible Complexity, its other problems are better demonstrated by reducing it to its components:
1) Humans make certain things (incomplete list provided).
2) Nature makes certain things (other incomplete list provided)
3) Therefore nature cannot make certain other more complex things.
4) Therefore Intelligent Design.
The problem here is that there is nothing but an appeal to the fact that humans work hard to create certain complex things. We have an emotional response to this because we can identify with it. The next step is to point out that there are even more complex things in nature. Since we are already feeling the pain of identifying with humans making complex things, we leap to the conclusion that nature could not have made stuff that is even more complex.
So we conclude that someone must have come along and helped nature do that.
The missing logic here is any hypothesis that demonstrates limits to what nature can do. It relies only on distracting us by pumping up our intutiion about what might be "really hard" for nature to make.
Yes, cells are more complex than anything we make. But so what? We don't do very well making stars, planets, and galaxies either. Does that say something about stars and galaxies or does that just speak to our limiitations at the present time.
It might very well be that there is a limit to the complexity of what nature can produce, but until someone forms a testable hypothesis about the limits of nature, it is just a feeling that we have. No testable hypothesis, no science.
In fact, most of this stuff is argued in such a way as to appeal to the flawed intuition of laymen, rather than providing a scientific argument. This is because the audience is not science but laymen. This is why there is a big hue and cry for public debates for this stuff and for climate science as well. Because the debaters don't have to do science. All they have to do is sway the lay jury with an emotional argument.
Appropriate for this site - The reproductive system. Very complex, and enourmously difficult to prove non-design. (using contrapositive argument)
that is like "If a number is not divisible by two then it is not even (true)".
Without the feeling and desire for sex, would we even reproduce?
I don't know, but flowers seem to do ok with sexual reproduction. I wonder how much desire they have?
This is pretty much the same thing. Appeal to the incredulity of laymen. Sex is complex, how could nature make that, I don't know, therefore intelligent design.
Still no testable hypothesis for the need for design.
these are a couple examples I came up with, would like to hear some of yours.
W&P, so yes these are examples of what we call an appeal to personal incredulity. It has this basic form:
1) Golly gee that looks really complicated.
2) I have no idea how that could have come about.
3) Therefore, Intelligent Design.
And I don't have examples of my own of that because it has no value for producing a testable hypothesis.
But I will come back and demonstrate how we create a testable hypothesis for the theory of evolution over deep time. It is the same way we create testable hypotheses for such things as Newton's Laws of Motion for celestial objects that are far away.
In both cases, we don't have access to the objects themselves to experiment on. And in both cases we make inductive leaps from things we have observed locally in space and time to things that are either very far away or far back in deep time.
The problem of testing inductive leaps in scientific hypotheses was solved about 400 years ago. It is no mystery how we test theories like evolution over billions of years. We do it the same way we test Newton's Laws on distant planets and galaxies.
In the meantime, consider how one might test Newton's Law of Motion, F = MA (which predicts the acceleration of a given mass when subject to a given force) for the planet Neptune without being able to go to the planet Neptune and apply a force to it and see how it accelerates.
