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Originally written by Stillness:

Switch the positioning and you get my logical development. Your claim of what I said is different.

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I’m not assuming anything about long time scales. You are. My conclusions are based off of observation.

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Originally written by Lord Safey:

The only thing against them is their commeinemt to the ISS. However NASA is researchhing alternate ways of meeting their commeinments to the ISS.

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Originally written by Tick tock tick tock tick tick.:

The argument makes no sense, though. Everything is irreducibily modular from interdependence. Eyes can't function without brains. Brains can't function without circulation. Circulation requires eukaryotic cells. Those cells need mitochondria. Mitochondria require proteins. Proteins don't work if you remove some amino acids. Amino acids can't exist if you, oh, rip off the amino group. Carbon atoms are irreducibly modular: they cannot act as carbon if you remove a proton.

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Everything is irreducibily modular from interdependence.

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I don’t know your definition of the term you placed upon me, but in this instance I’m going to insist that we use the established term. You all just need to understand it. Everything is not irreducibly complex, but a whole lot of stuff is.

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Originally written by Kelandon:

Catch up to the objection that has been made with regard to interdependent parts.

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I didn’t miss it, I just didn’t see anything that wasn’t addressed in the other posts. It sounds like your argument is semantic

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Originally written by Stillness:

What do you think Alo, is this an explicit detailed description or does it gloss over details?

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Yes, there are several large modules in the visual system, and abruptly removing any one of them makes it all useless. But this is absolutely not irreducibility in any sense relevant to evolution, because evolution is about changes far more gradual than anything as gross as abruptly removing an entire module.

Harping on about how removing nerves or lenses or retinas makes eyes fail, and calling that irreducible complexity, is sheer dodge. It has nothing to do with the actual issue at hand. I mean, congratulations: you've proven that eyes can't evolve by having modern lenses suddenly pop into modern eyes that were only missing lenses. If you can possibly find anyone who thinks eyes could develop that way, you can really set them straight. But if you imagined that scenario had anything to do with evolution, you were really out of touch.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

You're again making the leap from "We haven't seen it in our lifetimes" to "It didn't ever happen" (or at the very least "It probably didn't ever happen"). That leap is, as we have said over and over again, unjustified.

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Originally written by Stillness:

Let’s try this again. When you all see the phrase “irreducible complexity” it seems you are interpreting that to mean “this system can’t develop by means of evolution” or maybe “this system is can only arise by means of intelligent design.”

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It means that the parts that make it up work together to perform a function in such a way that if one part is removed the others become useless and the system fails.

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What we don’t see evolution doing is creating irreducibly complex structures. We know that intelligent agents can though. So from observation it is reasonable to conclude that these structures were created purposefully. If you want to get around observable reality you need a strong theory as to why we should.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

If 'irreducible' doesn't mean 'impossible to reduce', then you've been abusing language badly. If all it means is that things break if you suddenly tear big important chunks out of them, then why on earth have you been talking so much, in this discussion of evolution and design, about such an irrelevant banality?

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Originally written by Stillness:

I can’t imagine it and I have never seen a model that explicitly and quantitatively details such changes.

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Originally written by Dr. Johann Georg Faust:

I will be a real MaTA within about a month or two.

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Originally written by Niemand:

I spent most of the day today learning about applying to grad school. Now I feel like just giving up and hiding somewhere. Viewed from my current position it seems like an awfully daunting process.

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