Okay, fair enough. Nice to have "talked" with you. Best wishes.

Mike Behe

Note: OK, this is obviously an anticlimactic response, but I would like to say that this is the only time I am ever aware of Prof. Behe implying that irreducible complexity is inconclusive.

This is what he has said in the past: "To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved."

Does my web site disprove biochemical design? No, but I think it proves that it, as an idea, is inconclusive. By imagining how a complex system like a mousetrap could arise by natural selection, I have demonstrated that it may not be impossible for natural selection to be used to explain any other example.

IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY IS AN OPINION.

The Intelligent Design Movement falls apart as legitimate science if irreducible complexity is shown to be inconclusive. If IC is inconclusive, an Intelligent Designer can not be falsified or verified through the scientific method.

Is there an Intelligent Designer? Who knows? I'd like to think that there is. Hey, you're free to believe what you like, it's just not science.

Another Note: Some people have suggested that Prof. Behe was not really agreeing with me as much as he was brushing me off. There is obviously an attitude of, "yeah whatever" in his response. But then why respond at all? I made it clear to him that he did not have to. Was he just being polite? Sure, he's a polite guy, but he could have said, "I respectfully disagree" or any one out of an infinite number of responses without agreeing with me.

Certainly he can e-mail me again in the future and tell me he didn't mean what he has said here. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, until someone can demonstrate that IC is quantifiable and legitimate science, I'll let the evidence speak for itself.

In other words, if Michael Behe would like his hypothesis of irreducible complexity to be taken seriously by his fellow scientists, he needs to demonstrate mathematically that the probability of a complex biological system spontaneously appearing from nowhere is GREATER than the probability of it evolving from simpler structures. If he can not do that, he only has half of an argument.

Irreducible complexity is scientifically inconclusive just like a hypothesis of how a bacterial flagellum might have evolved by natural selection is. There are weaknesses on both sides. But we also have many positives on the side of evolution through natural selection that do qualify it scientifically and that's the difference.

A Final Note: I don't doubt Professor Behe when he says that evolution on the molecular level looks bleak for Darwinism. I'm no Biochemist, so what do I know? He may be right. Perhaps a strict neo-Darwinian theory is insufficient to explain evolution on the molecular scale. It is very possible that we still have much more to learn. But, where will our motivation to learn more come from if we have already decided that what we are looking at is irreducibly complex?