The Mouse trap (Philosophy)?

Question

a man named Behe, dissects Darwin’s natural selection theory by using his irreducibly complex system of the humble mousetrap. All the pieces of the mousetrap have to be in place before you can catch any mice. In comparison, during the process of natural selection, the systems involved must already be intact for the process to function.
Behe seems to have no insight as to how Intelligent Design is created. You can not compare any kind of human design to a Design that is intelligently made. I don’t think Behe realized that the trap could be broken down and used for other things besides its inteneded pourpose. (ex the bottom of the mouse trap could be used as a paper weight)

Answer 1

you losing me a little bit with the "intelligent design",,,,, and no comparison to human design,,,, humans are intelligent,,,,, and i believe nature gives us a basis for our designs,,,,,,,
but anyway,,,, to me he is just saying all the pieces , that are required, must be in place for natural selection to occur, and i believe that is true,,,,,,
one example, the most fit survive, but depending on the circumstances,,,,, the environment,,,,, the place,,, one group or another will be the most fit,,,,,,, all the pieces must be in place, to determine, say for humans, if the most fit are ones gifted mentally or physically or both,,,,,
to me, he is using the mouse trap, just to represent the circumstance,,,,
i dont believe Darwin ever put down the importance of situational circumstance, in his natural selection theory,,,,,,,the group best suited to survive/flourish,,, in a particular environment, would,,,,,, the environment (mouse trap) played a key role,,,, a variation in it would result in a different result

Answer 2

A mousetrap is a poor example to use. In discussions I prefer to use the example of an eye, coupled with some concepts I got from Douglas R. Hofstadter. For an eye to be of any use at all, the photosensetive cells need to appear on the surface of the body, in an area that is protected yet in the right orientation to be of aid in sensing. For example, if a critter evolved an eye on the sole of it's foot, on the hands, behind the ears, on it's back, or anywhere else, it would be of no use. Likewise it would need to simultaneously evolve an optic nerve and a center to interpret the signals coming from the receptors. I should clarify, I'm not even discussing lenses, retinas, tear ducts, or anything else- just photosensetive cells, like very primitive animals make use of. To make it harder, once the animal had evolved the cells, nerves, connections, brain centers, etc., it would somehow need to know what to do with this new sensory organ. Don't imagine it as giving a blind person sight or a deaf person hearing, (we already own the tools to learn how to interpret those senses) imagine it as giving a guinea pig sonar. Likewise, a dinosaur, which had spent millions of years learning through natural selection NOT to jump off tall cliffs, would need to know to do this once it had evolved the requisite feathers, membranes, muscles, lightness of body, etc. that it would need to be able to fly. It would also need to know how to control itself in the air- a feat hard enough for humans to do with vastly simplified and refined flight models. It would need to know how to flare properly, to avoid a catastrophic introduction to the ground. Natural selection is not flawed- it's just a term for those animals (or humans) unfit to live dying. You might as well devise a theory of mice not being able to lift large boulders. It's the idea of macro-evolution that is flawed. We can know this without knowing how everything came to be. Scientists knew that the sun was not a giant burning ball of coal long before they knew what it really was.

Answer 3

an old or new mouse trap works if the mouse trap is broken or wears out and is no longer able to do what it was created to do it would be the equivalant of death , as long as every mouse trap does what it was intended to do , then natural selection would be the element of death , which would be the item not being able to do what it was created to do anymore .
natural selection is a crock , it is where you think you have supremacy over another , when if all the ugly people got together and killed all the beautiful people , would the new beautiful by the old system then be determined as ugly , as the majority is usually determined as there is strength in numbers phenomenon of majority rules

Answer 4

Wow thats cool!