evolutionists: Where can I find evidence of reducible complexity?

Question

Do you know any websites that show studies done by credible organisations that provide evidence of reducible complexity?

For those who don't know what reducible complexity is, let me explain...

Darwin's (and any other's) theory of evolution is based on the premise that every organism and plant evolved slowly over time. If this is the case, there should be evidence of a VERY gradual change between species (macroevolution) in the fossil record. (I was told there is no evidence of this, particularly in the Cambrian period, where there was an explosion of new, species).

Also, I was told that scientists have for years been trying to reduce the world's most simple organism (a bacteria consisting of about 250 genes) step by step, but each time they remove one aspect of the DNA, the organism dies.

What I am asking is, where can I find evidence that a single backward step in evolution results in a living organism?

Thank you for your elucidation. :-)

(This Q is in R&S b/c it relates to atheism vs theism.)

Thanks for all those links, guys. I will have a read! Note: I want to see EVIDENCE of reducible complexity... ie an experiment OBSERVING successful devolution (not just a supposition that one species evolved/devolved from a similar one... I want PROOF that my eyes can see!)

I want to see evidence (links and quotes) not opinions and supposition, peoples. :-)

Justsyd, that's a good point you make about structures changing their uses over the course of evolution.

You also said that it's dangerous to say, "Scientists have not yet proven X." Well, that's true, but to believe in something without evidence is a form of faith.... ie religion.

Evolution is taught as a paradigm (ie a proven theory), but half of the evidence I have read for it could be equally applied to theistic models.

What I want to SEE is evidence (not theories or explanations) from an experiment, showing that scientists have OBSERVED an organism which has been devolved and survived the experience. A single-celled organism would be the easiest to observe this phenomenon.

Where is the OBSERVABLE, REPEATABLE evidence for evolution? (ie evidence that could not possibly also support ID.)

Until such evidence is found and elucidated, evolution will continue to belong in the R&S section.

The Bog Nug, you're taking my Q the wrong way. I'm not saying ID is proven if evolution is disproven. What I am saying is that evolution is supposed to be scientific, so SHOW ME SOME EVIDENCE!

Thanks Meat Mountain. That's nice.

I want evidence.... I truly do. I'm a scientists at heart, even though I do believe in God.

I used to be a theistic evolutionist. I have no problem with proofs of evolution. It won't rock my boat at all.

My problem is I've recently attended an ID seminar, which has rocked my belief in evolution. I would like some proof, please!

(Not just supposition and insults, as many people have given here.)

Thank you to those who posted links. I'll read them after I get back from Uni today.

PaulCyp - The 747 is not a good argument. Aeroplanes are intelligently designed.

I have no problem with microevolution... that's obvious. But will it ever be possible for a single-celled organism to form all on its own? Can the beginning of evolution occur without ID?

I read this link today: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Lifes_Origins_Were_Easier_Than_Was_Thought.html

If only 200 genes are needed to bridge the gap between small inert proteins and a "living" organism, this still leaves a gap where there is no proof that evolution could have occurred.

Why is ID excluded as a theory of the origins of life? Neither theory has concrete proof, and both have logical merit, so true scientists should be open-minded (objective) about both.

Answer 1

a common heard thing that is supposed to be irreducably complex according to ID is the Bacterial flagellum. But its components are functional as well. See:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

where the idea of irreducable complexity is deconstructed...

the idea is not btw that evolution can be reversed. You are asking for proof of something that nobody claims is happening (devolution).

And indeed, in some periods there is much faster diversification than in others. Read Gould, his explanations of this phenomenon (punctuated equilibrium) are very accessable.

edit: ID does not have any predicting power. ToE makes clear predictions to what kinds of things we may observe. ID says that something designed everything the way it is. Yeah, but how and why?

this page describes a person's path from creationism to ToE, it may help:

http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve2.html

you seem to have the same kind of enquiring mind he has. Which is an awesome thing, but means you have to find out everything for yourself... people can point and argue but they will never convince you. So I will try to point you to where I hope you can find out more. Of course eventually there is nowhere to go but the universities and the paleontologic excavations.

Answer 2

Reducible complexity is everywhere in nature. Let's take the Creationists' favorite example - the mammalian eye. According to this argument, the eye is irreducibly complex. It has many different parts, all of which are essential to its function. Take away one part and it doesn't work. Therefore it could not have evolved gradually because what advantage would most of the parts be, when all the parts are needed to make it work? What good is half an eye?

This silly argument is like saying that a Boeing 747 has many essential parts without which it couldn't fly; therefore airplanes could not have gradually evolved from a simpler model to the present complex models. What good is half an airplane? However, the Wright Brothers' model was much less than half of a 747, yet it flew just fine.

Likewise, when we look in nature we find animals that have eyes with a retina and an optic nerve, but no lens. This isn't half an eye however. This is a fully functioning eye that serves the needs of that animal perfectly. Just a simpler model. Take away the lens from a mammalian eye and it doesn't work, but that doesn't mean there cannot be a fully functional eye without a lens. If we continue to look at existing animal species we can find every possible step in the evolution of eyes, beginning with simple light-sensitive pigment spots that allow an organism to move toward light; then light-sensitive pigment enclosed in a membrane or other specific structure; then light sensitive pigments concentrated in the back portion of the structure; then attachment of a primitive nerve fiber to the back of the same structure. And so on, right up to the present day mammalian eye.

So, irreducible complexity is an irrelevancy. Evolution only demands that a simpler system can be improved upon, gradually becoming more complex. It doesn't demand that you be able to take apart a complex system and still have it work. That is nonsense.

Answer 3

No, there should not be evidence of a VERY gradual change between species in the fossil record because of the way speciation is OBSERVED to occur in modern populations. A small subset of the population evolves relatively rapidly in to a different species (and then there is stasis). The stratigraphic record in any one place has coarse resolution (in tens of thousands of years absolute max except in extremely rare circumstances), is episodic (full of time gaps) and transgresses environments as you go up or down the stratigraphic section. And the outcropping record only represents, for any one time, a tiny proportion of the past geography and species ranges. So how would you expect to see much evidence of speciations in the fossil record??

That said, among some types of planktic foraminifera (incredibly adundant, very highly studied, very stable oceanic geologic record but still coarse resolution) you do routinely see gradual morphing between species. No, I am not aware of any websites that show this. If you're looking for reliable scientific info, the scientific literature is the place to look, not the web (or better yet look under the microscope yourself).

What you do see is an overwhelming abundance of is transitional species. Exactly as predicted by evolution. Including within and preceeding the 'Cambrian Explosion'.

And you seem to have been conned that a modern bacteria is somehow representative of the first organisms. Todays bacteria have been evolving for as long as anything else. Chopping off some of it's DNA and it dieing is no different to chopping off a chunk of your DNA and you dying. The few scientists are trying to PRODUCE the simplest CELLED organism possible today, not back track bacterias evolution.

Evolution does not predict simple "reducible complexity" that can be undone to uncover the ancestral organism underneath (though if you really wanted you could often do this to go a short way back). Once a genetic sequence or trait is no longer needed, it is lost, either because it becomes a hinderance (in the very least on energy), or because it can accumulate mutations to no effect, or because it changes function. The long-since ancestral organism isn't there, in-tact, underneath.

Answer 4

Well hold on a second. You are taking the Behe idea of irreducible complexity turning it on it's head and saying show us this and if you can't it must be irreducibly complex. Which is actually an absurd way to debate scientifically.

The main item Behe used in the past was the bacteria flagellum by saying that if you removed any of the proteins that make it up it wouldn't work. So how could it evolve naturally? Which is the crux of your argument in a specific case.

Some scientists started studying the genes of the flagellum and found that a system used to secrete proteins was probably what eventually evolved into the flagellum. There are papers published on this that outline the different genes and proteins and how the evolution could have occurred. I suggest you read those for detailed information if you are serious in learning.

Answer 5

Evertything changes, there is no backward step, just a complete moving forward into change. A man and a woman have sex and when the sperm with its 23 chromosones mixes with the eggs 23, you get a changed, evolved version of you and your partner.

DNA, each cell has it, it is a library of knowledge that each cell has at its grasp. The cells in my toes are the same has the cells in my brain, each is just using what it wants from the library and is using it's knowledge to be a toe. It could also be transplanted to any other area and it could funtion like a brain cell, because all it has to do is look it up in the DNA and it can now act like a brain cell.

Plants cells are a good example of DNA being a map and library for each cell. A plant's cell can change into what ever it needs, a cell on the stem spilts and its son now goes off in a new direction to make a whole new stem o leaf or a bud or a fruit.

or just watch a frog evolve, you wont get to many fossil tadpoles, the 'link' in evolvtion of it, you will get millions of more fossils of frogs, never knowing that it made these changes to evolve.

Answer 6

It’s always dangerous to base your argument on some version of “scientists have never found X” (with X in this case being components of a complex structure existing and serving a function before the rest of the components showed up). That’s because those darn scientists keep making discoveries. If you want to say they “have never found . . . ,” you’d better understand that what you really mean is “they haven’t found it yet.”

Which brings us to the latest discovery in evolution: DNA needed to make synapses, the sophisticated junctions between neurons, in none other than the lowly sea sponge. Considered among the most primitive and ancient of all animals, sea sponges have no nervous system (or internal organs of any kind, for that matter), notes Todd Oakley, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But, he adds, they “have most of the genetic components of synapses.”

The first neurons and synapses appeared something like 600 million years ago, in a group of animals called cnidarians which, today, include hydra, sea anemones and jellyfish. Sea sponges are even older. “We look at the evolutionary period between sponges and cnidarians as the period when the nervous system came into existence, about 600 million years ago,” says Ken Kosik, co-director of UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute.

He, Oakley and the rest of the team listed all the genes known to be operative in synapses in the human nervous system. They then examined the sponge genome. “That was when the surprise hit,” said Kosik. “We found a lot of genes to make a nervous system present in the sponge.”

What were genes for synapses doing in a sponge, which has no neurons and therefore no synapses? This is where the irreducible-complexity crowd makes a fatal error: they assume that whatever the function of a biological component (gene, protein, biochemical pathway . . . ) today must have been its function in the past. For instance, of the 42 proteins known to make up the bacterial flagellum, 40 have been found to serve as ion channels or something else in bacteria. It is therefore perfectly plausible that they really were hanging around—serving some function that would have allowed evolution and natural selection to keep them around generation after generation—until they all got together and formed a flagellum.

So it seems to be with the genes for synapses. The sea sponge did not use them for their current purpose, but that doesn’t mean the genes had no use. “We found this mysterious unknown structure in the sponge, and it is clear that evolution was able to take this entire structure and, with small modifications, direct its use toward a new function,” said Kosik. “Evolution can take these ‘off the shelf’ components and put them together in new and interesting ways.”

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/06/06/irreducible-complexity-is-reducible-afterall.aspx

Answer 7

while evolution as a theory is not in question the mechanism/variety of mechanisms are still in debate.
Read up on punctuated equilibrium.
Read up on hox genes afterwards if you still have energy. Or any book on developmental biology will have heaps of data.

Am not quite clear what exactly you are asking for, but cave animals lose functionality of their eyes very quickly and without harm to the rest of the organism. Equally skin pigmentation.
Look up mexican blind cave fish for an example.
It used to be put into a different genus, because it looks pretty different from the closest relative, but as it actually can interbreed it's now in the same genus Astyanax.
Loss of vision is true for about every exclusively cave dwelling species.

Answer 8

Aw honey, the whole Bebe thing has been blown up hundreds of times over. Here's a link. (tired sigh)

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/02/reducible_complexity.php

This bit will be most useful I think: The incredibly smart, handsome and active Ian Musgrave has a piece on Panda's Thumb on Behe's key example, the clotting cascade, showing that all the homologues of the mammalian clotting cascade can be found doing other things in other organisms, and that it could very well have evolved by hijacking prior functions to a new task.

Answer 9

"but each time they remove one aspect of the DNA, the organism dies"

That is not true. Bateria continually mutate and lose information in their genome but, in successful species, it will be advantageous either by mutating to produce a different protein or just losing a protein that hindered it in its current environment.

This is also not true of eukaryotes as most primates (including humans), guinea pigs and several species of fruit bats have damaged genes that produce Vitamin C in other animals. We've gotten around this by eating things that produce it though.

Remember: "Life finds a way."

Answer 10

No complete fossil record exists. Many of the species we know to have existed in the past are represented by just a handful of fossils. No evolutionist would claim to be able to explain the exact progression of evolution on the road to man and other modern species. Their is a tremendous amount of evidence that Darwin was right though.

You just have to have faith.