Intelligent Design - Complexity
Behe’s main claim in “Darwin’s Black Box” is that cells contain structures that are “irreducibly complex”. This means that removing any single part from such a structure would cause it to not function.
- A mouse trap has several parts and all of them have to be in place for the trap to work
- .A bacterial flagellum is a tiny propeller attached to the back of some bacteria. The flagellum comprises about 30 different proteins, all precisely arranged. If any one of them is removed the flagellum stops spinning. Behe maintained that irreducible complexity presents Darwinism with “unbridgeable chasms.”
- Behe speculated that the designer might have assembled the first cell, essentially solving the problem of irreducible complexity, after which evolution might well have proceeded by more or less conventional means.