On 8 May 2014 at 4:14, Richard Aiken wrote:

>
> On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:43 AM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:
>     On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 12:05:24AM -0400, Richard Aiken wrote:
>     > Those favoring irreducible complexity have a point that a chemical
>     > process with ~23 steps (none of which do anything alone or in any
>     other
>     > combination of each other)
>
> They can stop right there. Those steps *do* do something without the
> full cycle. I don't know when your text was written, so maybe it's
> just obsolete rather than wilfully blind.
> IIRC, the point was that parts of the cycle do not do anything useful
> to *that* organism. That is, the organism doesn't gain any benefit
> from any of the intermediate steps, only from the end product of the
> full process.

Sorry, but the article actually says the exact opposite.

Just because those steps don't do anything useful other than as part
of the Krebs cycle in the *current* organism doesn't mean they
weren't steps in some *other* process in ancestor organisms.

They've even found evidence of those other uses in some cases. Which
leads to the ID folks demanding that they *prove* that it was true
for all steps.

This is the same game as the old "where are the intermediate
fossils?" BS. They ask that, then when an intermediate is found,
demand why there aren't intermediates between it and the original
two.

In short, they are playing "move the target", *knowing* that finding
what they want is nigh on impossible. And when it is found, they
shift targets because the odds of finding evidence (that they'll be
forced to accept) for *all* the steps are virtually nil.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com