Behe's illogical challenge to biological evolution, the so-called "irreducible complexity" that sells books to science-ignorant creationists, has suffered yet another blow.
"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.”"[source, original on PLoS ONE]
No surprises here–after all, the most primitive nervous system is found in the Cnideria.
[Jones] "found Behe's testimony wholly unconvincing, noting that irreducible complexity was not evidence against evolution, and that the biochemical systems touted by Behe were not irreducibly complex anyway. Behe's credibility was damaged also by his admission that ID's definition of science was so loose that it could encompass astrology, and by his fatal assertion that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God."
~ Jerry Coyne, The Great Mutator, in The New Republic
Complexity Reductio
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