Evolution Redux

As an update to this earlier post about evolution, I ran across this very interesting article which also mentions another key bit of evidence. A report on another nail in the coffin of "irreducible complexity," from WSJ:

To investigate this puzzle, biologists led by Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon reconstructed an ancestral receptor. They first analyzed receptors for steroid hormones in 59 species, including primitive jawless fish and skates. Then, in a process called gene resurrection, they worked backward to infer what the gene for the ancestral receptor was, and actually made the receptor in the lab: a molecule that last existed on earth 450 million years ago.

Testing various hormones on the ancestral receptor, the scientists found that both aldosterone and another one fit. The ancestral receptor, therefore, was fully employed acting as the keyhole for this second hormone. When aldosterone appeared on the scene by random mutation, it co-opted the existing receptor, the researchers conclude in today's issue of Science.

The findings, says Christoph Adami of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, Claremont, Calif., "solidly refute" ID.

This is not the first such finding. Michael Behe's iconic bacterial flagellum was exploded a couple of years ago, when someone found a precursor structure -- with quite a different function -- that only needed the addition of one molecule to become the flagellum in question. Behe, of course, wily old sophist that he is, took the tack that the precursor was irreducibly complex. The stance on this new finding is that the receptor isn't really very complex at all, so it's irrelevant.

It's called making up the rules as you go along. It may make for good creationism, however you want to disguise it, but it ain't science.