The argument from irreducible complexity fails

ObservationsMy opponent firstly agrees that the irreducible complexity debate is one that should not be held in science, as irreducible complexity is in fact a philosophical issue. However, he juxtaposes this by holding the debate to a scientific standard, claiming that evolution's position is just a hypothesis, that it is neither testable nor repeatable, and many other things which hold the irreducible complexity debate to a scientific standard. Second, my opponent assumes firstly that evolution is false, and that, if irreducible complexity is true, then evolution is false. This clearly isn't true, as there is no premise in irreducible complexity that contradicts evolution happening. Third, while my opponent holds evolution to a high standard necessary (which it should be held to), he does not hold his arguments to the same standard. This is evident by his clear explicit assumptions, such as the assumption that the blood clotting system is irreducibly complex, saying "I am going to assume this to be true". Of course, even in a philosophical debate this is a sin, and we must ask whether an argument which is not just based slightly in assumptions but entirely is assumptions holds any weight. Contention One: examples exist of irreducible complexity To refer to the flagellum, my opponent's criticisms seem pointless - I do not seem to understand the criticisms levied. Miller's criticism of irreducible complexity is irrelevant, as I've clearly shown how to get from a basic cell membrane to a flagellum. I go at it from a different angle than he does. The 'official name' doesn't exist, it is a variant (because I need to simplify it to not go over everyone's - including my own - head) of Matzke's paper[1] on evolution. In both cases, they seem not to harm my case. For the diagram, I understand the confusion, as comparing the diagrams the difference seems a lot. However, the base of the ATP Synapse is simply the rings and connector. For all intents and purposes they could be one ring: the ring acts as the filter that gets in or out the right proteins or materiel. The periplasm is literally nothing: it is the space between the inner and outer membrane found on gram-negative bacteria (like the flagellum)[2]. The tube itself does not require explanation to evolve: it does in the same way that a cows become fatter, or dogs become better hunters: it is the accentuation of an already existent feature. This is clear by the fifth diagram showing all the steps together. Evolution at work: simple to complexHow do things evolve? Well, we start from the simplest microorganism parts, and we build on this to get to the complex. For example, I started with the cell membrane and built on it until we got to the flagellum, or at least a basic flagellum. We go from simple to complex because that's the route evolution takes. Going from complex to simple is very difficult - there are many routes one can take to simplify a system, and most lead to contradictions. However, going from simple to complex we can come up with a timeline of evolutionary process in a simple way. By starting at the complex and simplifying, we are going to run into many more problems - how do you proceed from here? Is this the right step? Should I add or take away? The reason that we come across problems, other than the difficulty of our imagination, is evolution doesn't think like that. Evolution simply builds on and streamlines from the very simple systems. Starting from the complex to go to the simple in fact is misrepresenting and misunderstanding evolution - not in a purposeful or malevolent way, but this misapplication of evolution is the source of many problems. Contention Two: Irreducible Complexity's intellectual ignoranceMy opponent understands half of my case here - it rests on ignorance. The problem I espouse, though, is a wholehearted agreement that it rests on the fact that there could be something else we don't know about. Both evolution and irreducible complexity's solution, if we accept this argument, rests on there not being something else we don't know about. It's not an assumption of ignorance, but an assumption of omniscience. For irreducible complexity to work, we have to have all the information. Any possibility that evolution took place disproves the hypothesis. Irreducible complexity cannot simply say "evolution cannot explain this", or the more accurate "evolution does not explain this", but instead has to say "only intelligence can explain this" or "only purposeful creation can explain this". If the latter is true, then evolution in this case does not exist. But if the former statements are true anywhere in the argument, then the argument hinges with bated breath on a contrary possibility by evolution. Indeed, this is the major part of my argument: we have to say belief in irreducible complexity changes, and its conclusions (such as a deity) are true or false depending on the time of day. Are we truly to say that evolution becomes true or false due to who has published the latest peer journal? The debate cannot end, as both sides can create new arguments making them possible. It simply makes proof dependent on who published first - a flip of the coin decides whether God exists. Contention Three: Irreducible Complexity is unfalsifiableThis leads on from my previous point: irreducible complexity is unfalsifiable. The debate will always rage, as any example can be given as irreducibly complex. To Quote Sir Popper:"The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say. "Unfalsifiable claims are unscientific. They are proven by everything around us, and disproven by nothing. There is no way for them to feasibly be wrong, because the claims are so broad, vague, and pragmatically useless, that they have sacrificed their reason d'etre for necessary truth. Irreducible complexity cannot be proven, or justified, with any meaningful claims. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation. This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses. " If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this. [4] Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. "When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this. " Four: Irreducible Complexity says nothingThis is my final point. Irreducible complexity requires a creator, but there are no characters of this creator. Personal, impersonal, material, omniscient - none of these are necessary characteristics. The creator can be anything - or nothing. 1 - . http://www.talkdesign.org...2 - . http://www.uniprot.org...3 - . http://www.stephenjaygould.org...;4 - . http://www.eurekalert.org...