Editing Irreducible complexity (section)

===Creationism===
Versions of the irreducible complexity argument have been common in [[young Earth creationism|young Earth creationist]] (YEC) [[creation science]] journals. For example, in the July 1965 issue of [[Creation Research Society]] Quarterly [[Harold W. Clark]] described the complex interaction in which [[Prodoxidae|yucca moths]] have an "inherited action pattern" or instinct to fertilize plants: "Before the pattern can be inherited, it must be formed. But how could yucca plants mature seeds while waiting for the moths to learn the process and set the pattern? The whole procedure points so strongly to intelligent design that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the hand of a wise and beneficent Creator has been involved." Similarly, honeybees pollinate apple blossom: "Again we may well ask how such an arrangement could have come about by accident, or how either the flowers or the bees could have survived alone. Intelligent design is again evident."<ref name="bio design classrooms" /><ref name="CRSQ 1965 2 2">{{cite web | title=CRSQ 1965 Volume 2, Number 2 | website=Creation Research Society | date=July 1965 | url=https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq-1965-volume-2-number-2 | access-date=29 November 2022|quote=The Plants Will Teach You}}</ref>

In 1974 the YEC [[Henry M. Morris]] introduced an irreducible complexity concept in his creation science book ''Scientific Creationism'', in which he wrote; "The creationist maintains that the degree of complexity and order which science has discovered in the universe could never be generated by chance or accident."{{sfn | Forrest | Gross | 2007 | pp=284–286}} He continued; "This issue can actually be attacked quantitatively, using simple principles of mathematical probability. The problem is simply whether a complex system, in which many components function unitedly together, and in which each component is uniquely necessary to the efficient functioning of the whole, could ever arise by random processes."<ref name="incoherence" /><ref>{{cite book |author= Morris, Henry |title= Scientific creationism |publisher= Creation-Life Publishers |location= San Diego, Calif |year= 1974 |page= [https://archive.org/details/scientificcreati00inst/page/59 59] |isbn= 978-0-89051-003-2 |edition= 2nd |author-link= Henry M. Morris |url= https://archive.org/details/scientificcreati00inst/page/59 }}</ref> In 1975 [[Duane Gish]] wrote in ''The Amazing Story of Creation from Science and the Bible''; "The creationist maintains that the degree of complexity and order which science has discovered in the universe could never be generated by chance or accident."{{sfn | Forrest | Gross | 2007 | pp=284–286}}

A 1980 article in the creation science magazine ''[[Creation Ministries International|Creation]]'' by the YEC [[Ariel A. Roth]] said "Creation and various other views can be supported by the scientific data that reveal that the spontaneous origin of the ''complex integrated biochemical systems'' of even the simplest organisms is, at best, a most improbable event".<ref name="incoherence" /> In 1981, defending the creation science position in the trial ''[[McLean v. Arkansas]]'', Roth said of "complex integrated structures": "This system would not be functional until all the parts were there ... How did these parts survive during evolution ...?"<ref>{{cite book |author1= Keough, Mark J. |author2= Geisler, Norman L. |title= The Creator in the courtroom "Scopes II": the 1981 Arkansas creation-evolution trial |publisher= Mott Media |location= Milford, Mich |year= 1982 |page= [https://archive.org/details/creatorincourtro00norm/page/146 146] |isbn= 978-0-88062-020-8 |url= https://archive.org/details/creatorincourtro00norm/page/146 }}</ref>

In 1985, countering the creationist claims that all the changes would be needed at once, [[Graham Cairns-Smith|Cairns-Smith]] wrote of "interlocking": "How can a complex collaboration between components evolve in small steps?" and used the analogy of the scaffolding called [[centring|centering]]—used to [[arch#Construction|build an arch]] then removed afterwards: "Surely there was 'scaffolding'. Before the multitudinous components of present biochemistry could come to lean together ''they had to lean on something else.''"<ref name="Cairns-Smith, A. G. 1985 https://archive.org/details/sevencluestoorig00cair_0/page/39 39, 58–64"/><ref>McShea, Daniel W. and Wim Hordijk. "[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11692-013-9227-6 Complexity by Subtraction]." ''Evolutionary Biology'' (April 2013). [http://www.worldwidewanderings.net/Professional/Publications/complsub.pdf PDF] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130513010713/http://www.worldwidewanderings.net/Professional/Publications/complsub.pdf |date=2013-05-13 }}.</ref> Neither Muller or Cairns-Smith said their ideas were evidence of anything supernatural.<ref name="Perakh 2008"/>

The [[Flagellum|bacterial flagellum]] featured in creation science literature. Morris later claimed that one of their [[Institute for Creation Research]] "scientists (the late Dr. Dick Bliss) was using this example in his talks on creation a generation ago". In December 1992 the creation science magazine ''Creation'' called bacterial flagella "rotary engines", and dismissed the possibility that these "incredibly complicated arrangements of matter" could have "evolved by selection of chance mutations. The alternative explanation, that they were created, is much more reasonable."<ref name="bio design classrooms">{{cite journal | last1=Scott | first1=Eugenie C. | last2=Matzke | first2=Nicholas J. | title=Biological design in science classrooms | journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | volume=104 | issue=suppl_1 | date=15 May 2007 | issn=0027-8424 | doi=10.1073/pnas.0701505104 | pages=8669–8676| pmid=17494747 | pmc=1876445 | bibcode=2007PNAS..104.8669S | doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="creation Rotary engines">{{cite web | title=Rotary engines | website=creation.com | date=December 1992 | url=https://creation.com/rotary-engines |quote=''[[Creation Ministries International|Creation]]'' 15(1):23 | access-date=17 July 2023}}</ref> An article in the [[Creation Research Society]] Magazine for June 1994 called a flagellum a "bacterial nanomachine", forming the "bacterial rotor-flagellar complex" where "it is clear from the details of their operation that nothing about them works unless every one of their complexly fashioned and integrated components are in place", hard to explain by natural selection. The abstract said that in "terms of biophysical complexity, the bacterial rotor-flagellum is without precedent in the living world. ... To evolutionists, the system presents an enigma; to creationists, if offers clear and compelling evidence of purposeful intelligent design."<ref name="Slack 2008 p. 173">{{cite book | last=Slack | first=G. | title=The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA | publisher=Wiley | year=2008 | isbn=978-0-470-37931-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1kpx8HrQ08cC&pg=PA173 | access-date=17 July 2023 | pages=172–173 |quote=an article, predating [the 1996] publication of Darwin's Black Box, the book by Michael Behe in which the idea of 'irreducible complexity' was allegedly hammered out and from which the bacterial flagellum became the molecular poster child for both irreducible complexity and intelligent design. The article, titled 'Not So Blind a Watchmaker,' is in a journal called Creation ''Research Society Quarterly'', an overtly creationist journal published by the Creation Research Societv. .... a picture of none other than our now old friend the bacterial flagellum, accompanied by text that calls it a 'nanomachine,' which sounds a lot like biological machine, and a description that is a pretty good summary statement for Behe's and Minnich's claim for the flagellum's irreducible complexity: 'However, it is clear from the details of [the flagellum's] operation that nothing about them works unless every one of their complexly fashioned and integrated components are in place.' And a little further along in the article, he reads, 'In terms of biophysical complexity, the bacterial rotor flagellum is without precedent in the living world. ...To evolutionists the system presents an enigma. To creationists it offers clear and compelling evidence of purposeful intelligent design.' [When asked whether he would agree this was the same argument that he and Behe had advanced for irreducible complexity, Minnich said] "I don't have any problem with that statement.  }}<br>{{cite journal |first=Richard D. |last= Lumsden |title= Not So Blind A Watchmaker |journal= Creation Research Society Quarterly |volume= 31 |issue= 1 |pages= 13–22, quotations from pp. 13, 20 |date= June 1994|url=https://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/origins/documents/lumsden1994.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170705125432/http://www.public.asu.edu/%7Ejmlynch/origins/documents/lumsden1994.pdf |archive-date=5 July 2017 |url-status=dead |access-date=27 April 2025|quote=Received 11 May 1993; Revised 15 September 1993}}</ref>