A way above average article

It’s always nice when someone who has some clue about the relevant science decides to write an article on the ID issue. I would like to highlight this article by Sanjai Tripathi, a microbiology grad student at Oregon State University. His opinion piece appeared in the OSU Daily Barometer, and no, even though I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, I didn’t have anything to do with it.

One minor quibble: Tripathi uses the “reducing irreducible complexity” rhetoric. But the core issue is not really whether or not a system is irreducible, it is whether or not a system is unbuildable. This is a very different thing. A system that is currently irreducible for its current function might well be buildable anyway, most obviously via change-of-function. Tripathi talks about change-of-function anyway, so he basically knows what is up. But as a general rule, it is important for ID skeptics to keep in mind that “irreducible complexity” has never received a consistent definition, and that various ID proponents and ID opponents use the term to mean some very different things. See the entry on “definitional complexity” at Evowiki.