なので、ネズミ捕り分解コンテストな状況になってしまった。その中で、もっとも見事に、ネズミ捕りの仮想進化経路を定めて見せたのがJohn H. McDonaldだった。
It is not my purpose here to point out all of the philosophical flaws in Behe's argument; this has been done thoroughly in many of the resources collected on John Catalano's excellent web page. Instead, I wish to point out that the mousetrap that Behe uses as an analogy CAN be reduced in complexity and still function as a mousetrap.
ここでは、Beheの論の哲学的誤りのすべてを指摘しようとは思わない。その代わりに、私はBeheがアナロジーに使うネズミ捕りが、分解してもネズミ捕りとして機能することを示す。
The mousetrap illustrates one of the fundamental flaws in the intelligent design argument: the fact that one person can't imagine something doesn't mean it is impossible, it may just mean that the person has a limited imagination.
ネズミ捕りは、インテリジェントデザイン論の本質的誤りを示してみせるものだ。すなわち、それがイメージできないという事実は、それが不可能だと意味せず、想像力の欠如を意味するだけだと。
KENNETH R. MILLER: As an example of what irreducible complexity means, advocates of intelligent design like to point to a very common machine: the mousetrap. And the mousetrap is composed of five parts. It has a base plate, the catch, a spring, a little hammer that actually does the dirty work, and a bait holder.
The mousetrap will not work if any one of these five parts are taken away. That's absolutely true. But remember the key notion of irreducible complexity, and that is that this whole machine is completely useless until all the parts are in place. Well, that, that turns out not to be true.
And I'll give you an example. What I have right here is a mousetrap from which I've removed two of the five parts. I still have the base plate, the spring, and the hammer. Now you can't catch any mice with this, so it's not a very good mousetrap. But it turns out that, despite the missing parts, it makes a perfectly good, if somewhat inelegant, tie clip.
And when we look at the favorite examples for irreducible complexity, and the bacterial flagellum is a perfect example, we find the molecular equivalent of my tie clip, which is we see parts of the machine missing -- two, three, four, maybe even 20 -- parts, but still fulfilling a perfectly good purpose that could be favored by evolution. And that's why the irreducible complexity argument falls apart.