Posted: Jun 23, 2010 11:47 pm
Behe:
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning...Because the bacterial flagellum is necessarily composed of at least three parts - a paddle, a rotor and a motor - it is irreducibly complex.
CharlieM:
Note that Behe is not saying that it is impossible for an irreducibly complex system to be assembled by known naturalistic means. And he is not saying that if you take one or more parts away then the remainder will not have some function.
What he does say is that in considering the bacteria's flagellar motility system, if any one of the three parts mentioned above is removed then the system loses its motility function. Nothing that I have read here disproves this.