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To: exDemMom
I do not need to read anything by Behe to conclude that he is a charlatan: he has a reputation. It only takes a few minutes with Google to verify that the reputation is accurate.

...

For a more thorough discussion, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article, Irreducible Complexity.

Ever hear of an "Echo Chamber"?

Most working scientists don't write books; they're too busy writing grant proposals, reviewing grant proposals, writing journal articles, attending conferences and other meetings, reading scientific journals, and so forth.

...

By contrast, Behe has 40 publications dating from 1978, of which 5 are letters to the editor and 3 are reviews.

So not only has he committed the sin of not falling in line with evolution, he communicated his ideas to the general public. You admit yourself that means he has less time to publish "serious" papers, and that is your basis for calling him a charlatan.

On the basis of the abstract, can you judge whether the work described in the paper is of high enough quality to make reading the paper worthwhile?

I am confused, are you a scientist or a priest? It must really get under your skin when us second class citizens dare to ask you to explain things to us.

Behe's invention of "irreducible complexity" does not have any scientific validity.

"If it could ever be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - Charles Darwin

The search engine is, IMHO, very user friendly. Many of the articles indexed in PubMed can be accessed free. The information is there if you want it.

It has an M. Behe as authoring or co-authoring 131 articles. I have read several (none by Behe) that looked promising on identifying evolutionary paths, but all proved disapointing.

198 posted on 05/30/2012 8:21:11 PM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: hopespringseternal
Ever hear of an "Echo Chamber"?

Scientists heavily referencing the work of other scientists in order to advance their own work are not, in fact, an "echo chamber". They're wisely building upon the work already done, instead of starting over from scratch. The fact that research in the life sciences consistently supports the theory of evolution also does not mean an "echo chamber" is in effect. The laws of physics are invariant and immutable; no matter how many researchers examine physical phenomena, I expect their results to be consistent.

So not only has he committed the sin of not falling in line with evolution, he communicated his ideas to the general public. You admit yourself that means he has less time to publish "serious" papers, and that is your basis for calling him a charlatan.

The only reason Behe fails to "fall in line with evolution" is that he actively avoids having anything to do with the subject. He has never done any research that shows that any aspect of evolutionary theory is invalid, nor does he even propose workable hypotheses with which to test the validity of evolutionary theory. He's not communicating the results of his research to the general public (which would be fine); he's using his scientific education to hoodwink people by presenting fallacious ideas in what sounds like a sciency fashion to people who don't have the educational background to be able to tell the difference.

I am confused, are you a scientist or a priest? It must really get under your skin when us second class citizens dare to ask you to explain things to us.

Actually, I love explaining things. What I am responding to here is not that anyone is asking questions; it's that you're trying to claim a level of education that you don't demonstrate. I do try to answer questions as if they are asked with an open mind, even when they clearly are not.

"If it could ever be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - Charles Darwin

Ah, yes, now we get to quote mining. Of course, no one has yet falsified Darwin's theory of evolution using that set of criteria. Behe certainly hasn't.

It has an M. Behe as authoring or co-authoring 131 articles. I have read several (none by Behe) that looked promising on identifying evolutionary paths, but all proved disapointing.

Not all of those are Michael Behe, the literal creationist who actually earned a PhD in biochemistry. The first reference by that Behe is #6. When you click on that title, a citation appears. In the citation, it lists the author's affiliation which is Lehigh University. Since we can verify through other means (i.e. Google) that Behe works at Lehigh University, we can be reasonable sure that this is the "correct" Behe. When you click on his name within the citation, another list of 41 references pops up, and these are all the M Behe that we are looking for. One of the references is a duplicate; therefore, there are 40 references. My previous analysis of Behe's career was based on looking at those references; since I know the conventions of scientific publishing, the form of the references tells me a lot.

206 posted on 05/31/2012 5:00:01 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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