The fact that archaeologists can't explain how the Egyptians could have built the pyramids proves that they were a product of Super Inteligent Design. 
Posted on 02/07/2005 8:16:39 AM PST by metacognative
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Design for Living By MICHAEL J. BEHE
Published: February 7, 2005
ethlehem, Pa. — IN the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design. As one of the scientists who have proposed design as an explanation for biological systems, I have found widespread confusion about what intelligent design is and what it is not. Advertisement
First, what it isn't: the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments. For example, a critic recently caricatured intelligent design as the belief that if evolution occurred at all it could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator. That's misleading. Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.
Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.
Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. The 18th-century clergyman William Paley likened living things to a watch, arguing that the workings of both point to intelligent design. Modern Darwinists disagree with Paley that the perceived design is real, but they do agree that life overwhelms us with the appearance of design.
For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved. (Imagine a scientist repeating through clenched teeth: "It wasn't really designed. Not really.")
The resemblance of parts of life to engineered mechanisms like a watch is enormously stronger than what Reverend Paley imagined. In the past 50 years modern science has shown that the cell, the very foundation of life, is run by machines made of molecules. There are little molecular trucks in the cell to ferry supplies, little outboard motors to push a cell through liquid.
In 1998 an issue of the journal Cell was devoted to molecular machines, with articles like "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines" and "Mechanical Devices of the Spliceosome: Motors, Clocks, Springs and Things." Referring to his student days in the 1960's, Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered." In fact, Dr. Alberts remarked, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. He emphasized that the term machine was not some fuzzy analogy; it was meant literally.
The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.
Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.
The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.
Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, is the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
Except for the 95 percent who won't accept anything beyond a finch's beak changing size.
First, what it isn't: the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments.
And only those people, but that's just a coincidence. (Yeah, right!)
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Logic could be your friend if you'd let it. You cannot determine the veracity of statements by analyzing its adherents. Virtually all atheists accept evolution, but that tells us nothing about the veracity of the claims entailed in evolutionary theory.
After two centuries of research, we still really don't know how the pyramid builders did it. Did they lever the stones up tier by tier, or build a ramp which wrapped around the pyramid, or a huge external ramp?
There's a very good chance that we will never know. Yet (I hope) no one seriously thinks that we should therefore entertain the idea that they were floated into place by supernatural means.
Archaelogy is a very good analogy.
After two centuries of research, we still really don't know how the pyramid builders did it. Did they lever the stones up tier by tier, or build a ramp which wrapped around the pyramid, or a huge external ramp?
There's a very good chance that we will never know. Yet (I hope) no one seriously thinks that we should therefore entertain the idea that they were floated into place by supernatural means.
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Oh, no. I'm quite sure they were built up by the gradual accumulation of natural processes. I'm afraid someone is going to conclude that the pyramids were designed. Pffffffffft.
What kind of designer would put a recreation facility right next to a sewage pipe?
What kind of designer would put a recreation facility right next to a sewage pipe?
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If you don't like the arrangement you are free to alter it. If you like it, what's your point?
Ken Miller is a fraud. He claims to be Catholic, but his book does not describe anything like any christian belief. His refutation [in quotes?] of Behe merely claims a paperweight isn't irreducibly complex. Ridiculous, and only palatalbe to true believers with closed, old fashioned, minds.
The fact that archaeologists can't explain how the Egyptians could have built the pyramids proves that they were a product of Super Inteligent Design.
Behe is a modern scientist who looked at the evidence through a modern scientific microscope. Darwinists want to live in the past and pretend that 'protoplasm' can evolve by mistake.
Repeatability, man. Exactly how they did it isn't all that important since it is very easy to demonstrate any number of ways that they could have done it that don't require supernatural intervention.
Right now we can't demonstrate evolution. We can only infer from second hand observation.
Then why do the ID'ers complain so much when it's pointed out that the designer did a lousy job in many cases; and that any designer would have needed another designer to design her. She seems rather cruel to have designed tsunamis and Huntington's corea.
Because evolution does not postulate supernatural involvement. It is a valid scientific hypothesis.
SO9
"The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious."
But She did give us an immune system to somewhat handle sometimes the infectious agents She Designed to kill us.
Her Designer must have been One Tough Old Mamma, though, maybe even tougher than Delia Darrow.
>> If this is what ID amounts to, one wonders what its proponents do to occupy their time.<<
Instead of wasting their lives trying to figure out what made the legos, they spend their time making things with the legos. 8^>
...the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, ...
Then why do the ID'ers complain so much when it's pointed out that the designer did a lousy job in many cases; and that any designer would have needed another designer to design her. She seems rather cruel to have designed tsunamis and Huntington's corea.
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Just so you don't embarrass yourself. Most theists believe in some version of a "fall" to explain the bad things, disease, malformations etc. that exist. And most theists will not take offense at the observation that evil poses a theological problem for them. All religions are full of explanations for evil. All religions including evolatria.
Intelligent design and evolution do not have to be mutually exclusive. Certainly an evolving universe (and hence evolving life) could be part of a master plan, if one chooses to believe that.
Design is against my religion. I want to believe in dumb luck only!
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