Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Nick Matzke has also commented on this, but the op-ed is so bad I can't resist piling on. From the very first sentence, Michael Behe's op-ed in today's NY Times is an exercise in unwarranted hubris.
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.
And it's all downhill from there.
Intelligent Design creationism is not a "rival theory." It is an ad hoc pile of mush, and once again we catch a creationist using the term "theory" as if it means "wild-ass guess." I think a theory is an idea that integrates and explains a large body of observation, and is well supported by the evidence, not a random idea about untestable mechanisms which have not been seen. I suspect Behe knows this, too, and what he is doing is a conscious bait-and-switch. See here, where he asserts that there is evidence for ID:
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.
This is where he first pulls the rug over the reader's eyes. He claims the Intelligent Design guess is based on physical evidence, and that he has four lines of argument; you'd expect him to then succinctly list the evidence, as was done in the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ on the talkorigins site. He doesn't. Not once in the entire op-ed does he give a single piece of this "physical evidence." Instead, we get four bald assertions, every one false.
The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.
He then tells us that Mt Rushmore is designed, and the Rocky Mountains aren't. How is this an argument for anything? Nobody is denying that human beings design things, and that Mt Rushmore was carved with intelligent planning. Saying that Rushmore was designed does not help us resolve whether the frond of a fern is 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.
No, this is controversial, in the sense that Behe is claiming it while most biologists are denying it. Again, he does not present any evidence to back up his contention, but instead invokes two words: "Paley" and "machine."
The Reverend Paley, of course, is long dead and his argument equally deceased, thoroughly scuttled. I will give Behe credit that he only wants to turn the clock of science back to about 1850, rather than 1350, as his fellow creationists at the Discovery Institute seem to desire, but resurrecting Paley won't help him.
The rest of his argument consists of citing a number of instances of biologists using the word "machine" to refer to the workings of a cell. This is ludicrous; he's playing a game with words, assuming that everyone will automatically link the word "machine" to "design." But of course, Crick and Alberts and the other scientists who compared the mechanism of the cell to an intricate machine were making no presumption of design.
There is another sneaky bit of dishonesty here; Behe is trying to use the good names of Crick and Alberts to endorse his crackpot theory, when the creationists know full well that Crick did not believe in ID, and that Alberts has been vocal in his opposition.
So far, Behe's argument has been that "it's obvious!", accompanied by a little sleight of hand. It doesn't get any better.
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.
Oh, so many creationists tropes in such a short paragraph.
Remember, this is supposed to be an outline of the evidence for Intelligent Design creationism. Declaring that evolutionary biology is "no good" is not evidence for his pet guess.
Similarly, declaring that some small minority of scientists, most of whom seem to be employed by creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute or the Creation Research Society or Answers in Genesis, does not make their ideas correct. Some small minority of historians also believe the Holocaust never happened; does that validate their denial? There are also people who call themselves physicists and engineers who promote perpetual motion machines. Credible historians, physicists, and engineers repudiate all of these people, just as credible biologists repudiate the fringe elements that babble about intelligent design.
The last bit of his claim is simply Behe's standard misrepresentation. For years, he's been going around telling people that he has analyzed the content of the Journal of Molecular Evolution and that they have never published anything on "detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures", and that the textbooks similarly lack any credible evidence for such processes. Both claims are false. A list of research studies that show exactly what he claims doesn't exist is easily found.
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.
How does Behe get away with this?
How does this crap get published in the NY Times?
Look at what he is doing: he is simply declaring that there is no convincing explanation in biology that doesn't require intelligent design, therefore Intelligent Design creationism is true. But thousands of biologists think the large body of evidence in the scientific literature is convincing! Behe doesn't get to just wave his hands and have all the evidence for evolutionary biology magically disappear; he is trusting that his audience, lacking any knowledge of biology, will simply believe him.
After this resoundingly vacant series of non-explanations, Behe tops it all off with a cliche.
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.
Behe began this op-ed by telling us that he was going to give us the contemporary argument for Intelligent Design creationism, consisting of four linked claims. Here's a shorter Behe for you:
The evidence for Intelligent Design.
That's it.
That's pathetic.
And it's in the New York Times? Journalism has fallen on very hard times.
This article was first published on Pharyngula and appears here by permission.
Markets are markets, big or small. A businessmen sells his wares, somebody buys them. Pretty simple stuff, I'm surprised you're having such a hard time wrapping your arms around it.
It's not so much that Behe is wrong but that he is irrelevant. His "theory" has no research implications. It can't be supported or discredited by evidence.
If you disagree, feel free to post a link to the ID research program.
The last time some posted ta link to the ID "scientific objectives" it was a list of political objectives, not a discussion of potential research.
Then prices could be set by experts, right?
Prices are set by what the buyer is willing to pay. The businessman analyzes that before sending a product to market based on cost vs anticipated selling price. The process is directed from beginning to end. Do businessmen make mistakes? Of course, but the process is directed, not random.
That's right, but the product is ultimately shaped by the market, not by the manufacturer. Only in socialist countries are products shaped entirely by planners.
Now, I'm going to have to leave this for a while. It's been fun, but I have to work tomorrow.
I have said that my analogy can't be stretched too far. It was intended as a way of explaining how selection forces can shape things. In a free market, consumers design things by their purchasing decisions. This is an abstract level of analysis, but conservative economists invented this concept, Darwin borrowed it, and that's the history of it.
"Political objectives" like getting themselves a fair hearing? If so, what's wrong with that?
As for the alleged untestability of ID, perhaps you're right. I don't know. But I do know that I find it interesting and a useful contribution to the debate over man's origins. "Untestable" doesn't necessarily mean false.
Don't forget, the prestigious (in some circles) Institute for Creation Research has somehow made the link between Darwin and free enterprise. But as with so many other things, the meaning of this hasn't yet dawned on them:
Darwin's Influence on Ruthless Laissez Faire Capitalism.
Medical abortion is merely the modernized version of traditional infanticide. That was made clear earlier.
And, if you read up, you will see that we started with abortion.
PS. Keep in mind that running into an anomaly is the risk you take when you ask for anecdotal accounts. We didn't need anecdotes, because the objective research has already been posted above.
That's probably because you are less familiar than them with the history of creationists trying to use pseudoscientific expedients to get their religious beliefs taught as science. ID is just the most recent Trojan Horse.
Maybe not. But it does mean unscientific.
Agreed, but probably not in the way you mean.
Far too many of you are spewing hatred at Michael Behe and Intelligent Design.
Really? Who and where, exactly? I see quite a bit of well-earned derision directed at Behe et al, but I don't see any "hate" being "spewed". Please point out where you see any "hate" in, for example, my post #42.
You are echoing the closed-minded arrogance of the Darwinist establishment.
No, we are "echoing" the considered, informed opinions of people who know about this topic and can spot flawed arguments when we see them. You are invited to explain where, exactly, you have found me (for example) to be "closed-minded". Or even merely incorrect in my analysis of Behe, for that matter.
I try not to cross the line over to "arrogance", but I certainly admit to being extremely confident of my position, since it is based on enormous amounts of evidence, and has withstood countless attempts to falsify it. And I'm not about to pretend to some sort of we-could-all-be-right liberal-style kumbayaa in the name of intellectual political correctness, when I know that the amount of validation of the "two sides" is very much *NOT* even remotely close.
While I'm not yet persuaded that Intelligent Design is a sound theory,
It's not even an *unsound* theory. It's not a "theory" at all, in the scientific sense.
I find its vehement, name-calling, don't-give-an-inch rejection by the scientific establishment to be an indication that there is something wrong with that establishment,
Oh, yes, right -- we should be "respectful" of other opinions, even when they are demonstrably wrong and spread all sorts of falsehoods, right? We should be halfhearted in our identification of pseudoscience posing as science. We should refrain from labeling ignorance as ignorance and error as error, even when we are routinely called fools, charlatans, God-haters, genocide-enablers, destroyers of moral values, conspirators, racists, and liars by the other side, right? We should compromise with flawed hypotheses, right? And if we don't, it means that something is wrong with *us*, you say?
Sorry, I just can not agree.
and perhaps with its Darwinist/materialist theory, not that Behe et al must be wrong.
Ah, I see -- the more people pile on showing how wrong Behe is, the more it means that Behe *isn't* actually wrong, more likely his critics are the ones holding a faulty position, eh?
Did you learn this method of rationalization from the liberals? Because it sure sounds familiar.
This thread is further evidence of how far the liberal/left orthodoxy has penetrated "conservative" minds -- and on an issue more important than many of those that get FReepers so exercised.
Actually, your post is "further evidence of how far" some people go to label as "liberal/left" anything they would prefer to disagree with, regardless of how ridiculously vapid that label might be in a particular case.
There's nothing "liberal/left" about evolutionary biology, son, except in your own mind (and in the minds of similarly prejudiced folks who "reason" thusly: "If I disagree with it, it must be liberal, because everything in the universe is necessarily either conservative(good) or liberal(bad)"..)
My challenge to that figure, the assertion that families and soical groups murder between one in ten and one in seven babies on average in all human historical eras including recent, my challenge, sir, stands. It is highly unreasonable both as to common experience known to nearly all and as to the ability to accurately research such numbers. And I'll add another reason to question that one in seven figure -- lack of support from history, at least as far as I have read. What you see in history's reports are periods and places (such as with baby girls in "modern" China) where infantcide becomes more widespread, yet even in today's China the 15% infantcide figure would mean the ratio of boys to girls would be muich higher than it is.
Interesting, maybe, but "useful", probably not. If it were actually "useful", it would be testable. Something is testable when it has detectable consequences which can be examined. An idea without consequences is pretty much "useless" by definition. It's just ivory-tower blue-skying, fit for at most late-night dormroom bull sessions after a few too many beers.
"Untestable" doesn't necessarily mean false.
That cuts both ways -- it doesn't necessarily mean true either. And being untestable, it not only can't be determined whether it's true or not, it doesn't *matter* if it is or not (again, because in order to matter, it has to make some sort of difference to some aspect of the real world, but untestable notions don't -- if they did, they'd be *testable*).
Clearly your reading has been inadequate. I recommend you visit the Amazon link posted before and bust out your credit card........
Would you be calling that earning some pearls so as to throw before swine? Is there some First Darwin Bankcorp where all you all lay up the pearls to be polished and earn interest? And is there some sort of swine selection process, as to which porkers you throw these collections of pearls before?
Is the process by which "well-earned derision" accrues and develops is that random evolution or ID on your part?
Why is it that laissez-faire capitalism is always "ruthless"? The free market is never referred to as what it is, an infinite network of peaceful voluntary transactions. Are not politicians in government ruthless? History indicates they are and that government coercion is also ruthless. If you don't like your government and disobey it, you're in deep trouble. If you don't like Microsoft, it's not going to jail you or invade your country. On the other hand, a disliked company is going to be nice to you in order to win you back. I'll take the "chaos" of the free market over the "order" of government any day.
Maybe I've just had some bad experiences, but I've never yet encountered anyone on this website with the word "patriot" in his name who wasn't 'round the bend in some way. Perhaps this fellow will be a happy exception.
Note to Luddites: Don't misquote me by suggesting that I'm not patriotic, or that I belittle those who are.
If you want to see an example of "dog eat dog" behavior, you won't find it in a shopping mall. But if you visit your legislature during budget time ...
300. Why not?
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