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.
He was born 196 years ago today; I'm glad today is NOT my birthday.
His Grandfather conducted experiments to shock stuff 'to life', and Mary Shelly witnessed those experiments.
His Grandfather wrote the poem "Temple of Nature".
It is only natural that what we are witnessing .... keeps saying the same ol same ol ...
It sounds impressive, but I've read several articles by Behe, and they make excellent sense. I say that not from a religious perspective but as someone with an interest in science.
Reducing the whole theory to the length of a NY Times OpEd piece is bound to produce a simplified argument which has to leave a lot unsaid. But he has argued it in greater detail elsewhere.
I don't expect any agreement on this issue, because Darwinists have a stake in evolutionary theory and they don't want to hear anything different. But sooner or later Darwin will go the same way as his two major nineteenth century colleagues in modernist mystification, Marx and Freud--into the dustbin of history.
Excuse O'great Snarks, but PZMeyers is who?? Is what??
I am a biologist, but I do not bow before Darwin. Let us search for truth, not Your interpretation of it.
Check it out.
It sounds impressive, but I've read several articles by Behe, and they make excellent sense.
I've just been reading one of the articles linked to by PatrickHenry:
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity", by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University.
The first part of this article critiques two of Behe's publications which tout the eubacterial flagellum as the paradigm case for 'irreducible complexity'. Miller slices Behe's position to shreds. Perhaps you'll want to read it yourself.
'Intelligent Design'
To the Editor:
In "Design for Living" (Op-Ed, Feb. 7), Michael J. Behe quoted me, recalling how I discovered that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered" some 40 years ago. Dr. Behe then paraphrases my 1998 remarks that "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."
That I was unaware of the complexity of living things as a student should not be surprising. In fact, the majestic chemistry of life should be astounding to everyone. But these facts should not be misrepresented as support for the idea that life's molecular complexity is a result of "intelligent design." To the contrary, modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process.
In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.
Bruce Alberts
President
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, Feb. 9, 2005
Miller is just playing word games.
Utter horse manure. Miller is pointing out that by BEHE'S OWN DEFINITION of "irreducible complexity", the flagellum DOES NOT QUALIFY.
Period.
That's not a "word game", that's demonstrating that Behe's "example" of IC doesn't Behe's claim for it.
No. Whoever overturns major portions of current evolutionary theory will likely get a Nobel Prize. Given that statement, why would Darwinists have a stake in evolutionary theory. The best assumption is that the Basic Tenets Evolutionary Theory have proven unassailable, and that there are large amounts of evidence for it.
I'd do a Google websearch on "criticism Behe" and you'll see more detailed criticisms of his work. I believe that you'll find that people have ripped large holes in his work to date.
Perhaps when your awesome responsibilities permit, you'll drop back in and detail for us how the theory of evolution "so often conflicts with good science."
More silly nonsense, easily disproven just by glancing at the 1831 'standard' introduction to Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.
They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin (I speak not of what the doctor really did or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him), who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion.
Clearly, Mary Shelley did not herself witness whatever the experiment in question, but rather speaks of hearsay description regarding Erasmus Darwin's experiment. In fact, she explicitly specifies that she speaks "not of what the Doctor really did" but rather of what was said about him.
In any case, Mary Shelley is evidently referring to a passage from The Temple of Nature where Erasmus Darwin writes of vorticellae (the ciliate protozoan), and not vermicelli (the pasta), where E. Darwin accurately recounts that the microbe lies dormant for lengthy periods of time until reanimated by water ("it discovers no sign of life except when in the water, yet it is capable of continuing alive for many months though kept in a dry state").
In an earlier passage, E. Darwin also writes of how adding water to flour paste can seem to reanimate life (try leaving some flour out for a long while and then add water to it and see what critters swim up out of it - probably a common occurrence in 1802..) and accurately concludes: "even the organic particles of dead animals may, when exposed to a due degree of warmth and moisture, regain some degree of vitality." This may also have been referred to by Mary Shelley, though clearly she primarily refers to the vorticellae that she misreads as vermicelli.
PS. Your credibility is about nonexistent as it is, but I'm curious where you picked up this latest bit of tripe? Oh, and what do you mean to have one infer from your cite of "Temple of Nature"? Have you taken even a cursory glance at the work, or are you just fantasizing whatever ominous signification you think it might have?
Feel free to back up this empty claim with an concrete example, if you think you can, so that we can determine whether you actually know what you're talking about.
Thanks for posting that.
PS. I forgot to mention that if Mary Shelley had in fact witnessed any of E. Darwin's experiments she must've been a remarkable infant, because E. Darwin died when Mrs. Shelley was 4 years old.....
Only at first glance. I have yet to see any argument by Behe which holds water when examined more closely.
I say that not from a religious perspective but as someone with an interest in science.
Same here.
Reducing the whole theory to the length of a NY Times OpEd piece is bound to produce a simplified argument which has to leave a lot unsaid. But he has argued it in greater detail elsewhere.
Unfortunately, his lengthier works are flawed as well -- and often in the same ways as the op-ed piece by him.
I don't expect any agreement on this issue, because Darwinists have a stake in evolutionary theory and they don't want to hear anything different.
Oooh, riiiight... *Your* side is coming from a 'perspective as someone with an interest in science'", but those with differing opinions are those who "have a stake in evolutionary theory and the don't *want* to hear anything different"...
Grow up.
But sooner or later Darwin will go the same way as his two major nineteenth century colleagues in modernist mystification, Marx and Freud--into the dustbin of history.
Gee, really? People have been predicting that was about to happen "any day now" for oh, 150 years now.
For some perspective, check out this web page on The Imminent Demise of Evolution. Anti-evolutionists have been continuously predicting that evolution was about to come crashing down any day now since 1840... That page contains quotes predicting the "any day now" crash of evolution from 1840, 1850, 1878, 1895, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1912, 1922, 1929, 1935, 1940, 1961, 1963, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002.
Sample:
"It must be stated that the supremacy of this philosophy has not been such as was predicted by its defenders at the outset. A mere glance at the history of the theory during the four decades that it has been before the public shows that the beginning of the end is at hand."But surely, you're finally right *this* time, eh? Dream on.
-- Prof. Zockler, The Other Side of Evolution, 1903, p. 31-32 cited in Ronald L. Numbers, Creationism In Twentieth-Century America: A Ten-Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903-1961 (New York & London, Garland Publishing, 1995)
Maybe I'm just blinded by all the enormous flood of research which continues to confirm evolutionary biology, but it's possible I've missed some tiny nugget which overrides all that and signals that the last century-and-a-half of supportive evidence for evolutionary common descent is actuall all wrong after all -- perhaps you could share it with us?
Welcome. It was a timely find by ThinkPlease and needed to be incorporated into the FR record.
"Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don’t bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed.
Everything about ID can come down to that. There is an implied threat to the scientific community. That no matter how ID is unaccepted by the experts and scientists, no matter how thoroughly evolutionists defeat them in debate and results, a non-scientifically trained entity, the public through the courts, can impose its will on the instruction of science. All Behe and IDers do is demagogue this issue to the gullible public. This is an outrage. In no other academic field can outsiders dictate to academic insiders how their field is to be run. You can't have the inmates run the asylum.
But the IDers are doomed to fail. The longer this is prolonged, the greater will be the attention upon this issue. Once that happens, the resistance by the imposed upon scientific community will increase, leading to a more dramatic and humiliating ID defeat.
I'm sorry, but I just can't take seriously a claim of wanting to "search for truth" from someone who thinks that adopting the paradigm of evolutionary biology would in any way involve "bowing before Darwin".
Nor do I think that a professional biologist would even be able to make such a strange error concerning how science works....
William A. Dembski, in UNCOMMON DISSENT, INTELLECTUALS WHO FIND DARWINISM UNCONVINCING has commented upon Miller's article and said Despite Miller's promises to the contrary, don't look for a refutation of irreducible complexity there. None of Miller's arguments against irreducible complexity withstands scrutiny.... Miller refers his readers to "four glittering examples of what Behe claimed would never be found." Go to the articles that Miller cites, however, and you'll find that Miller's four glittering examples not only fail to be detailed but also fail to be irreducibly complex. Miller isn't even in the right ballpark.
Two suggestions: 1. Christians are not by definition nonintellectuals, and 2.We have a legitimate place at the conservative table.
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