Not as cool as Maureen Dowd. She has one several times a week.
(Funny, never figured you for a MoDo fan.)
And, of course, having mentioned MoDo, the rules require I post this.
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.
I need to look for liars no further than your posts. And I'll be happy to forgive you, gobucks, as soon as I see some evidence you've given up lying, and acknowledge your past misrepresentations.
And I feel sorry for the kids who are receving 'moral' instruction from you.
I've heard of Hoyle's speculation, the fanciful sci-fi notions of space aliens, yada yada. My point would be I just don't consider any "search" for "a designer" to be a proper scientific question at all. Assuming the designer were God, it's not like you're gonna get God down into the laboratory so that you can "observe" Him. But this would be required of science, if indeed it wanted to ask this question, which I strongly doubt it does anyway.
The point is, though you cannot "handle" the putative designer, you can "handle" the putative evidence of design. For it can be directly observed. That is susceptible to scientific test in a way that the designer never (in all probability) could be.
I really liked your astute observation: "What if the necessary evidence requires better access to a dimension that we have little access to at this point." That seems eminently to be the case. But again, if the designer were God (Who is "extra-dimensional" at least in the sense that the heavenly realm is no part of material reality), regardless of how many new dimensions might be discovered, I expect that God would not be "found" in any of them. In principle.
So it's silly to go chasing after the designer. The problem before us is to look at/for the design; and let each person who wishes to engage in philosophical or theological reverie go right ahead and try to figure out the problem of the designer if he has an inclination to do so. Or not as the case may be. The point is: Look at the world. That's all science can do, anyway.
Actually, it was mendacious and libelous, but who needs to worry about the truth when you have the Truth?
A house is evidence of the architect, even though the architect is not in it. Creation reeks of a designer, and those who study it with this thought in mind are the ones who make the most progress unlocking it's secrets.
In other words, one does not reverse-engineer a thing unless they believe it was engineered in the first place.
This isn't a response to you as much as an amplification, from a different position, of what you are already saying.
Thanks for the pings, btw.
placemarker eating placemarker
Hello, dear Patrick!
WRT the above itals: But don't you see that the very idea of a thing having a "nature" is an observation that points to the fact that "nature" is real, but that the word "nature" in this context is an actual abstraction of the mind and therefore is something that is real as such, and yet immaterial and non-physical. In other words, there is a distinction to be recognized between a "thing" and its "nature." "Nature" in this context would be closely analogous to the physical laws, which I've already suggested are instances of things that are real without being physical, tangible, material.
I think Aristotle was aware of this problem. For where Plato wanted to contemplate the Idea, the universal forms, Aristotle wanted to investigate the forms of actual, concrete bodies; and when he spoke of such "forms," he called them "natures." At least that is my best understanding of the issue at the present time.
Do you see what I mean?
Yes. You've said: ... the word "nature" in this context is an actual abstraction of the mind and therefore is something that is real as such, and yet immaterial and non-physical .... there is a distinction to be recognized between a "thing" and its "nature."
I understand what you're saying. I agree that a thing itself is different from our perception of the thing; and I further agree that a thing's inherent attributes are different from our abstract understanding thereof. That doesn't indicate, to me at least, that there's anything more to a thing than ... well, than the thing itself.
Our observations and abstractions are within us; they add nothing to the thing itself, and they don't even suggest to me that a thing has some kind of dual reality, merely because we perceive it and think about it. I'm not persuaded, or even inclined, to think that there's anything more to it, but I always remain open to evidence.
He had an op-ed in the NYT? Cool!
Not as cool as Maureen Dowd. She has one several times a week.
(Funny, never figured you for a MoDo fan.)
And, of course, having mentioned MoDo, the rules require I post this.
Yes, and a face on a mountain is evidence of an artist who sculpted it, right? That's true if the mountain is Mt. Rushmore. It's not true if your talking about a rock formation in New Hampshire generally known as the Man in the Mountain. The point is that something is evidence of design only when we know that the object is designed. There's no universal test that you can apply to any object to determine whether or not it was designed. If I am wrong, then please tell me exactly what characteristics an object must have to conclude that it is designed. For example, how do you look at a house and referring solely to the characteristics of that house determine that it is designed? You are not permitted to say anything about an architect since that is assuming your conclusion. You may only point to features of the house itself. Also, make the test general enough so that it is applicable to objects other than houses. Once we have this test, then we have a scientific theory of ID since it would be possible to use this test to potentially falsify the idea that life is designed. Without such a test, ID is not falsifiable, and hence is unscientific.
But that is exactly where ID is wrong. You cannot recognize design unless you know the history of an object, or the object has features or materials whose history you know. There is no objective procedure for demonstrating that something is designed.
Secondly, order does arise from disorder. Consider the crystal.
To refer back to things that have passed over the horizon of consideration : The civil society, the laws that are used within civil society, and the deed to your house are more real than material things.
Full page ads in the New York Times have a lot of interesting siblings, including the glorious leaders of North Korea. I give NYT ads the same respect and attention I give to the Weekly World News.
That is the kind of reasoning we find in the deconstructionists and post-deconstructionists, and in Aristotle. That is how a constituting power creates a constituted power. This will separate the philosphers from the other 99.999% of the human race.
In case nobody has postulated it here, I will reiterate it:
The brain is hardware. The mind is software.
A distinction without a difference. The mind is the behavior of the brain, and learning visibly alters the structure of the brain. Changes in the structure of the brain can be the result of biological evolution or the result of learning.
The brain is firmware.
I'm not suggesting that there is a "dual reality," Patrick. Bear in mind that it is our observations and abstractions (the latter would include, for instance, the laws of physics, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc.), which are "within us," that enable us to do science in the first place. If they are not "real" (notwithstanding that they are intangible, non-physical, immaterial), then neither is science itself.
Capice amice?
Tru. 8^>
>>The mind is the behavior of the brain, and learning visibly alters the structure of the brain.<<
The mind is consciousness. That is, it is you. The brain is merely the part of your biological machine that the software called "You" runs on.
And in every case, it is version 1.0. 8^>
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.