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've seen a Bridgman apparatus in use. Does that count?
You wouldn't get powder diffraction if it were only a few atoms thick. If you can't get at least microcrystalline material - and microcystalline usually means microns at least on a side - a Bridgman won't help you much. After all, all it really does is singles out a single predominant growth axis.
On the other hand, one piece of evidence or one evidence-based argument is almost never enough to establish the probable truth of an empirical proposition.Right. Any one thing can have many possible explanations. What gives evolution its explanatory power as a theory is the multiple lines of evidence (morphology, DNA, geology, radiometric dating, continental drift, tree rings, ice cores, ocean cores, etc.) that all converge to support it. Nothing else even approaches evolution's ability to unite the evidence from all these various disciplines.
As The Fonz would say (before he jumped the shark?):
"Correctomundo!"
Conceptualize that now-considered simple appartus surrounded by high pressure oil to equalize extremely high pressures on all sides, imagine the design to seal it. 100,000 atomspheres! Not an easy thing to do at sizes bigger than the angel's dance hall.
Sure there is. Design!
"Finnegan begin again."
"Bwahaha! You're no better at guessing than at telling the truth. Wrong twice."
Ok, fine. I'm wrong twice ... if you are telling the truth.
But, quite frankly, something doesn't click here. You don't sound like a middle child, and you definitely would qualifty for last born spoiled brat, but you are too disciplined w/ language for that.
Thus, in the birth order, you were the '1st' one to really take seriously the idea of being responsible.
Perhaps there is a large gap between you and the next oldest. Or, as likely, the next oldest was a reprobate, and you filled in the moral gap. Oh well, you likely not going to provide a detailed biography. It would help however, in figuring out why you detest Protestants so much. (Clearly the term Christians was simply not precise enough; your S. Baptist comment reveals much).
The point is, you sound a lot like an oldest.
"If they get Biblical literalism and the subservience of women in the style of the Southern Baptists, yes I do feel sorry for them."
So you think women should not be subservient? The bible is pretty explicit about how women fit into a family government structure. The book of Timothy comes right out and states stuff that is just plum awful.
Your standard left-wing elevate-wive-over-husbands worldview is unsurprising RW Professor; it is consistent with all your other arguments (except that you love the GOP). This suggests you probably own a copy of the Matrix. Trinity (HA!) is not subservient in that movie...; in fact, like many movies, including Sabrina w/ Harrison Ford, the story is always the same ... SHE, whoever she is, leads the man out of the boy. She is the one who redeems and saves the 'guy' from guydom. (At the end, Ford, in Paris, says "Save me Sabrina Fair"; then cue the kiss).
Now you are really starting to make some sense. And so, to extend the logic, a 'man' wouldn't cheat on his wife, not b/c he is to be faithful to God, but b/c he is to be faithful to her; he has to be, b/c she, not God, SAVED him. It is perfectly reasonable.
Basically, if God was not a "Father", you'd likely have a far different reaction to the whole creation story I am guessing.
It always boils down to the same story ... some Dad screws over his own kids (a drunk, a lout, a philanderer, or worst, just missing) .... and godlessness results.
All varities of it, but the common denominator between Marx, Freud, Rand, Sartre, etc, etc, etc, is a weak/absent father figure.
All those academics I met in college, esp Grad School ... all those weak/absent Dads. The correlation and significance were overwhelming. It is quite interesting RWP. I had a Dad who wasn't absent; I'm beginning to fully believe that all these fights are merely a huge noise over how crummy life can get when Adam is a silent wimp.
But all this is immaterial to you. Let's address what you care about: the spiritual emancipation of women. Given your main argument, that we Christians, esp Baptist types, are bad for the GOP, do you have any evidence that the liberated, 'partnership oriented', cul-de-sac craving, risk-averse, women tend to vote MORE along GOP lines?
I'm interested in reading how wresting the training of girls out of the dirty fingers of Southern Baptists is going to create a better crop of Republicans. I mean, you are here at FR, a GOP stronghold. Surely you can provide some reliable data. I can't wait to see this ... but again, you'll ignore this as you have ignored all else ...
Wait; correction, getting back to the opening now .... You didn't ignore my call for your 'reasons' for being honest. But, what you did do was piggy back on someone else's ideas (from the Catholic Ency.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03432a.htm):
Categorical Imperative
A term which originated in Immanuel Kant's ethics. It expresses the moral law as ultimately enacted by reason and demanding obedience from mere respect for reason.
But that will alone is good which acts not only conformably to duty, but also from duty. And again the will acts from duty when it is determined merely by respect for the law...
Therefore the first fundamental principle of morality is: "Let the law be the sole ground or motive of thy will." Kant further finds that the law is capable of inspiring respect by reason of its universality and necessity, and hence lays down the following general formula of the moral law: "Act so that the maxim [determining motive of the will] may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings."
Necessity and universality, he declares, cannot be derived from experience, whose subject matter is always particular and contingent, but from the mind alone, from the cognitive forms innate in it. Hence the moral law originates in pure reason and is enunciated by a synthetical judgment a priori--a priori because it has its reason, not in experience, but in the mind itself; synthetical, because it is formed not by the analysis of a conception, but by an extension of it.
Reason, dictating the moral law, determines man's actions.
Yet it may do so in a twofold manner. It either controls conduct infallibly, its dictates being actually responded to without conflict or friction--and in this case there is no obligation necessary or conceivable, because the will is of itself so constituted as to be in harmony with the rational order--or it is resisted and disobeyed, or obeyed only reluctantly, owing to contrary impulses coming from sensibility.
In this case determination by the law of reason has the nature of a command or imperative, not of a hypothetical imperative, which enjoins actions only as a means to an end and implies a merely conditional necessity but of a categorical imperative, which enjoins actions for their own sake and hence involves absolute necessity.
While for God, Whose will is perfectly holy, the moral law cannot be obligatory, it is for man, who is subject to sensuous impulses, an imperative command.
Accordingly, the categorical imperative is the moral law enacted by practical reason, obligatory for man, whose sensibility is discordant from the rational order, and demanding obedience from respect for its universality and necessity.
RWP, you have GOT to be kidding. Your expectation is that KANT, KANT!!! is going to be our savior if we just get reasonable enough? These are your 'compelling' reasons, which happen to be better than 'the 10 commandments', for being honest? Tell me, please, that you are joking. By this logic you would, if you were open and honest, agree that society should devise a 'rationalism' mental test; those not suitably rational would be denied the vote. (At the least).
Not only do you want us all to love scientists, but we are to bow down low to the likes of John Edwards and the rest of the folks who are inventing laws right and left out there.
Do you have any good reasons for being honest that you are bright enough to think up on your own? Or was that bold crack about 'compelling' reasons simply a reference to the fact you're a Kant disciple.
BB and AG, I'm not well trained in the masters of Philosophy; but somehow, this appeal to Kant, as a understructure for justification of this marathon fight over how little kids should be exposed to ToE teachings, .... I find this appeal to have some major flaw. Help please if either of you are of a mind...
Right, "a few atoms thick" referred to the extreme thinness -- a few hundred, a few thousand needed to assemble the xrays in that difraction grid. What did you think I meant?
These are NOT multiple lines of evidence. These are multiple disciplines that may be employed to interpret evidence in such a way as to fit a priori views. The philosophy of evolution once again proves itself predictable as ever; predictably dedicated toward obfuscation where empirical science is concerned.
Groundhog's Day.
I think you're confusing two things here, guy: Bridgman's apparatus for attaining very high pressures, and his crystal growing apparatus.
Yes, he was a fine physicist. But just because he sometimes had to go to considerable experimental lengths to grow crystals, does not mean crystals in general are designed. I grow huge ones in my lab, often by slow evaporation. Other huge ones grow naturally.
As Nabokov wrote (memory speaks, albeit perhaps inaccurately), "Finnegan's Wake reminds one of nothing so much as a persistent snoring in the next room."
Even you growing yours apply all sorts of process and chemical tricks and mechanics that some theorical little demon at the crystal face would have no idea of. He -- the crystal evolutionist such demons do be -- would insist that you do not exist!
Hilarious! First you tell 'em "So you think women should not be subservient? The bible is pretty explicit about how women fit into a family government structure. The book of Timothy comes right out and states stuff that is just plum awful." . Then you ask the subservient ones to bail you out!
Pathetic!
"Hark, hark; three quarks for muster mark!"
Nah. I just get a saturated solution, maybe seed with some small ones, and let nature do the rest. Works for most things I do.
But the real pros, the guys who grow protein crystals, you know what they do? They use randomness! They simply make up hundreds of different combinations of growth conditions, and select the one or two that work.
Sound familiar?
http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2000-12/drnl-tcr061902.php
that is certainly ONE effect.
"Finnegan's Wake reminds one of nothing so much as a persistent snoring in the next room.""Hark, hark; three quarks for muster mark!"
Hmmm...persistent snoring in the next room...Murray Gell-Mann... A connection? Poor Murray, he could never match Dick Feynman's chutzpah and comfort in the limelight. And, yet, Murray got his quarks.
No apostrophe in Finnegans, heathen ;)
Joyce was a lousy punctuator (and his orthography needed a little work, 2)!
While we're at it, my original post should have read: "Finnegan, begin again." I put the comma in, then took it out (as Elaine might have put it).
Ach!
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