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.
Memories are not separate from the structure of the brain. there is no RAM. There is no memory reader. This is the current best hypothesis. It fits very nicely with our subjective sence of being "whole".
placemarker du jour
Well, sure, but only 3 people on your list are named "Steve."
Well thanks, maybe.
Goggling "SocialText" takes me to a forum/blogger workgroup software site called socialtext. They have some blogs they list, of which the ones I looked at were Deaniacs or affines.
Also one blogger who covers modern neuroscience, possibly of interest to Junior. See
http://www.socialtext.com/weblog/2005February.html
&
http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/
How? Our intentions cause the wheels to turn. Hmm.
We intend a lot of things that don't happen. What is the mechanism? The wind?
but more potently the design and parmeterization of processes, which processes may appear in the small to be random, but that are subject to a crafty process that engenders the desired result. The intelligence may be so subtle that its processes avoid discrete detection -- are not possible to distinquish from chaos, yet in aggregate it is design.
from this:
...``a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description'' -- this is quite simply a fact about the world, much as the self-proclaimed empiricists of modernist science might prefer to deny it. In such a situation, how can a self-perpetuating secular priesthood of credentialed ``scientists'' purport to maintain a monopoly on the production of scientific knowledge?
RightWing: How? Our intentions cause the wheels to turn. Hmm. We intend a lot of things that don't happen. What is the mechanism? The wind?
On the level of classical physics, we can easily identify matter. But not so on the quantum level, where the existence of the Higgs field/boson is unconfirmed, or on the cosmic level, where most of the matter exhibits counter-indicative behavior, in particular the negative gravity of dark energy.
It parallels this instance, speaking to how an "intent" to move a finger can become a finger moved. The moved finger is classic, easy to identify. The physical mechanism is a bit more obscure because it involves a non-corporeal - information aka "success communications".
Moreover, the "intent" itself is non-corporeal, non spatial/non temporal. It cannot be put under a microscope, it cannot be measured like information as a reduction of uncertainty in the receiver, it cannot be translated to thermodynamics of the dissipation of energy into the local surroundings.
But "intent" is nevertheless the origin of the successful communication, in this case to move a finger - or in the albatross dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa flying away, while the dead one falls to the ground with the 12 lb cannonball.
You ask "how" our "intent" can originate a successful communication within the body. That is the tether between the consciousness (mind, soul, spirit - take your pick) and the brain. The intention itself is evidence of the difference between consciousness and the brain: contemplation, prediction, analysis, synthesis, etc.
So you ask about why some "intentions" don't manifest. One cause may be actual boundaries - physical boundaries of an autonomous organism. I cannot "intend" for a mountain to be moved, for instance, because the mountain is not part of my autonomy.
And yet, in the animal kingdom, there are groups of organisms (like bees, ants, schools of fish) which act with a single intent. Therefore, another cause may be "perceived" boundaries. I cannot "intend" the mountain to move because I believe I cannot - or vice versa, I can "intend" it to move and it will because I believe I can.
What is the mechanism?
On the other question--what is the matter of the law or of the state?
But it doesn't seem that it fits very nicely, if one does an thorough analysis of the subjective thought process.
We (or at least I, but I hardly think I'm unique in this) must "retrieve" the various elements of the thought process. We don't think wholly serially, it seems to me; that is one discrete impression/thought at a time. Not all the elements necessary to thought are streaming in via sense perception from the outside environment. Some are; but they would have no context in thought if we were unable to place them in relation with the "stuff" of memory -- recollections of past events, past analyses, etc.
I'm just trying to be descriptive here. Based on my own observations, the hypothesis you suggest does not seem to fit with what I know from experience.
So, then what???
When you calculate pi the numbers extend without end and without an apparent correlation. If you were to take a chunk of the numbers out of the extension, it might appear to be random. But it would not actually be random at all, because it originated with a simple calculation of circumference divided by diameter.
Thus what might seem as happenstance is actually "designed".
This is the basics of Kolmogorov complexity. Complexity is determined by the least algorithmic description. pi is not "complex".
It is also the objection of Wolfram to "randomness" per se. IOW, everything is an effect of a prior cause and thus only "pseudorandom". (Of course, this requires one to hold firmly to physical causality but that's another subject.)
It is also the basis of my standing hypothesis around here, i.e. that algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design.
How does it work?
Retrieval of a specific memory item usually involves attempting to place ourselves in the situation or state of mind where we learned the item. There are a zillion tricks for this, and a few people have made a good living selling books and lecturing on memory systems.
There is in psychology a concept of "state dependent learning" which predicts, among other things, that things learned while under the influence of drugs will most readily be recalled under the same influence.
Something to keep in mind if you use uppers while cramming for an exam.
What is the matter of thought?
It is an origination, an inception, a beginning of a successful communication (Shannon information: the reduction of uncertainty in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state).
It is like the "Big Bang" only on a smaller scale: an origination.
Voila! A miracle!
Action at a distance? The aether? Very mysterious waving of hands--And it originates!
Hello Alamo-Girl! I suspect it isn't corporeal at all, in the sense of a bodily organ. I suspect it is something that is carried by a universal field, and can be accessed via the brain if we so direct it. But I certainly haven't worked out all the details yet!
In general, I think that consciousness is field-like at the level of the individual, and that moreoever there is such a thing as collective consciousness. It seems there are many instances of what appears to be collective consciousness in the natural world; e.g., the behavior of the social insects for instance. Also there seem to be instances of it in the human world, e.g., in what is known as "public opinion," or what we mean by zeitgeist or the spirit of the age for examples.
Dr. G. has suggested that the Bauer life principle also requires a field, at the organismic level, and also at the universal level. And of course, consciousness -- or at least rudimentary sensation or awareness -- is a property of every living being.
But for me, this is merely food for speculation at this point! :^)
Thank you so much for writing, and for your excellent posts today. Unfortunately, I've been a little tied up with work projects :^( , so have not been able to jump in as much as I'd like. (This working for a living business "is for the birds!" LOL!!!)
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