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.
To stir the pot, in a related connection, a paraphrase from a novel-- "If I were to throw a rock at your head, and hit you in the eye, what would happen?"
"I should feel pain and perhaps see splintered light."
"Yet that would be the true operation of the rock."
Left out of your discussion of neuronal firings is what the brain is *thinking*, *perceiving*, or *doing* at a given point.
Some of the same neurons might be firing during such completely different activities as finishing a biology final, finishing a race, or sexual climax. Are the differences in the "experience" of the "self-aware" brain KNOWN to be reducible entirely to qualitative and quantitative differences in the neuronal transmissions? Or are the differences [however confidently] PRESUMED to be reducible?
But we cannot say that the brain knows anything about that, or is "aware" of these activities.
Unless the brain does not recognize them as individual events, but it DOES recognize, interpret, and form opionions--preferences--about the brain's own internal various states which are correlated with various combinations or forms of the neuronal activities...
Happiness may show up on the scan in one way, hunger or lust another. But (if our language is any indication) we are aware in our own way of certain states, which are differentiable by other means to the neurologist etc. Cheers!
Hi grey_whiskers! That may be the true operation of the rock; but the rock didn't throw itself. "I" did.
Why do you think the brain is "*thinking*, *perceiving*, or *doing*...?" It may be that its role is that of the rock, not that of the rock thrower.
If we want to find out what's what, then perhaps the question should be left open for further investigation, rather than reduced or closed, based on our current understanding of the problem. JMHO FWIW
Well, you're right, except it was your post that motivated my thoughts. That something is unnoticed, almost beyond seeing, does not mean either that it is unseeable or insignificant. It may be of great significance.
It's great I got that right, Alamo-Girl! It's been a wonderful experience, "comparing notes" with you!
But the human science of physics does not cover all possible physical laws. It does not cover the laws of matter as they relate to living things. I suppose it could in principle, but in practice it doesn't. The laws of matter for living things are a superset which include the laws that physicists study, but add properties that emerge in the more complex structures of living things.
The law of biology cannot contradict the laws of physics, but they can include emergent properties. RWP is in a position to know the current state of research and its prospects for the near future.
The ability to predict is somewhat different than the ability to model. I can model the deal of a poker hand perfectly on my PC, but I cannot predict an actual poker hand.
I have to disagree. Water has properties that are not predictable from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. Living things have properties that are not predictible from the properties of its constituent elements. There is quite a bit of mystery to be unraveled, but no reason to resort to magic. There is no reason to assume anything other than emergent properties.
The first reason for not making the assumption of supernatural activity is that there is no evidence for it. The second reason is that neuroscience is flourishing without it.
The radio receiver anology would have to assume that all animals that have brains also have souls, since there is no jarring discontinuity between the behavior of animal brains and the behavior of human brains. My college training is in special education. If you take the whole spectrum of human differences and capabilities, there is a pretty seamless transition with apes. There is not much you can say about the difference between the human mind and the mind of apes that applies to all humans.
Exactly so, bvw. Then again it has been said that "the best place to hide something is to leave it out in broad daylight in the public square." :^) People who are busying themselves about trees rarely ever see the forest.
Thanks for your insightful posts!
Dennett says something along these lines in "Consciousness Explained", but doesnt go into much detail.
That could apply to evolution and natural selection, you know. Hidden in plain sight.
Behe jumped the shark, perhaps. Big deal. Darwin is worm food.
Wonderful post that.
I think we can agree in principle that there is more going on in biological systems than the physical laws, known today, can address.
But when it comes to the terms "physical law" and "matter" we are up against very specific definitions in Physics which are not likely to change. Hence I doubt that any explanation for these other properties will make it any further than "theory" or will conflict with the properties attributed to "matter" by physicists. But that's fine - after all, relativity is and will likely always be, a "theory" too.
IMHO, with all these mathematicians and physicists at the table with the evolution biologists, a comprehensive and widely accepted theory ought to be forthcoming.
I'm tickled pink that you recognize this difference in biological systems and are willing to discuss it, js1138! Thank you!!!
Right now you cannot tell me why there is a 100 percent correlation between brain damage and mental deficit. Or why there is a 100 percent correlation between the brain features and functions that humans share with animals, assuming animals have no souls.
Hence when you get hit with a rock, in the eye, you feel pain. Someone on the sidelines might note the vascular damage, the cells being pulverized, the biochemical and molecular attempts by the body to mediate the damage.
Both are true, but you are only immediately conscious of one.
But just because pain is "subjective" and cannot be quantized in the way beloved by scientists does not make it "unreal"--it just means their instruments cannot differentiate it; whether because the instruments are not yet suited, or not powerful enough, or whether there is a "ghost in the machine" is yet unknown...
Cheers!
Not so hidden that I can't "see" them, js1138. I accept both evolution and natural selection as perfectly credible. The first is the way of the universe, and the second is a strategy that the evolutionary process employs. But the Darwinist model does not explain how matter "got smart" enough to drive the process all by itself. And I simply strongly doubt that it can. Until this piece of the puzzle is in place, although Darwinism has a good explanation for speciation, it has nothing to say about how life arose in the universe: It cannot tell us what life is.
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