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.
Well snarks, I've been away for a while on work-related matters and I'm sorry I'm such a latecomer to this thread.But I just had to drop you a note to say that you gave what I consider to be a fair consideration of what I also believe are some of the obvious flaws in the Intelligent Design hypothesis.
Let me hasten to point out this thread started with P.Z. Myers' critique of Michael Behe's NYTimes op-ed piece. I can't take any credit for that. But welcome to the thread...
Unless...unless...one of my rivals has already done it! Gadzooks! Anyone seen my Turing test?
Thank you for your reply!
Pass the smelling salts, for i faint away! It's gonna take me a while to recover my senses from this ordeal....
But I am "all for" a thread to battle it out! Let's finally get down to the nitty-grit of mathematics (including information theory) and physics in biological systems - complex systems theory, quantization of continuums, autonomy, semiosis and the whole nine yards. Let's finally get a consensus of what is life v non-life/death.
We circumlocute the subject all the time on these threads. It's high time we hit the nail on the head and see what's there!
...distinguishing wherein the willfulness exists from the space/time coordinate point at which the cascade of information (successful communication) to actualize the will actually, physically ensues.
I'm sorry, I must've missed some of the things you've said in other posts. I went back and re-read your posts #518 and #582, but I don't find therein an explanation of how one soul could be distinguished from another if souls were neither corporeal nor spatial nor temporal. What I'm seeking is an account of a principle of individuation of souls that in no way refers to or depends upon space, time or matter/energy. Is there such a principle, in your view?
(BTW, have you been influenced by Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung)? By Henrí Bergson? By Teilhard de Chardin? Just curious.)
Oh I'd love to, It would be very interesting to hear how the experts spin that Chapter. I'd also like to hear about the rest of Numbers Chapter 5, After God's Eugenics project, he tells how to tell if your wife is unfaithful which is to
Go to a priest, the priest then makes her drink some "Bitter water", If she is guilty the water will make her thigh rot and her belly swell. If she's innocent "she shall be free, and shall conceive seed"
After hearing that who says the Bible doesn't contain valuable scientific information?? I'm sure that would be very useful as evidence in divorce court.
Why suffer a burden of misunderstanding when you might --
What misunderstanding? It's pretty clear cut
"And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead......And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel".
You can't really chalk that up to a "Mistranslation". That's pretty much Eugenics plain & simple.
in true scientific researcher fashion -- resolve the issue. Certainly it would add to your understanding, and who wouldn't look to add to accurate understandings?
HUH? How am I suppose to research this? Take a bunch of people who are sick and/or "hath an issue" and drop them off in the middle of an arid wilderness where there is no chance of them finding help and without modern day equipment/provisions and see if they live or not? I don't have to do that, I already know the odds are overwhelmingly they won't make it and I'd be put in prison.
But again, Even if somehow they beat all odds and lived, What happened is still not a good thing. If you were sick or "hath an issue" would you want to be kicked out into the wilderness away from your family? Would you want your mother or father to be if they were?
What happened here like all eugenics is just plain evil, considering since God if he really had a problem with these people could have just cured them, especially the lepers because in Leviticus 14 God gives his treatment for them (More wonderful scientific info in the Bible - who need antibiotics)
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.
With all due respect, Fester, what you just said is absolute horse crap.
There's no "a priori view" dogmatic enough to force-fit that much evidence, from as many different sources, into any paradigm which *isn't* actually consistent with the evidence. It would be like trying to fit a million square pegs the size of Arkansas into a hundred round holes too small to admit a quarter.
If you had *ever* done any data analysis yourself, you'd *know* this, and you wouldn't be spewing such nonsense.
But since you very clearly haven't, you're just talking out of your hind end. What you say above is just ludicrously wrong, and transparently so to anyone who is actually familiar with how such research works. You are, quite honestly, making a fool of yourself. Normally I wouldn't mind, but there are enough folks like you that they're really giving conservatism a bad name among people who are science-literate, and *that* I *do* care about.
Nor, contrary to your implication, is it even a matter of scientists trying to "fit" each new data item into an evolutionary scenario. New evidence just AUTOMATICALLY falls into evolutionary patterns without any massaging, because THAT'S HOW THE DATA IS. Again, if you actually bothered to become familiar with the evidence, you'd *know* this -- just as any intellectually honest person does who cares to look at it.
So please, can you give it a rest with such empty, silly, ignorant, and *wrong* accusations like:
The philosophy of evolution once again proves itself predictable as ever; predictably dedicated toward obfuscation where empirical science is concerned.
Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say. Keep believing that if you want to, since obviously no amount of attempts to educate you is going to have any effect. You already "know" what you want to believe, and won't listen to anything to the contrary.
First, no I have not read the book you cite and thus am not at all influenced by it.
Secondly, the discussion of Shannon (information theory and molecular biology) is a subtext from post 518 to now.
To sum it up though, the Shannon mathematical theory of communication is the basis for the field "information theory" which is a discipline of mathematics. It is successfully applied to biological systems in cancer and pharmaceutical research.
Under Shannon, information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is an action, not a message. It is measured in bits (not binary) and has a corresponding dissipation of energy to the local surroundings, paying the thermodynamic tab of the second law.
It is not the message. The value or meaning of the message is totally irrelevant to Shannon information theory.
The will is the inception (beginning or origination) of the transaction or cascade of successful communications in biological systems which ensues from the will. The most simple example is the will to move your finger initiating a cascade of successful communications throughout your molecular machinery actualizing your will. Another obvious example is to drop a live albatross, a dead albatross and a 12 pound cannonball from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
For live creatures which have a brain, we observe that the cascade of information originates at (though perhaps not exclusively at) space/time coordinates within the geometry of the physical brain. The is the physical initiation of the information, but not the host of the will itself. But some creatures, such as amoeba, have no brain and yet act willfully. Likewise, swarms of creatures act as a collective with a single will.
All of this points to a field-like corporeal “will to live” or want to live or struggle to survive.
Fine and dandy. But man is uniquely an individual. He has self-will – a sense of good and evil/right and wrong – or of transcendence, a belonging beyond space/time. Hence my post at 644; the collective consciousness – or will to live – is not adequate to explain the phenomenon of man.
What we actually observe in man is individualized, self-will, a gradient of willfulness which must therefore exceed the field-like collective consciousness and be hosted by the non-corporeal, non-spatial and non-temporal, and be individualized to effect self-will.
I'd be curious to know which of Skinner's scientific ideas are absolute crap. Nevermind his politics or dreams of utopia. He did have a big fight with Noam Chomsky, a plus in my book.
...the discussion of Shannon (information theory and molecular biology) is a subtext from post 518 to now.
To sum it up though, the Shannon mathematical theory of communication is the basis for the field "information theory" which is a discipline of mathematics. It is successfully applied to biological systems in cancer and pharmaceutical research.
Under Shannon, information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is an action, not a message. It is measured in bits (not binary) and has a corresponding dissipation of energy to the local surroundings, paying the thermodynamic tab of the second law.
It is not the message. The value or meaning of the message is totally irrelevant to Shannon information theory.
Okay, so far you've restricted your discussion to information exchanges which take place in the physical universe. Shannon's work makes no reference to the transmission of information from a non-physical entity to a physical entity (or vice versa). So the problem that's bothering me—to wit, how to explain the individuation of disembodied, non-spatiotemporal souls—is so far unaddressed.
Let's move on to your next three paragraphs:
The will is the inception (beginning or origination) of the transaction or cascade of successful communications in biological systems which ensues from the will. The most simple example is the will to move your finger initiating a cascade of successful communications throughout your molecular machinery actualizing your will. Another obvious example is to drop a live albatross, a dead albatross and a 12 pound cannonball from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
For live creatures which have a brain, we observe that the cascade of information originates at (though perhaps not exclusively at) space/time coordinates within the geometry of the physical brain. The is the physical initiation of the information, but not the host of the will itself. But some creatures, such as amoeba, have no brain and yet act willfully. Likewise, swarms of creatures act as a collective with a single will.
All of this points to a field-like corporeal “will to live” or want to live or struggle to survive.
Okay, you posit that there exists (in some sense of 'exists') something called 'will', which corresponds to our ordinary sense of willing our fingers to move, or even to an amoeba moving towards food or the like. But you want to speak of this 'will' as a 'will-field' or something of that sort. This will-field (somehow) initiates an information cascade that issues in biological activities of various kinds. Of course, this will-field must also experience back-reactions of information from the biological activities that it initiates, setting up feedback loops for the control of behavior.
Clearly, this will-field, if it exists, must be physical, don't you think? How else could it communicate information to a biological entity and receive communications of information back from a biological entity? And how else could Shannon's theory of information be applied to it (for Shannon's theory makes no provision for information exchanges between physical entities and non-physical ones, if such entities there be)?
I don't see how a will-field could be something non-corporeal, non-spatial and non-temporal, and yet transmit and receive what must be regarded as physical information. This needs clarifying, it seems to me (perhaps you've addressed this problem elsewhere and you can point me to that discussion—I don't wish to burden you with requests for what might be to you redundant explanations).
Now here is your penultimate paragraph:
Fine and dandy. But man is uniquely an individual. He has self-will – a sense of good and evil/right and wrong – or of transcendence, a belonging beyond space/time. Hence my post at 644; the collective consciousness – or will to live – is not adequate to explain the phenomenon of man.
So will=will to live=collective consciousness. But this, you claim, is not enough to account for man.
Which brings us to your last paragraph:
What we actually observe in man is individualized, self-will, a gradient of willfulness which must therefore exceed the field-like collective consciousness and be hosted by the non-corporeal, non-spatial and non-temporal, and be individualized to effect self-will.
So you speak of individualization of man's self-will (does this mean we've now arrived at individual souls?), but then you assert that this individualized self-will must "be hosted by the non-corporeal, non-spatial and non-temporal". This doesn't seem to me to follow at all, and in fact, it's really assuming what I was hoping you'd explain, to wit, how it's possible to distinguish between two (or more) souls if those souls, by their nature, lack physicality, spatiality and temporality! Doesn't the individualization of self-will that constitutes man—I'm going along with you on this for a moment—stem from man's physicality and rootedness in space and in time? Otherwise, how can one piece of self-will be distinguished from another?
Anyway, thanks, Alamo-Girl, for taking the time and trouble to respond to my query, and I hope you'll recognize that I'm just trying to understand what it is that you're saying and how you address what seems to me to be a serious difficulty in your position.
Best regards...
A serious debate to battle-out the issues of intelligent design v evolution would have to begin with ontology so that all the correspondents would be on the same page of "reality".
Further, if I were to rank the disciplines you name - with regard to any investigation - Mathematics would be first because it is the most sure.
And because physical laws are preeminent, for me, the contributions of Physics would have to come next.
Too bad, though, it could have been productive.
A "field" is defined as existing at all points in space/time. Thus when I am speaking of a collective consciousness being "field-like" I am indeed speaking within space/time - regardless of whatever dimensionality may apply.
However, when I am speaking of man's self-will I am indeed saying that it is more than a "collective consciousness" - it is individualized. A self-will beyond the collective will, i.e. the will to live.
The other point is the integration. Man would have both a stake in the field-like collective consciousness and also as an individual with self-will beyond that. "Beyond" entails beyond the field, beyond space and time - e.g. his non-corporeal soul/spirit.
With regard to information (reduction of uncertainty in a receiver) in molecular biology - the initiating event can either be an interrupt (sensory - sight, touch, etc.) or cyclic function (e.g. heart rhythm) or will (intent, abstraction, anticipation, choice, etc.).
Lurkers: for more information on information theory and molecular biology:
Adami: Information Theory and Molecular Biology
A theory is not just a wildassed guess.
It is a scientific wildassed guess.
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