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.
Unfortunately, I have seen tht same arguments applied to evolution, by people who should otherwise know better.
I haven't. Could you point to some examples?
Hey, what about *my* "civil spirit", ya jerk!?!
;-)
Hell, I'd be happily surprised if you'd do it even *once*...
I'll leave the construction of philsophical minutae to those who espouse it. The bigger the edifice, the harder the fall. With 150 years of philosophical details palming themselves off as science I reckon the fall will be somewhat uncomfortable. Of course, there will always remain a handful in their ivory towers who deny reality. I happen to be acquainted with some of them.
LOL. Nice rant. Doesn't pass for an argument; but, did you get it off your chest. I said it before and I'll say it again. Claiming piles of evidence doesn't make it so. Claiming something is evidence for a specific thing requires more than claiming it so. When it's evidence in support of a one or more other possibilities, it is hardly specific support. I'm saying nothing that first week logic students don't know; but, y'all sure don't act like you've ever been acquainted with it. I understand why you're reticent to just admit it's your "belief"; but, that doesn't make your endless claims any less dishonest or more scientific.
Now boys, STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER! (how many thousand times have I said that?) :}
Oooooooooooo I know you've been waiting for that opportunity....He He He
BTW are you the bug variety or the "weasel like" variety?
Until they do, are you going to continue to rely on it as support for your position, or set it aside while awaiting verification?
Nevertheless, even if the additional experiments were to fail in duplicating a "thinking" or "memory" on the part of the amoeba - there would yet remain the "will to live".
Again, while living things obviously employ various methods and strategies to enhance their odds of survival, it's a misnomer to call it a "will" in all cases.
This same "will to live" exists in all kinds of life forms - from bacteria to whales.
With the aforementioned objection to the terminology being employed, I agree.
It is also a collective will in some species, such as ants and bees.
As I've already pointed out, the apparent "collective will" in ants and bees and other hympenoptera is actually a "will" (*cough*) towards *individual* propagation of genes, due to the haplodiploid genetics of that group.
It is cooperative among the molecular machinery (cardiovascular, neural, etc.) required to sustain an organism such as man.
Yes, the various tissues and structures of multicelluar organisms are configured in order to sustain the organism as whole.
The "will to live" is the thrust of my preceding posts about a field-like property (being universal wrt space/time) which must exist in addition to the physical laws and constants relative to biological life to explain what we observe.
There are various false assumptions in this statement. The "will to live" is fully explainable without any "field-like property", nor any "universal with respect to space/time" property, nor "must" such a "universal field" (whatever that might be) exist "in addition" to anything in order to "explain what we observe".
The ubiquitousness of the "will to live" as you call it among living things is entirely explainable as an expected result of evolutionary processes. Individual organisms which have more "will to live" (i.e. properties of various sorts which enhance survival) than their cohorts will have a positively differential survival and reproduction rate, and these traits (the "will to live" properties) will accumulate across generations.
This also explains why the tissues, etc. of multicellular creatures act in concert to enhance survival -- selecting for "survival enhancers" is exactly what natural selection *DOES*.
There is absolutely no need to invoke a "magical", "univeral", "field" which somehow "imbues" life with survival behaviors in order to account for them. Evolution itself ensures that they will be selected and amplified in populations of living things.
But Mooooooommmmmm....
Alas, only "anecdotal"--reading in various half-remembered magazine articles while waiting in airports and such.
Please note I used the word "unfortunate" and I did not say "all too common"...
Cheers!
Dear, dear snarks! You have bet the family farm on space/time and all therein contained.
Don't I wish I had a family farm to bet!
But here's the deal. Space/time is the canvas of creation and not the Creator.
That may be true, but there's no objective, non-anecdotal evidence for it.
True, it is the expansion of space/time which gives rise to fields and thereby energy and matter and the sense of time passing in four dimensions. But space/time has a beginning - regardless of cosmology.
It seems to be the case that our little patch of spacetime had a beginning, but whether the larger arena of what might be called 'physical reality' had a beginning is not known. Here are a few links that provide interesting reading (you don't have to follow all of the math to get the gist of the arguments):
Anthony Aguirre & Steve Gratton, "Steady-State Eternal Inflation" (2002, PDF format)
Let me be clear: I'm far from suggesting that one (or any) of the above papers shows that physical reality had no beginning. All I'm suggesting is that it's possible that physical reality had no beginning. Clearly, we're still investigating the question. Perhaps we'll never achieve a satisfactory resolution of it, perhaps we will. But, meanwhile, it's in no way certain that physical reality had to have had a beginning and so had to have had a creator of some sort. The jury is still out.
When we are speaking "beyond" space/time we are speaking of the uncaused cause, God Himself. There are no spatial/temporal coordinates at this spiritual level. Physical causality is out the window. So are physical laws and constants. There is only being and becoming - harmony. Timelessness, snarks.Timelessness does not have a corollary or even a useful metaphor in space/time.
If a 'spiritual actor' is a 'non-physical actor', meaning an actor which somehow 'acts' while standing apart from matter/energy (of any sort), space (of whatever dimensionality and structure) and time, then I simply don't know what this means. If the expression 'spiritual actor' is more than merely flatus vocis, I fail to see why.
Best regards, Alamo-Girl...
It may appear that A-G and I are coming at you from two different directions and maybe we are but it is an tenet of Christianity that objective truth exists and can be found. This truth may not be able to be duplicated in a controlled setting but it is reasonable. The Gospels make the case that Jesus is special. History backs it up.
I would agree that Jesus as he is portrayed in the Bible was a remarkable individual. There's very little in his teaching or his example that I would criticize. If more of us behaved as he did, the world would be a far better place.
Precisely the point, furball4paws!
Indeed, but I think you're overlooking the obvious answer, the one I believe fb4p has in mind: "Nothing -- it evinces no 'will'".
That is why betty boop and I call it "field-like". A field is defined as something which exists at all points in space/time - e.g. gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak atomic.
In what manner is that superior to the null hypothesis of "it ain't got none and don't need none"?
We observe, at bottom, at the most primative levels of life, a field-like "will to live".
We do "observe at bottom at the most primitive levels of life", activities which can be mislabeled as "will to live", but it's not "field-like". Even if it's ubiquitous in living things, that still doesn't make it "permeating all space/time" nor "field-like".
Using information theory to analyze molecular biology, the will is the cause, the inception or beginning of a cascade of successful communication in a living organism to accomplish that will.
No it isn't, especially at the level of amoebas and so forth. Tropisms are *reflexive*, they are *reactive*, they are not "the cause, the inception or beginning" of the "cascade of successful communication".
In the amoeba, the will to live causes it to engulf a prey.
No, chemical tropisms do, which are no more based on "will" than is the way in which surface tension causes water to "climb" a capillary tube. Water does not "will" itself to rise in narrow tubes, nor could it "will" otherwise. And ameobas do not "will" themselves to engulf nutrients.
Insect -- "bugs" are technically a different subset of insects, ;-) -- I didn't learn about the mongoose variety until later, although I am now rather fond of it.
And how many thousand times have you heard: (Whiny voice):"Well he started it!"
When I first saw your name, I couldn't remember if it was flies or wasps so I looked it up and there was this vicious furry thing. I thought, this is neat, but you are not vicious. Phorids are my favorite bug :^}
If ‘science tried’ to blow smoke in order to prove something, what would this mean?
Is the media biased or science? - Both?
I thought you might find this interesting…
What do you mean? Survival is unique and without purpose, due to the mindless universe it ‘emerged’ from?
The old adage “there are none so blind, as those who will not see” comes to mind. Einstein certainly seemed to think so and said it quite eloquently:
Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262
Strange how some of you cannot see the “will to live” when it is plainly obvious to so many, if not most all, of the rest of us.
When we think of a fish pulled out of the water onto the dry land, we observe the will to live as it flops around trying to get back into the water. Drop a bird from a rooftop and it’ll fly away. Step on a snake and it will coil and strike back.
One can hold his breath, try to make his heart stop beating or his brain quit functioning - but he’ll fail until he forcibly overrides the universal “will to live” that permeates every cell in his physical body by committing suicide by an intentional act of self-will.
All of the molecular machinery in the body is organized by function and cooperates together for the survival of the whole organism. When an invading bacteria or mutant cancer cell arrives in the body, it'll struggle to survive too.
Even the single cell amoeba has a will to live as do bacteria and anthrax spores which lay dormant as one of their life cycles until they are breathed into the lungs, where they seize the opportunity to actualize that will to live.
That will to live is the underlying principle of the biosphere, ecological balance. Ignorant plantlife are all caught up in this same "will to live". It applies universally, collectively, in all forms of life. That is why we say it is "field-like" - it is not peculiar to select space/time coordinates or entities.
Y’all seem to object to the “will to live” because you believe is not “needed”. That is a cop-out, a statement of religious faith, like the anthropic principle, i.e. “Nature did it!”
You excuse the amoeba by reason of the bio/chemical actions it takes without pausing to consider why it should take any action at all. Jeepers! Do this thought experiment:
Hint: the answer will not be in an “automatic” response. Only creatures who have a dormant phase in their life cycle will respond to feeding to become active. Try feeding a dead cat.
What is observed in living molecules is a change of states. This changing of states is a reduction of uncertainty (entropy) which is caused by the receipt and decoding of an incoming coded message. That is successful communication, information in biological systems.
There are three possible initiation types for such successful communications: interrupts (sensory) – cycles (like heart beats) – and will (will to live, intent, abstraction, anticipation, etc.)
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