Posted on 10/16/2005 1:28:00 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Marginalized by his university colleagues, ridiculed as a quack by the scientific establishment, Michael Behe continues to challenge the traditional theory of how the world came to be.
For more than a decade, the tenured Lehigh University biochemistry professor and author has been one of the nation's leading proponents of intelligent design, a movement trying to alter how Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school.
This week, Behe will testify in a federal courtroom in Harrisburg in a landmark case about whether students in a Pennsylvania classroom should be required to hear a statement before their evolution classes that says Darwin's theory is not a fact.
"The fact that most biology texts act more as cheerleaders for Darwin's theory rather than trying to develop the critical faculties of their students shows the need, I think, for such statements," Behe said.
In papers, speeches and a 1996 best-selling book called "Darwin's Black Box," Behe argues that Darwinian evolution cannot fully explain the biological complexities of life, suggesting the work of an intelligent force.
His life on the academic fringes can be lonely. Critics say the concept is nothing more than biblical creationism in disguise. He long ago stopped applying for grants and trying to get his work published in mainstream scientific journals. In August, his department posted a Web statement saying the concept is not scientific.
"For us, Dr. Behe's position is simply not science. It is not grounded in science and should not be treated as science," said Neal Simon, the biology department chairman.
Behe said he was a believer in Darwin when he joined Lehigh in 1985, but became a skeptic after reading Michael Denton's book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis."
Behe's big idea, published in "Darwin's Black Box" and the one that catapulted him to academic fame, is irreducible complexity. It is the notion that certain biochemical systems are incapable of having evolved in Darwinian fashion because they require all of their parts working simultaneously.
Behe uses a mousetrap to illustrate the concept. Take away any of its parts - platform, spring, hammer, catch - and the mousetrap can't catch mice.
"Intelligent design becomes apparent when you see a system that has a number of parts and you see the parts are interacting to perform a function," he said.
The book "put the positive case for design on the map in a way that some of the (previous intelligent design) work had not done," said Steven Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute [http://www.discovery.org]. Most of academia panned it.
Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education [ http://www.ncseweb.org], said that he believes Behe thought he discovered something astonishing. "But no one is using irreducible complexity as a research strategy, and with very good reason ... because it's completely fruitless," he said.
Behe finds community in a Web group that he says includes like-minded faculty from other universities. Most keep their views to themselves, Behe said, because "it's dangerous to your career to be identified as an ID proponent."
He earned tenure at Lehigh before becoming a proponent, which lets him express his views without the threat of losing his job.
"Because of the immense publicity that's mushroomed around this issue in the past six months, more people are getting emotional about the topic," Behe said. "And it's generally not on my side."
Inferences that have no predictive power are not part of science.
That may be. But that just tells us that human life is more than science can give.
God made Adam and found him to be lonely so he offered all the animals to Adam inorder for Adam to have a suitable partner. Adam said (after trying all the animals), God, please, I am a man. I don't want no stinkin' animals, I want a woman!
We don't try to cram all of life into science class. We have history, philosophy, religion, literature -- all of which deal with the ineffable. Science is empirical.
Why did He create them man and women if he didn't intend for them to engage in the man-women thing?
You know, that's curious. If God offered Adam all the animals as companions (presumably, therefore, animal companions were okay with God), what's the big deal about ... animal companions now?
Projection:
"The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt."
I must be missing something, because I don't see how this contradicts evolution. According to modern science, the first humans were male and female.
All life was asexual at some point, but human life was never asexual.
Of course, it's the conservatives who want to do away with tenure. If that happens, Behe will be one of the first to go.
good point.
Uh, yeah, Jerry Bergman is a phony whose writings (and finger pointing) on issues of racism and discrimination are about as dependable as those of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
He claims...
Leading Nazis, and early 1900 influential German biologists, revealed in their writings that Darwin’s theory and publications had a major influence upon Nazi race policies.
But if you actually read Hitler and other leading Nazis you find that, although they did indeed appeal at times to (a naive and superficial version of) Darwinism, it was to argue for their doctrines of militarism.
Nazi racism was actually based not on scientific doctrines but on (a mystical version of) creationism. Read Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Rosenberg, the Nazis' most important philosopher of race, asserts that each race is created with a unique "soul," giving each race specific tendencies, attributes and geniuses. (The genius of the Aryan race was supposedly conquest and enslavement of lesser races.) Hitler echoes these views in Mein Kampf and in his speeches.
The Nazi selective breeding ideas Bergman refers to were NOT based on any Darwinian scheme for evolving or improving the race. Rather their purpose was to RESTORE the lost "purity" of the "blood" which carried the racial "soul". None of this nonsense has a damn thing to do with Darwin.
Again, Darwin was appealed to in a cartoonish way in arguing for militarism, in that the brutality of warfare would supposedly "select" the dominate races. But still this was secondary to awaking the "natural" tendency of the Aryan "blood" toward the conquest and rule of lesser races, a tendency installed therein by the Creator.
I might point out that not all humans are clearly male or clearly female.
What you are engaging in is know, in psychological terms, as "projection".
Sorry. I did project that about Adam wanting a women. The Bible doesn't say that. It says that God put him in a deep sleep.
Some are both male and female. DNA from both and organs from both.
Scientists always point to the Galileo case. I point to the case of Galois. No one of high ability has ever been treated more badly than this young man was. And it was all because he was dealing with totally egocentric people...that is, the typical scientific academic.
*** I must be missing something, because I don't see how this contradicts evolution. According to modern science, the first humans were male and female.***
You missed the FROM THE BEGINNING part.
Humans were created in the beginning as male and female.
The were not created as blobs that, after several billion years, finally evolved into males and females.
They were male and female from the beginning. From the beginning of what? From the beginning of the world - not billions of years later.
Since you are critical of my projection that "Adam wanted a women" you must be happy with the animals. hmmm.
You inserted that "from the beginning of the world." The Bible doesn't say that. Is that your direct link to God in action again?
Points.
God created Adam before Eve. Was Adam asexual or sexual before Eve.
Adam and Eve had no interest in sex prior to the eating the apple. How can you say they were sexual before since Eve had no desire or capacity to bear children. If they were sexual, it must have been for their pleasure only.
Whereas ID is the claim that Nature cheats.
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