Professor [Behe]: Design not creationism [Evolution trial, 18 October]

The Harrisburg courtroom was packed yesterday with reporters and members of the public who came to see the second half of Dover's intelligent design trial.

The defense began presenting its case by calling its star witness -- Lehigh University professor, biochemist and top intelligent design scientist Michael Behe.

Thomas More Law Center attorney Robert Muise started the questioning in a simple format, asking, for example, if Behe had an opinion about whether intelligent design is creationism. Then he asked Behe to explain why.

Behe said intelligent design is not creationism, but
a scientific theory that makes scientific claims that can be tested for accuracy.

Behe testified that intelligent designdoesn't require a supernatural creator, but an intelligent designer: it does not name the designer.

He said evolution is not a fact and there are gaps in the theory that can be explained by intelligent design.

There is evidence that some living things were purposefully arranged by a designer, Behe claimed in his testimony.

Gave examples: One example is the bacterial flagellum, the tail of a bacteria that quickly rotates like an outboard motor, he said.

The bacterial flagellum could not have slowly evolved piece by piece as Charles Darwin posited because if even one part of the bacteria is removed, it no longer serves its original function, Behe said.

Biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller testified for the parents about two weeks ago. He showed the courtroom diagrams on a large screen, detailing how the bacterial flagellum could be reduced and still work.

Also showing diagrams, Behe said Miller was mistaken and used much of his testimony in an attempt to debunk Miller's testimony.

Miller was wrong when he said that intelligent design proponents don't have evidence to support intelligent design so they degrade the theory of evolution, Behe said.

But Behe also said evolution fails to answer questions about the transcription on DNA, the "structure and function of ribosomes," new protein interactions and the human immune system, among others.

By late in the afternoon, Behe was supporting his arguments with complex, detailed charts, at one point citing a scientific article titled "The Evolved Galactosidase System as a Model for Studying Acquisitive Evolution in the Laboratory."

Most of the pens in the jury box -- where the media is stationed in the absence of a jury -- stopped moving. Some members of the public had quizzical expressions on their faces.

One of the parents' attorneys made mention of the in-depth subject matter, causing Muise to draw reference to Miller's earlier testimony.

Board responds: Randy Tomasacci, a schoolboard member with a Luzerne County school district, said he was impressed with Behe's testimony.

Tomasacci represents Northwest Area School District in Shickshinny, a board that is watching the Dover trial and is contemplating adopting an intelligent design policy.

He said he thought Behe was "doing a good job" during testimony, but "it can get over my head pretty quick."

Former professor Gene Chavez, a Harrisburg resident, said he came to watch part of the proceedings because the case is "monumental."

"I think he's going to have a hard time supporting what he has concluded," Chavez said. "I think he is using his science background to make a religious leap because it's what he believes."

But cetacean clotting must be irreducible, and if it isn't then something else is.

Don't laugh, they're already trying that argument to see if it flies.

Since the IDers know that they've fallen on their faces with the *specific* examples they've offered of "IC" systems (e.g. blood clotting, flagella, mousetraps, etc.) now they're waving their hands in a more *general* manner, by spinning mumbo-jumbo about "irredicibibly complex cores".

Put simply, it's the argument that goes like this:

Okay, fine [say the IDers], many *particular* blood clotting systems have redundant portions and thus isn't actually 'IC', and maybe even *all* actual biological blood clotting systems might be this way, *but*, by gosh, there is some minimal 'core' of IC in the blood clotting system -- i.e. the simplest possible blood clotting system that would still function successfully -- and *that* hypothetical system is indeed 'IC' (by definition) and *that* system (which we won't even try to determine or specify) is still too complex to have successfully evolved (because we say so!)

The ID "true believers" seem to be lapping this up, but anyone with function critical thinking skills is going to recognize a certain, shall we say, lack of rigor (i.e., holes big enough to drive a truck through).

Recent article: 'Intelligent design' advocate [Behe]: complaints based on politics. Excerpts:

A leading proponent of "intelligent design" acknowledged Tuesday in a trial over its place in public schools that major scientific organizations and even his own colleagues oppose his ideas, but he said their criticisms aren't scientifically based.
"Not every statement issued by a scientific organization, even on science, is a scientific statement," Lehigh University biochemistry professor Michael Behe said.
During cross-examination of Behe, Eric Rothschild, a lawyer for eight families suing to have intelligent design removed from the Dover Area School District's curriculum, cited a resolution from the American Association for the Advancement of Science as an example of opposition from mainstream scientists.
The resolution passed by the association's board in 2002 urges "citizens across the nation" to oppose policies that would allow the teaching of intelligent design as science in public schools.
"This is a political document," Behe said. "What scientific paper do you know where it says, 'whereas'?"

Sample statements by mainstream organications:
Statements from Scientific and Scholarly Organizations. Sixty statements, all supporting evolution.

[It is doubtful that there will ever be a concept more earth shattering in the intelligent design community than that of irreducible complexity.]

LOL. What else is there?

Here's my favorite passage from that link:

For example, both irreducible complexity and natural selection were first introduced in books, as opposed to journals. Natural selection proposed in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and irreducible complexity in Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box.

Um, no, *both* concepts were first introduced in *one* book: Darwin's.

The original notion of "IC" goes back to Darwin himself. He wrote:

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
-- Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species", 1859

That's "Irreducible Complexity" in a nutshell. It's not as if Behe has pointed out anything that biologists (or Darwin) didn't already realize.

But let's examine Darwin's description of "IC" in a bit more detail (emphasis mine):

No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, round which, according to my theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we look to an organ common to all the members of a large class, for in this latter case the organ must have been first formed at an extremely remote period, since which all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.
We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind. Numerous cases could be given amongst the lower animals of the same organ performing at the same time wholly distinct functions; thus the alimentary canal respires, digests, and excretes in the larva of the dragon-fly and in the fish Cobites. In the Hydra, the animal may be turned inside out, and the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach respire. In such cases natural selection might easily specialise, if any advantage were thus gained, a part or organ, which had performed two functions, for one function alone, and thus wholly change its nature by insensible steps. Two distinct organs sometimes perform simultaneously the same function in the same individual; to give one instance, there are fish with gills or branchiae that breathe the air dissolved in the water, at the same time that they breathe free air in their swimbladders, this latter organ having a ductus pneumaticus for its supply, and being divided by highly vascular partitions. In these cases, one of the two organs might with ease be modified and perfected so as to perform all the work by itself, being aided during the process of modification by the other organ; and then this other organ might be modified for some other and quite distinct purpose, or be quite obliterated.
The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose, namely respiration. The swimbladder has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain fish, or, for I do not know which view is now generally held, a part of the auditory apparatus has been worked in as a complement to the swimbladder. All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is homologous, or 'ideally similar,' in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals: hence there seems to me to be no great difficulty in believing that natural selection has actually converted a swimbladder into a lung, or organ used exclusively for respiration.
[Example snipped]
In considering transitions of organs, it is so important to bear in mind the probability of conversion from one function to another, that I will give one more instance. [Long detail of example snipped] If all pedunculated cirripedes had become extinct, and they have already suffered far more extinction than have sessile cirripedes, who would ever have imagined that the branchiae in this latter family had originally existed as organs for preventing the ova from being washed out of the sack?
-- Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species", 1859

Darwin makes two critical points here:

1. A modern organ need not have evolved into its present form and function from a precursor which had always performed the same function. Evolution is quite capable of evolving a structure to perform one function, and then turning it to some other "purpose".

2. Organs/structures can reach their present form through a *loss* of function or parts, not just through *addition* of function or parts.

Despite the fact that these observations were laid out in 1859, Behe's version of "Irreducible Complexity" pretends they are not factors, and defines "IC" as something which could not have arisen through stepwise *ADDITIONS* (only) while performing the same function *THROUGHOUT ITS EXISTENCE*.

It's hard to tell whether Behe does this through ignorance or willful dishonesty, but the fact remains that *his* definition and analysis of "IC" is too restrictive. He places too many "rules" on how he will "allow" evolution to reach his examples of "Behe-style IC" structures, while evolution itself *IS NOT RESTRICTED TO THOSE RULES* when it operates. Thus Behe's conclusion that "Behe-style evolution" can not reach "Behe-style IC" hardly tells us anything about whether *real-world* evolution could or could not have produced them.

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