Posted on 10/18/2005 9:31:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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.
He said the courtroom went from "Biology 101" to "Advanced Biology."
"This is what you get," Muise said.
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.
"We're going to see what happens in this case," he said.
Some of his fellow board members are afraid of getting sued, Tomasacci said.
Tomasacci's friend, Lynn Appleman, said he supports Dover's school board.
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."
He said he had doubts about the effectiveness of Behe's testimony.
"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."
You have a link?
I think that Miller is going to have something to say about it, now that Behe brought it up. The following is Behe's endnote from the article:
Miller’s prose is often exaggerated and sometimes borders on the bombastic. Perhaps he uses such a relentlessly emphatic style in the hope of overwhelming readers through the sheer force of his words. Perhaps he just has a much-larger-than-average share of self-confidence. Fortunately, in this section on the “acid test,” experiments exist to show that his prose is bluster. Let me be blunt—Miller always writes (or speaks) with the utmost confidence, even when experiments show him to be quite wrong. I would caution readers of his work not to be swayed by his tone, whose confidence never wavers even when the evidence does.
(trueorigin.org, a blatant attempt to mimic talkorigins.org)
Has anyone ever noticed how much the Creationist wackos have in common with Screwy Louis Farakhan and the Nation of Islam? Both believe that a Scientist, at some distinct point in the near past, made mankind. Maybe the Creationists should merge with Louis? They are very similar ideologies.
Just read 'Darwin's Black Box' by Behe. Very compelling book. At the LEAST it leaves a lot of hard questions about the explanatory power of evolution.
-- Joe
You are missing the whole point of Allen's post. I suggest you reread it carefully.
You sure seem to be putting a lot of faith into a psuedo-science charlatan.
It's ironic how this court case mirrors our discussions on FR.
We've had this argument that you can't teach ID in high school because a bunch of kids reading at a 4th grade level aren't prepared to cope with graduate level material in biology.
Have you got a supernatural designer in your back pocket or are you just making this up?
Wow!! That has got to be the most classic case of "psychological projection" I have ever seen. Behe's remarks about Miller actually describe Behe himself perfectly, especially since it comes as an "endnote" to Behe's own "confident bluster" in his desperate hand-waving attempt to salvage his flawed arguments.
I'm not a scientist myself but, you just happen to have a few pretty good evolution explainers on the thread today. Ask one or two of your "hard questions" from Behe and watch them go...
Yeah, but is he as good an elocutionist?
It's only "very compelling" until you stop for a moment and realize its fundamental errors.
At the LEAST it leaves a lot of hard questions about the explanatory power of evolution.
Really? Such as?
KM: So the point stands that a subset of these proteins is functional in a different context. Now that's the bacterial flagellum, let's look a couple of the other guys. Let's look at the clotting pathway, this is the way in which blood clots, you call this the Rube Goldberg in the blood, great stuff, and the clotting pathway is extremely complex. It produces a clot around the red blood cell, and what you wrote is, in your book is that none of the cascade proteins, these proteins, are used for anything except controlling the formation of clots, that's very clear. Yet, in the absence of any of the components blood does not clot and the system fails. Now here's the, the hard part for me. Remember you said, in the absence of any of the components, blood does not clot and the system fails. One of those components that you've talked about is called factor 12 or Hagemann factor, and you'd think, if we take it away, the system should fail, so there shouldn't be any living organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, but it turns out, uh, lo and behold, that there are some organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, I've crossed them off up there, and those organisms turn out to be, dolphins and porpoises, they don't have, um, I assume that statement therefore is incorrect and has to be changed?
MB: Well, first of all let me express my condolences for the dolphins. Umm...[laughter]
KM: You don't have to have to do condolences they do fine. That's my point. It's the theory of irreducible complexity that needs condolences at this point, [laughter/ applause] because that's what's happening.
MB: Well, if you read my book a little more closely, you'll see that I talk about both the intrinsic and extrinsic pathway, I say that they can use both of them. And, uh, you'll see that when I talk about irreducible complexity I say, the details of the pathway, beyond uh christmas factor and so on, are rather vague, so let's uh, so I said I'll, we'll confine my argument to those. But nonetheless...
KM: Yeah but your own words are up here and you point out Hageman factor, factor 12 and so forth, so they're part of that system.
MB: Well, um, nonetheless, let me point out that if you do delete prothrombin if you delete tissue factor, you end up with this.
KM: I'm asking you about Hageman factor. I'm not deleting those. My question is straightforward. You said you couldn't delete them, nature's done the experiment, it deleted them, doesn't that disprove the hypothesis?... and you're talking about deleting other ones?
MB: You're right there are redundant components in the blood clotting system...
KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?
MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
"I'm not a scientist myself but, you just happen to have a few pretty good evolution explainers on the thread today. Ask one or two of your "hard questions" from Behe and watch them go..."
I'm sure Ichy would be glad to oblige :-)
“Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
Probably not, but WJB won his case and died a few days later in ignominy. To actually admit humans were not mammals in the courtroom - wow! He at least was true to his beliefs even if it made him out to be a blithering idiot.
Behe, already marginalized scientifically, will be crushed. JMHO 8-}
Why? Evolution theory doesn't attempt to explain origins.
Even Relativity can be boiled down; Einstein wrote a 500 word essay on it for laymen, as I recall. That Behe can't present his pet Theory in a straighforward manner should be a clue to all concerned. The purpose of education is to clarify ideas, not muddy the water.
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