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."
On the surface, it may seem to be a false dichotomy; but is it really? "If evolution is ruled out", ID would the best best explanation absent other alternative explanations. Do you know of alternatives to evolution, besides ID?
As for me, I have never argued that IS must be true simply because evolution is disproved. There are other reasons as well, including the absence of other rational explanations.
Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. Evidence *against* evolution is not evidence *for* ID (or any other particular alternative explanation). And Behe has never, ever, ever given actual evidence which directly supports ID itself -- he has always attempted to just undermine evolutionary biology.
I don't think Behe ever claimed that he has. The real issue is that if the evidence undermines evolutionary biology, it casts doubt on the truth of evolutionary biology.
Furthermore, even his arguments "against" evolutionary biology are fundamentally flawed, and it shouldn't be hard at all to show that to the court as well.
I don't think it will be nearly as easy as you might think. You ought to keep in mind that only one of the plaintiffs' witnesses claimed that evolution is a 'fact'; and that claim was based only on a perception that it is a fact because it is 'widely accepted'. Miller even admitted that evolution is not a 'fact'.
Not going to say the defendants are going to win, because you never know what a judge will decide, regardless what the evidence says.
The statement of the Dover school board was carefully crafted and I don't think the plaintiffs have shown that it does anything more than state that there are other opinions about 'life' and where one might look for that information if a student is interested.
ID does "explain" origins, so it has to answer that question.
Does not follow. Even if a "supernatural designer" existed outside of *our* space-time system, you have not demonstrated that it would necessarily be free from causality in its *own* realm, or that that realm would have no time of its own, etc.
For example, if advances in physics one day allow us to create a new Universe ourselves (parallel to our own), that would, by your definition, make us "supernatural designers" with respect to the new Universe, yet that would hardly therefore mean that we "need no beginning", as you incorrectly conclude.
We've spent a lot of time on these threads asking what an ID curriculum would look like and have been met with deafening silence.
Now Behe is showing us where his curriculum would begin.
It appears we've undergone a Vulcan Mind Meld or something!
Right. I've requested the mods to make a correction.
I think the question is purely rhetorical. If one assumes a designer, then somewhere at sometime at the bottom of the pile of turtles or space aliens has to be a supernatural creator, i.e. God or any of his many manifestations (FSM, Allah or the Hindu variety or some other thing). There is no other explanation.
KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?
MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
Ouch.
Thanks for fixing my title.
"Behe testified that intelligent design doesn't require a supernatural creator, but an intelligent designer: it does not name the designer."
So, Mr. Behe, who do you think the designer might be?
Well, I don't know. It could be a spaghetti monster, I suppose, or it could be an invisible pink flamingo. Our science is not concerned with the identity of the designer (wink, wink, nod, nod)
Evolution theory isn't on trial here. A charlatan psuedo-science called non religious "intelligent design" is on trial.
AKA "the Turtle of Special Pleading"
Behe is hardly a psuedo-science charlatan. If you are placing your faith in an attorney against a well-prepared and intelligent expert witness, you are exercising faith.
That'll do.
Yes, please, do so.
Electrician? Behe's an electrician? No wonder he knows diddly about the subject of evilution.
"Behe is hardly a psuedo-science charlatan"
I suggest you look at the whole of Behe's output since he received tenure. That sum adds up to "Pseudo-science charlatan".
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