HARRISBURG — At one point during Michael Behe's interminable testimony about Lord knows what on Day 10 of the Dover Panda Trial, he finally got to the good part.Scientists, sex mark Day 10 - Mike Argento Commentary
We're talking sex.
One of the things Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and one of the grand poobahs of the intelligent design movement, pointed out to show that scientists still debate the idea of evolution is that scientists don't know anything about sex.
He had a slide that referenced an article from the science journal "Nature" titled "Why Sex?"
You know, if you have to ask...
Seriously, I guess, he quoted the article as saying, "Scientists come with a profusion of theories."
Interpret that any way you wish.
He said the article reported that "major factors of the evolution of reproduction are still obscure." The article said, "After decades of theorizing about the evolution of sex, biologists are at last beginning to test their ideas in the field."
It's really kind of sad because a lot of these guys are middle-aged and if they're just getting around to it...
The article says, "How sex began and how it thrived remain a mystery."
It usually begins with a few drinks and maybe dinner and then...
OK, scientists, pay attention now. When a man loves a woman, or another man, or, in the world of creationists and U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a dog...
Oh, never mind.
It's just that I've met a lot of scientists and while they might have some limited social skills, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't understand sex.
Take Behe. He testified that he has nine kids and his claim to fame is being one of the few scientists on the planet who supports intelligent design, which he says isn't creationism, despite all of the scientists who don't understand sex saying it is.
He did not — I repeat, did not — offer any evidence of the stork theory of spontaneous human reproduction. So the guy probably knows something about sex and therefore, should be the envy of scientists who don't get it, so to speak.
Seriously, though, he was giving an overview of a debate within the science community over how sexual reproduction overtook asexual reproduction as a means of propagating species. The idea being that asexual reproduction is more efficient and therefore should be the preferred means of reproduction. But from a natural selection point of view, asexual reproduction is not very efficient at mixing up genetic material and furthering the cause of evolution.
And while it's true that asexual reproduction is more efficient — you don't have to go out to dinner and have drinks and remember birthdays and stuff like that — sexual reproduction is a lot more fun.
Of course, I'm not a scientist...
Behe testified at length that we're full of little machines that process all of the stuff that goes into making us human. He repeatedly said that scientists don't use machines as metaphors, that they mean it literally.
He didn't get it quite right. In the examples he gave, scientists didn't use the word "machine" as a metaphor. They were using it as a simile. (If you don't know, you didn't pay attention in English class.)
Actually, he was saying the cells that make up our bodies are full of little molecular machines and they do a lot of things, such as process chemicals, create proteins, digest cheeseburgers. I guess since our bodies run on a bunch of little machines, we are kin to Terminator, Robbie Robot and R2-D2. Just think, we're all full of the same stuff as the governor of California.
Well, some of us are.
Moving on, Behe's main argument seems to be that scientists don't know a lot of things — something scientists freely admit, except for the embarrassing not-knowing-anything-about-sex thing — so stuff must have come from somewhere.
That's the crux of intelligent design, that if something looks designed and if scientists can't explain it, then it was designed.
He said his idea doesn't require a creator, which raises the question, who designed whatever it is that was supposed to have been designed? Is it God, or space aliens, or some guy who forgot about some leftover Chinese food in the back of a great cosmic refrigerator?
At least that's what I think he's getting at.
It's kind of hard to tell. He spent a lot of time Monday saying that other scientists didn't understand him and pointing out that Darwin's theory of evolution is full of the same stuff the governor of California is.
As court wound down for the day, he spent, oh, I don't know, about eight or nine years explaining something or other to do with an experiment involving E. coli and galactosidase or something like that.
At one point, quoting a journal article about it, he said, "Neither the constitutive nor the inducible evolved strains grew on lactose in the absence of IPTG."
I guess that settles the whole thing.
Shortly after 4 p.m. — right about the time that nearly everyone in the courtroom was wondering just what Behe's lengthy description of E. coli and how it digests lactose had to do with anything — Robert Muise, the defense attorney guiding Behe through his dissertation, said it would be a good time to break for the day because "we're about to move into the blood-clotting system."
Federal Judge John E. Jones III retorted, "Oh, really?"
He sounded kind of disappointed. Maybe he was hoping for more about how scientists don't get sex, so to speak.
"" "Neither the constitutive nor the inducible evolved strains grew on lactose in the absence of IPTG." ""
As a microbiologist/biochemist I have spent quite awhile trying to make sense from this. I assume it is a quote and is accurate because of the "", but who knows.
I think it means this:
"Neither constitutive beta-galactosidase nor inducible beta-galactosidase strains grew on lactose as carbon and energy source in the absence of isopropyl-beta-D-galactopyranoside."
If that's true, what does this have to do with ID?
Anybody got a better take on this?