The Case of Behe vs. Darwin

The Los Angeles Times ^ | November 5, 2005 | Josh Getlin

[Doctor Stochastic]

Unless and until someone has been there and has personal knowledge of the core of the sun, oath means nothing.

Counterexamples abound.

[Doctor Stochastic]

... humans and simians cannot reproduce because the chromosomes don't properly pair...

This doesn't stop horses and donkeys from reproducing.

[Dimensio]

Reading through the pro-Darwinist comments above, I will conclude my visit by expressing my amazement that all Darwinists are not religious fanatics, given that the incredible suspension of disbelief necessary to defend your dogma greatly exceeds that necessary to conceive of a supernatural Creator.

And yet another dishonest creationists attempts to insinuate that evolution = atheism.

[Thatcherite]

Oath? Dude, don't you understand "theory"? Oath has nothing to do with anything except for childish grandstanding when debating theory. It's like placing an astrophysicist under oath the determine what is at the core of the sun. Unless and until someone has been there and has personal knowledge of the core of the sun, oath means nothing. The reason the Theory of Evolution is called the Theory of Evolution is that it was and is a THEORY. It is (at best) informed speculation ragarding the processes behind witnessed (or imagined) outcomes. No man has witnessed the process of macroevolution, and so there would be no more point placing one debating the points of the theory under oath than there would be placing a modern historian under oath to discern the specific events of August 27, 1023 in a small village outside Monmouth.

He claims to have studied these debates a lot, yet he posts brain-dead tosh like the above. What do you think guys, stupid or a misspeaker? My money is on a stupid misspeaker. I expect that he'd do great on the stand at Dover.

[Drammach]

The trial is about whether there can even be a mention of any alternative to evolution.

No, it's about whether religion is an alternative to evolution.
It isn't..

[exDemMom]

We can't replicate a supernova in the lab.

We can't?

Well, in that case, I guess I'll have to come up with a different project for my 2nd PhD. ;)

[exDemMom]

That is not what Behe said. ID may not have the suppost of most scientists, but Behe did not say ID did not have significant evidence supporting it.

He didn't have to say it. If there were significant evidence, there would be more than a minuscule, statistically insignificant, number of scientists who support ID. There would actually be research into it. Right now, there isn't, because scientists like to spend their time doing productive research.

[js1138]

No man has witnessed the process of macroevolution...

And yet Behe, under oath, said he accepts the fact that it has happened. I suspect you simply aren't aware of what ID is all about. You are confusing it with Young earth creationism. Behe and Denton accept common descent.

[connectthedots]

I'm not merely saying it's "possible" that chromosome numbers can change without eliminating (and sometimes, if more rarely, without even reducing) fertility. I'm saying THAT IT ACTUALLY DOES HAPPEN, and that there are many observed examples of it happening.

Really? Where has it been 'observed'?

[furball4paws]

Approximately 40% of all existing plant species have occurred by such processes.

[Stultis]

Yeah, but in fairness that's usually by means of polyploidy (multiplicative increases in chromosome number). kstone's objections obviously don't (automatically) apply in these cases since you still have the same chromosomes that assort and pair in the same manner, you've just doubled (or tripled, quadrupled, etc) their number.

kstone seems to be asserting that if existing chromosomes mutate by fusing, breaking apart, and by other such means changing their number, then they CAN'T possibly assort and pair. This is false (as a universal assertion) but a different issue from polyploidy.

[Stultis]

Really? Where has it been 'observed'?

The interfertility of animals with differing chromosome numbers has been observed in many, many instances. For instance the house mouse, Mus musculus domesticus, has some 40 chromosomal races. Most were apparently formed by the fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes (centromere at the end) to form one metacentric (centromere in the middle), or the fission of a metacentric to form two acrocentrics, or multiple instances of same.

The study below looked at many hybridizations between between chromosomal variants. Although there was some level of reduced fertility in all cases, there were others in which even complex differences in chromosome arrangements did not produce sterility.

Chromosomal Heterozygosity and Fertility in House Mice (Mus musculus domesticus) From Northern Italy
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/150/3/1143

[balrog666]

There have been a few threads on this subject in the three years since you last posted - perhaps you would like to review them before continuing, lest you find yourself falling into old traps.

You know this ignorant fool?

[Stultis]

Meant to ping you guys to the preceeding message.

[megatherium]

Darwin won't have the opportunity to testify, but Kenneth Miller I believe did. Miller wrote a fine book, Finding Darwin's God, offering arguments as to why intelligent design is poor theology as well as poor science. Miller, as is Behe, is a Roman Catholic.

So we won't get to see Behe debate Darwin, but on C-SPAN they were showing a terrific debate between Behe and Miller.

I happen to come down on the Miller side of this debate; I think ID is bad science that does not belong in high school classrooms. But nor do I think ID can be dismissed out-of-hand; it and its proponents deserve to be debated in a respectful manner. My more vociferous (and less informed) pro-evolutionist friends and colleagues seem to think ID is just young-Earth creationism in drag, and their polemics reflect that supposition. I have, well, bothered them by carefully arguing that ID is nothing of the kind.

[connectthedots]

"apparently"?

So, it hasn't been observed. If it had been observed, why do you use the word "apparently"? "apparently" = speculation.

[Stultis]

So, it hasn't been observed. If it had been observed, why do you use the word "apparently"? "apparently" = speculation.

Oh, Good Lord.

THESE ARE ALL THE SAME SPECIES. THE CHROMOSOMAL MUTATIONS OCCUR IN LABS STRAINS. THE CHROMOSOMES ARE EASILY AND, yes, OBVIOUSLY MATCHED UP. Robertsonian (Rb) translocations have been observed in these and many other intances. Etc.

Sheesh.

[furball4paws]

No, it's a method through hybridization, which is not polyploidy. It leads to gametes that are roughly half of each parent and new species since thay cannot cross with either parent, not having a full complement of genes from either parent. It is quite common.

[Senator Bedfellow]

I can read the dates on his posts - he's a regular Halley's Comet, this one ;)

[furball4paws]

Not only has speciation been observed, it has been accomplished in the lab.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1351793/posts