Posted on 11/05/2005 11:47:03 AM PST by Lurking Libertarian
The Case of Behe vs. Darwin An unassuming biochemist who became the lead witness for intelligent design is unfazed by criticism but glad he has tenure.
By Josh Getlin, Times Staff Writer
HARRISBURG, Pa. As he took the witness stand in a packed courtroom, ready to dissect Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, biochemist Michael J. Behe looked confident and relaxed. Then he learned what it felt like to be under a microscope.
Isn't it true, an attorney asked, that Behe's critique of Darwin and support for intelligent design, a rival belief about the origins of life, have little scientific support?
Yes, Behe conceded.
Isn't it also true, the attorney pressed, that faculty members in Behe's department at Lehigh University have rejected his writings as unscientific?
Behe, a slight, balding man with a graying beard, grudgingly answered yes.
"Intelligent design is not the dominant view of the scientific community," he said. "But I'm pleased with the progress we are making."
After two grueling days on the stand, Behe looked drained. He was also unbowed. In a nationally watched trial that could determine whether intelligent design can be taught in a public school, the soft-spoken professor had bucked decades of established scientific thought.
Behe (pronounced BEE-hee), one of the nation's leading advocates of intelligent design, challenged Darwin's theory that life evolved through natural selection and a process of random variation. He argued that living organisms are so highly complex that an unseen, intelligent designer must have created them. That designer, he said, is God.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Counterexamples abound.
This doesn't stop horses and donkeys from reproducing.
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.
No, it's about whether religion is an alternative to evolution.
It isn't..
We can't?
Well, in that case, I guess I'll have to come up with a different project for my 2nd PhD. ;)
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.
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.
Really? Where has it been 'observed'?
Approximately 40% of all existing plant species have occurred by such processes.
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.
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
You know this ignorant fool?
Meant to ping you guys to the preceeding message.
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.
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.
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.
I can read the dates on his posts - he's a regular Halley's Comet, this one ;)
Not only has speciation been observed, it has been accomplished in the lab.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1351793/posts
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