Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Nick Matzke has also commented on this, but the op-ed is so bad I can't resist piling on. From the very first sentence, Michael Behe's op-ed in today's NY Times is an exercise in unwarranted hubris.
In the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design.
And it's all downhill from there.
Intelligent Design creationism is not a "rival theory." It is an ad hoc pile of mush, and once again we catch a creationist using the term "theory" as if it means "wild-ass guess." I think a theory is an idea that integrates and explains a large body of observation, and is well supported by the evidence, not a random idea about untestable mechanisms which have not been seen. I suspect Behe knows this, too, and what he is doing is a conscious bait-and-switch. See here, where he asserts that there is evidence for ID:
Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims.
This is where he first pulls the rug over the reader's eyes. He claims the Intelligent Design guess is based on physical evidence, and that he has four lines of argument; you'd expect him to then succinctly list the evidence, as was done in the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ on the talkorigins site. He doesn't. Not once in the entire op-ed does he give a single piece of this "physical evidence." Instead, we get four bald assertions, every one false.
The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.
He then tells us that Mt Rushmore is designed, and the Rocky Mountains aren't. How is this an argument for anything? Nobody is denying that human beings design things, and that Mt Rushmore was carved with intelligent planning. Saying that Rushmore was designed does not help us resolve whether the frond of a fern is designed.
Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too.
No, this is controversial, in the sense that Behe is claiming it while most biologists are denying it. Again, he does not present any evidence to back up his contention, but instead invokes two words: "Paley" and "machine."
The Reverend Paley, of course, is long dead and his argument equally deceased, thoroughly scuttled. I will give Behe credit that he only wants to turn the clock of science back to about 1850, rather than 1350, as his fellow creationists at the Discovery Institute seem to desire, but resurrecting Paley won't help him.
The rest of his argument consists of citing a number of instances of biologists using the word "machine" to refer to the workings of a cell. This is ludicrous; he's playing a game with words, assuming that everyone will automatically link the word "machine" to "design." But of course, Crick and Alberts and the other scientists who compared the mechanism of the cell to an intricate machine were making no presumption of design.
There is another sneaky bit of dishonesty here; Behe is trying to use the good names of Crick and Alberts to endorse his crackpot theory, when the creationists know full well that Crick did not believe in ID, and that Alberts has been vocal in his opposition.
So far, Behe's argument has been that "it's obvious!", accompanied by a little sleight of hand. It doesn't get any better.
The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.
Oh, so many creationists tropes in such a short paragraph.
Remember, this is supposed to be an outline of the evidence for Intelligent Design creationism. Declaring that evolutionary biology is "no good" is not evidence for his pet guess.
Similarly, declaring that some small minority of scientists, most of whom seem to be employed by creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute or the Creation Research Society or Answers in Genesis, does not make their ideas correct. Some small minority of historians also believe the Holocaust never happened; does that validate their denial? There are also people who call themselves physicists and engineers who promote perpetual motion machines. Credible historians, physicists, and engineers repudiate all of these people, just as credible biologists repudiate the fringe elements that babble about intelligent design.
The last bit of his claim is simply Behe's standard misrepresentation. For years, he's been going around telling people that he has analyzed the content of the Journal of Molecular Evolution and that they have never published anything on "detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures", and that the textbooks similarly lack any credible evidence for such processes. Both claims are false. A list of research studies that show exactly what he claims doesn't exist is easily found.
The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.
How does Behe get away with this?
How does this crap get published in the NY Times?
Look at what he is doing: he is simply declaring that there is no convincing explanation in biology that doesn't require intelligent design, therefore Intelligent Design creationism is true. But thousands of biologists think the large body of evidence in the scientific literature is convincing! Behe doesn't get to just wave his hands and have all the evidence for evolutionary biology magically disappear; he is trusting that his audience, lacking any knowledge of biology, will simply believe him.
After this resoundingly vacant series of non-explanations, Behe tops it all off with a cliche.
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Behe began this op-ed by telling us that he was going to give us the contemporary argument for Intelligent Design creationism, consisting of four linked claims. Here's a shorter Behe for you:
The evidence for Intelligent Design.
That's it.
That's pathetic.
And it's in the New York Times? Journalism has fallen on very hard times.
This article was first published on Pharyngula and appears here by permission.
The problem with this scenario is that you can't apply selection pressure to it and thus you are dealing with random probabilities. When you leave the thought exercise and start working with actual biological systems, the probabilities become so low as to be zero for all intents and purposes.
The biggest problem with evolutionary biologiy and the folks here who defend it is that they are weak in math. The moment I hear someone say IC doesn't exist, I know that I am speaking with someone who is weak in math, physics and chemistry, since IC is factually demonstrable in all three disciplines. And yet, these folks maintain that it is miraculously absent in biological systems.
Explain why the universe "should" be different. If you want to hang your faith on the unlikelihood of the universe, I won't argue, but I have it on my list of things that can't confirm or deny faith. Other items are the kindness or brutalness of nature.
You might want to check out Strominger/Vafa proving Hawking/Bekenstein with string theory...
Not even the proponents of string theory are yet prepared to assert that extra dimensions are physically existent. But, as I said, that's not relevant to the question we're discussing.
An[y]way, ought I to conclude that you're unable to specify (in words) a principle of individuation for non-corporeal, non-spatial, non-temporal souls? Or have I just failed to discern it in your posts to me?Asked and answered, thus I must conclude you have failed to discern it. It is observational evidence which not every one can duplicate.
It can't be stated in words? I know you have a high regard for mathematics. Mathematicians insist on trying to state clearly and precisely the assumptions they make and the principles of reasoning they employ. That's what I'm seeking: a statement in words of a principle setting out how it's possible for two souls lacking bodies, spatial locations, and temporal locations to be distinguished from each other.
Most cosmologists - like Steinhardt - recognize this and thus consider the existence of a beginning in all multi-verse, cyclic, ekyrotic, imaginary, multi-world theories as a "weakness" which has yet to be overcome.
The challenges are to any atheist or metaphysical naturalist who asserts his belief that reality is all that exists in nature (space/time) under the color of science, as if to authenticate or justify his point of view.
There is no substantive difference in the effect of saying “God did it” versus “Nature did it”. They are both a cop-out to stop the investigation.
If we are going to investigate further – and hopefully we will – all correspondents must agree not to cut off the discussion with such declarations of faith.
That is, "Nature" has been defined as that which comes into the range of direct observation; i.e., that which can be grasped by means of sense perception. Of course, such a definition is most helpful to the person who wishes to disregard all things which are not "physical," such that any putative intangible or non-physical entity is defined out of existence right up-front. IOW, Reality -- "all that there is" -- is reduced, not just to "Nature," but to physically realized nature. The idea that the physical realization just might depend on non-physical inputs is ruled out in principle, in advance.
And yet some quite brilliant minds have concluded that such an expectation -- the signature expectation of the metaphysical naturalist which is, BTW, a philosophical opinion and possibly a theological one as well -- is wholly groundless.
Freeman Dyson has pointed out that life may be independent of the concrete nature of materials, and that structure may be the basis of consciousness and life. The same structural relations may be realized in principle in different material systems. Therefore the essence of life is not the material of life (like protein), but complexity and information. Complexity and information are not material things.
Rudy Rucker presented a list of things that are not physical. “There are minds, thoughts, ideas, and forms…these [are] familiar nonphysical entities.” Then there is the matter of the of form of natural objects (which is essentially mathematical, thus non-physical), which seems to shape the boundary conditions of natural objects.
But there are more general types of forms: In living systems, there are internal boundaries as well as outer ones, which can be continuously modified in response to information (or more precisely, to successful communication as defined in the Shannon information model). Internal boundaries may be formed between the individual, collective, and global degrees of freedom of the living organism’s constituent parts, including electronic, atomic, molecular, supramolecular, and more inclusive units.
Yet Lyubarev and Kurganov take the issue even further, proposing that biological organization is much more than structural: It is the unity of structure, function, and regulation. Stewart noted that “it is not what DNA is, but what it does, that really counts”.
Abel noted that questions relating to the origin of functional-sequence complexity are among the most difficult in biology, if not in all of science. The problem for biology is that 100 percent of a cell’s functional sequence complexity is still intact after cell death. If life were reducible to functional sequence complexity, Abel asks, why then is the cell now dead?
And thus it seems, dear Alamo-Girl, that our expectation that there is more to life than simply "matter in its motions" stands on solid ground. Of course, neither you nor I say that there is anything in biology that refutes any physical law in any way. Though I believe we are in agreement that life is more than physics, and it is also more than "natural selection." And the authorities alluded to above seem to share that view, even if Ichneumon does not.
Am working on a more comprehensive piece. But this will have to do for now. Thank you ever so much for writing, Alamo-Girl!
Is that the DNA sequence? Bruce Lipton says that the DNA is not the life of the cell, not the brain. The life, or brain function resides in the cell wall. When the cell wall stops processing, the cell is dead, but when a body, 50 trillion cells in a colony, dies, individual cells may live on for a long time.
"life advancing ever more aggressively. "
I must ask you to reconsider both "advancing" and "aggressively".
A highly evolved organism has to only be well suited to its environment to be successful. I give you the trilobite. Is it less "advanced" than contemporary organisms? By using "advanced", I think you are antropomorphizing where it should not be.
As far as "aggressive" is concerned, I don't think any of the 3.6 by of life is more or less heavy in its "aggressive" species, since "aggressive" can cover many different things.
As far as the rest, well the electrons mixed with the babble and the chaos ---- well it reminds me of Scriabin.
Have a good day :^}
But then you asked for the delineation of individuality at the level of soul/spirit. So, likewise I offered a similar spiritual experiment to determine whether we are separate souls or individual souls - with the stipulation that you personally may not be able to conduct that experiment and would have to rely on observations of others. But that, you evidently do not accept.
If you are on the same spiritual wavelength an explanation of "how it is possible" would not be necessary - and if you aren't, you won't believe it anyway because it is Spiritually discerned.
Bruce Lipton's book will ship from Amazon May 31. In case anybody is ordering and wants the book sooner, he says it is available now from his own website. I have already placed an order with Amazon and will wait since I already have plenty of reading material.
Maybe they are not separate entities. Maybe the perception of time, space, and individuality is a peculiarity caused by the effect of extra dimensions, like a prism acts on white light. If that is so, does it make a difference? Can an engineer build something interesting from that effect?
Does Lipton mean by this that the cell wall is to be understood as a boundary condition? And that life "leaks in" through that boundary? That's interesting, RW. But if it is true that life is the unity of structure, function, and regulation; and if the estimate can be trusted that there are approximately 6*1013 cells in the adult human body, how is this astronomically vast number of cells coordinated so as to express organic unity? Of what does the regulative process consist? The idea of organic wholeness, dynamic integration of the zillions of constituting parts, seems to demand the presence of a regulative or governing principle -- which would appear to be of an "informative" nature.
What's your view on this?
I've already offered the thought experiment to determine whether we are separate individuals or one individual (consciousness or mind). You accepted that.
I accepted that we're two separate individuals, but I did point out that we're separate because we're two different bodies in two different places. In the absence of bodies and places and times, I don't have a clue how to tell one soul from another. That's what I've been trying to learn from you.
One of my besetting 'sins' is a chronic inability to believe in things that I can't explain to myself. So when I hear somebody else talking about things I can't explain to myself, I try to find out what they mean. That's why I've been asking you the same question over and over again (pestering you!). But now you tell me that only certain special people who experience a certain special sort of experience are able to grasp how souls which lack bodies and spatial positions and temporal positions can nevertheless be distinguished one from another, and this knowledge cannot be expressed in words. And so, since I'm not one of those special people, I guess I'm left behind (so to speak).
Darn.
Best regards...
how it's possible for two souls lacking bodies, spatial locations, and temporal locations to be distinguished from each otherMaybe they are not separate entities. Maybe the perception of time, space, and individuality is a peculiarity caused by the effect of extra dimensions, like a prism acts on white light. If that is so, does it make a difference? Can an engineer build something interesting from that effect?
If they're not separate entities, how would they preserve their separate identities? That's the question I'm asking anyway. As for extra dimensions, first, we don't know whether there are any, and second, even if there were, presumably they would be physical dimensions, so I don't see what they would have to do with entities which ex hypothesi aren't physical and have no spatial or temporal location.
The amazing thing is that great writing, great art, great music is full of such foldings. And so should great engineering be. But rare to find it.
And how many pixies can dance on the head of a mallet?
I read that the day you posted it. It is one of those "head scratchers".
I don't think complexity is related to "advancing" or "aggressive"
BTW - I think you left out an important piece of complexity, interaction between individual pieces. A long linear complex thing where interaction is only localized would be less complex than a smaller circular (or helical or superhelical) unit with close interaction of all the pieces.
Here come the Borg!
snarks, if you are asking for a physical proof of the existence of discrete souls, about all I could offer would be the observation that souls are not entities definable within the "language" of the 3+1D spacetime continuum; they are outside of it altogether and unavailable for inspection by observers who base their observations on sensual perception of phenomena within the 3+1D block.
i think what Alamo-Girl is suggesting is that the "proof" of the existence of individual souls is not to be found by "looking outward" into the world, but by "looking inward" into conscious experience (i.e., in meditation and contemplation. Plato and Christianity testify to the reality of such experience). So I guess that's why she says you either have to observe (or have the experience) yourself, or trust in others who have. Or not as the case may be. Perhaps you would consider that an evasion. There's no help for that; I do happen to agree with this understanding, however.
A-G, I hope I'm not misrepresenting your view of this!
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