Posted on 10/19/2005 5:10:52 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
One of intelligent design's leading experts could not identify the driving force behind the concept.
In his writings supporting intelligent design, Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemistry professor and author of "Darwin's Black Box," said that "intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on proposed mechanisms of how complex biological structures arose."
But during cross examination Tuesday, when plaintiffs' attorney Eric Rothschild asked Behe to identify those mechanisms, he couldn't.
When pressed, Behe said intelligent design does not propose a step-by-step mechanism, but one can still infer intelligent cause was involved by the "purposeful arrangement of parts."
Behe is the leading expert in the Dover Area School District's defense of its biology curriculum, which requires students to be made aware of intelligent design.
The First Amendment trial in U.S. Middle District Court is the first legal challenge to the inclusion of intelligent design in science class. At issue is whether it belongs in public school along with evolutionary theory.
In his work, "On the Origin of Species," Charles Darwin identified natural selection as the force driving evolutionary change in living organisms.
But Behe argued that natural selection alone cannot account for the complexity of life.
After Behe could not identify intelligent design's mechanism for change, Rothschild asked him if intelligent design then isn't just a negative argument against natural selection.
Behe disagreed, reiterating his statement that intelligent design is the purposeful arrangement of parts.
The bulk of Behe's testimony Monday and Tuesday had been on his concept of "irreducible complexity," the idea that in order for many organisms to evolve at the cellular level, multiple systems would have had to arise simultaneously. In many cases, he said, this is a mathematical impossibility.
He compared intelligent design to the Big Bang theory, in that when it was first proposed, some scientists dismissed it for its potential implications that God triggered the explosion.
He also said he is aware that the Big Bang theory was eventually accepted and has been peer-reviewed in scientific journals, and that intelligent design has been panned as revamped creationism by almost every mainstream scientific organization.
Rothschild asked Behe if he was aware that the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both oppose its teaching in public school science classes, and even that Behe's colleagues have taken a position against it.
Behe knew of the academies' positions and said they misunderstand and mischaracterize intelligent design.
Behe also said he was aware that Lehigh University's Department of Biology faculty has posted a statement on its Web site that says, "While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."
Earlier in the day, Behe had said under direct testimony that a creationist doesn't need any physical evidence to understand life's origins.
So creationism is "vastly 180 degrees different from intelligent design," he said.
Still, Behe said he believes that the intelligent designer is God.
In his article, "A Response to Critics of Darwin's Black Box," Behe wrote that intelligent design is "less plausible to those for whom God's existence is in question and is much less plausible for those who deny God's existence."
After referring to the article, Rothschild asked, "That's a God-friendly theory, Mr. Behe. Isn't it?"
Behe argued he was speaking from a philosophical view, much as Oxford University scientist Richard Dawkins was when he said Darwin's theory made it possible to be "an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
"Arguing from the scientific data only takes you so far," Behe said.
Not when I'm trying to swallow my water, please.
here's a different perspective:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/index.php?p=925&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more925
obviously, different reporters have teir own biases.
Behe Testimony Round 2
Yesterday, Michael Behe completed his second day of testimony in the Dover trial. Below are more highlights based upon informal notes submitted by the Discovery Institute's Logan Gage, who is currently observing the trial.
Direct Examination
Behe responded to many claims made by plaintiffs' expert Dr. Kenneth Miller, including:
o Behe explained that Miller's critiques of Behe's arguments regarding the blood clotting cascade have been flawed. Miller’s slide (from his earlier testimony) shows that the cascade isn’t broken if some proteins are knocked out of a pufferfish cascade; but Behe says there are 2 pathways, like 2 lightswitches, which will turn on the clotting. Miller only showed that the other pathway still works (a point which Behe qualified in DBB). Miller didn't show that there isn't an irreducible core which is still irreducibly complex. Miller’s citing of sequence comparisons says nothing about the mechanism of evolution.
[More:]
o Behe also responded to Russell Doolittle's critiques of Behe's arguments about the blood clotting cascade.
o Behe explained how accounts of the evolution of the immune system are exceedingly speculative.
o Behe reported a search for Miller’s cited articles, which allegedly support Darwinism, by searching for the words “Natural Selection” and “Random Variation” (Behe made clear which he checked visually and which he searched online for the words; the point is that while Miller claims to have cited overwhelming evidence for Darwinism, the articles he cites hardly mention the mechanism):
• Blood clotting articles Miller mentioned: 0
• Immune System articles Miller mentioned: 0
• TTSS articles Miller mentioned: 1 (one reference to natural selection—but at least it was one reference)
• Common ancestry of hemoglobin: 0
• Molecular trees: 0
o Miller cited citrochrome C as a line of evidence which Pandas botches. But Behe explains that evolutionary theory doesn’t make clear predictions with regards to the molecular clock.
o Behe explained that the “John Loves Mary” example written on the beach example comes from Pandas, p.7. Miller said any logician would spot the flaw in reasoning, because we know humans made this. But Behe replied that this is inductive reasoning, like all scientific reasoning (e.g. Big Bang as an induction from explosions; e.g. SETI)
Behe on other topics...
o Behe also critiqued the Lenski study. He said that computer studies are fine; but they must model real biological processes. He said Lenski "stacked the deck," creating a model that assumes the disputed point. Behe points to his paper he coauthored with physicist David W. Snoke (M.J. Behe and D.W. Snoke, “Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Features That Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues,” Protein Science, 13 (2004): 2651-2664) which more closely mirrors bio reality; and shows how hard it is to get 2 or more amino acid changes.
o Behe explained that creationism means young earth creationism, flood geology, Genesis, etc. But he said that ID is none of these; it’s scientific, not theological; doesn’t require special creation; doesn’t rely on religious texts or religious leaders; Behe testified that ID requires physical evidence.
o Behe explained that ID can’t explain the source of design. If it was space aliens, or time traveling biologists (as mentioned tongue-in-cheek in Darwin's Black Box), these show we can’t rule out natural explanations for design. Behe noted that even Francis Crick's hypothesis about directed panspermia would be intelligent design.
Behe on Methodological Naturalism:
o Behe said that methodological naturalism hobbles and constrains our conclusions. Science should be a no-holds-bard search for true explanations. Identifying design is thus rightly part of science (e.g. and it already is--SETI!)
o Behe criticized statement by plaintiffs' expert Brian Alters, saying, when Alters claimed that the Dover policy would make Dover kids learn about God and make them have to know how to defend their religion before learning a scientific theory is. Behe called this criticism “histrionic.”
o Behe felt that the Dover policy would provide more than one theoretical framework, which is a good lens for students to learn about data.
Cross Examination of Behe:
o Plaintiffs' attorney Rothschild tried to make Behe say that “creationism” could be substituted for ID at particular places in Pandas; Behe says no, it couldn't.
o Plaintiffs' attorney Rothschild chides Behe for being listed as a “critical reviewer” of PANDAS, when he is really a contributor, unless he is critically reviewing his own work. Behe responds that they must have envisioned a future role for him in the book, because he is not presently listed as a co-author here.
o Plaintiffs' attorney Rothschild rattled off the organizations and prominent scientists who oppose ID, like the NAS. This was Behe’s finest hour: Behe explained that the NAS statements against ID were “political statements,” not a scientific argument, and were only against a strawman version of ID.
o Behe also rebutted declarations by the AAAS against ID—he noted that neither one made any sort of reference to the literature, and Behe said all their declarations aren’t worth a single peer-reviewed paper showing how Darwinism can build complex biochemical systems.
o Rothschild enthusiastically noted that even Behe's own department at Lehigh University repudiated ID. Behe coolly replied that faculty shouldn’t swear allegiance to theories, especially without citations to the literature. Behe repelled all of these examples cited by Rothschild of scientific organizations which oppose ID by noting that they expose the huge political bias against ID coming from the scientific community.
o Behe also explained that we can’t know anything (scientifically) about the Designer’s intentions/motives except what can be inferred from the limited amount of empirical/physical data we have from the designed system—so, for instance, we can know the designer had the power to make this complicated of a system, etc. But we can't necessarily know if it was "special creation" or what the designer's purposes were.
A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design.
After this admission, it scarcely seems worth saying any more, but then we have this:
The cross-examination of Professor Behe on Tuesday made it clear that intelligent-design proponents do not necessarily share the same definition of their own theory. Eric Rothschild, a lawyer representing the parents suing the school board, projected an excerpt from the "Pandas" textbook that said:
"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact, fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc."
In that definition, Mr. Rothschild asked, couldn't the words "intelligent design" be replaced by "creationism" and still make sense? Professor Behe responded that that excerpt from the textbook was "somewhat problematic," and that it was not consistent with his definition of intelligent design.
Mr. Rothschild asked Professor Behe why then he had not objected to the passage since he was among the scientists who was listed as a reviewer of the book. Professor Behe said that although he had reviewed the textbook, he had reviewed only the section he himself had written, on blood clotting. Pressed further, he agreed that it was "not typical" for critical reviewers of scientific textbooks to review their own work.
BWAHAHAHA! So this is what passes for peer-review in the 'ID community' -- review your own work! I wonder how often they get negative criticism?
So what's the truth here? The NY Times and other newspapers reported that Behe on the stand said he wrote the section on blood-clotting in Pandas, and that he then reviewed his own work, admitting that that was unusual.This directly conflicts with the above. Is the NY Times lying, or the DI? I guess we'll have to wait for the transcript.
(My money's on the DI lying)
This is the most recent study I could find and don't have any idea how accurate it is. Religious or moral training was second to school environment.
Philosophical Objections to Intelligent Design: Response to Critics
Seems that Behe has a rational response to his critics.
"Claiming that we must restrict things we know to things we directly observe does not pass the smell test. Ever been to Mongolia?
Nope. But I know someone who has. And as for whether or not Mongolia exists, there is a testable, verifiable hypothesis.
"Who needs absolute certainty? 'Best guess' is often good enough, and 'beyond reasonable doubt' is better still.""
I had a number of discussions many years ago with a physics professor from Princeton on the theories of the Origins of the Universe. After many hours discussing this stuff, I asked him how certain he was about it. He laughed and said, "I can't be certain of any of this stuff. But I'm still convinced it happened the way that I described. If I find out differently in the future then I will believe differently."
He was convinced of what he was saying but he agreed that since we couldn't test and verify the hypothesis there was no way he could draw an absolute conclusion.
I think you guys are overselling Evolution.
Imagine, though...a religion that Tribune7 "...Imagine a religion that tells us to love our neighbor and do unto others as they would unto you...."
Um, depends on the neighbors.
You woudn't be referring to Luke 6:31 would you?
"And where do you think that comes from? The Constitution? Why did our Founders put it in the Constitution? They just pulled it out of the blue one day in Philadelphia?"
Parents have to evaluate the schools available to them. My daughter went to a public school that is better than the expensive private school I went to. More AP courses, more merit scholars, more national science competition winners.
BeheReviewedit placemark
Behe can have all the rational responses in the world, but until he produces some science, his ideas are worthless. It doesn't make any difference whether he's right or wrong. Science is a process, not a destination. He has no proposals for research.
sorry, bad formatting
corrected version:
Tribune7 "...Imagine a religion that tells us to love our neighbor and do unto others as they would unto you...."
Um, depends on the neighbors.
You woudn't be referring to Luke 6:31 would you?
Many of God's supposed mouthpieces, or self-selected ambassadors, tend to make excellent examples of intolerance, cultural xenophobia, and general bad manners, to say nothing of outright stupidity.
Whereas religion is a destination, and does not rely on process. Thus, who needs research?
One is inclined to wonder why they (all three or four of the ID movements' "scientists") didn't just review each others' work, and give themselves glowing approvals; that's a tradition handed down from the earlier Creationists, who used to award each other PhDs from the Diploma Mills they respectively ran......
Using that reasoning, evolution os worthless unless evolutionists can propose some research that provides real evidence that man can be traced back to single cell organisms
It's called the mutational clock. And just as the paleontological tree of life can be verified by using it to predict the locations morphology of future finds in the geological column, it makes predictions about the mutational distance between individual genes that have identical jobs in related species.
From the link where the author quoted Coyne.
If one accepts Behe’s idea that both evolution and creation can operate together, and that the Designer’s goals are unfathomable, then one confronts an airtight theory that can’t be proved wrong. I can imagine evidence that would falsify evolution (a hominid fossil in the Precambrian would do nicely), but none that could falsify Behe’s composite theory. Even if, after immense effort, we are able to understand the evolution of a complex biochemical pathway, Behe could simply claim that evidence for design resides in the other unexplained pathways. Because we will never explain everything, there will always be evidence for design. This regressive ad hoc creationism may seem clever, but it is certainly not science. (Coyne 1996)[underlining mine]
From the article quoted in you post #262
Behe explained that Miller's critiques of Behe's arguments regarding the blood clotting cascade have been flawed. Miller’s slide (from his earlier testimony) shows that the cascade isn’t broken if some proteins are knocked out of a pufferfish cascade; but Behe says there are 2 pathways, like 2 lightswitches, which will turn on the clotting. Miller only showed that the other pathway still works (a point which Behe qualified in DBB). Miller didn't show that there isn't an irreducible core which is still irreducibly complex. Miller’s citing of sequence comparisons says nothing about the mechanism of evolution. [underlining mine]
It is interesting that Coyne predicted Behe's action back in 1996. This points out quite strongly the problem with falsifiability inherent in ID.
I guess that would depend on what newspaper you are reading.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.