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.
I've seen this quite often and I'm pretty sure that many of them do it on purpose (cf. "banning" prayer in schools).
Then I appreciate the necessary corrective.
Exactly. As long as we have Asians we have nothing to fear. After all, they all believe in evolution and that is the very most important aspect of science. No other discipline really matters if you don't believe in evolution.
If Behe is truly a scientist should he not be the one looking to falsify his own hypothesis? Is it not part of science to test your own hypotheses?
Thanks. A causeless effect is really getting to me, though, and my brain is struggling.
Are there any popularizations out there? Not only was calc a problem for me back in college, now simple computation has become problematic (since a head injury 10 years ago). Thus even a moderately technical approach is probably out of reach. :-(
Is the flu caused by shaking hands with infected people, the close proximity of chicken coops, pig-pens, and houses in China, or failure to get flu shots? If causality is a law of nature, why can there be multiple causes of a thing? Does the boy hit the ball, or is the ball hit by the boy? Do you think the fact that we give distinct scientific names to creatures we find constitutes a natural law that prevents them from mating? Like lions and tigers, or camels and llamas, for example?
You can usually think more analytically about how things happen if you just run the numbers--causality is a useful, but neither infallible, nor indispensable mental convenience, in aid of human decision-making, not a law of nature.
There are even more Asians in Asia. We also have Europe, Australia and Israel to count on.
Science will not disappear. It will just relocate.
There is a tendency among the more extreme elements on either side of the spectrum to see everything in black-and-white, and to refuse to see any possible gray areas. Because this forum is conservative, we get to see the right-wing version; on DU you get to experience the left's version.
Who said science would disappear?
I guess intelligent debate is at an end.
I presume you and other creationists won't be getting a shot against Avian flu, since the emergence of a virulent strain in humans is entirely an evolutionary prediction, and you don't want evolution crammed down your throats. Good; that will reduce the demand.
Talk about a negatively selective meme though!
These viruses mutate so often I'm not sure how effective a shot would be at this point. But a virus remains a virus.
Defining the question is critical.
Getting the flu may be caused by a number of things. The flu itself is a result of the interaction of the relevant virus and the infectee.
For instance one may be infected (have the virus setting up housekeeping) but not sick (a killer immune system)
Too many effects or too many causes usually mean a carelessly phrased question.
I am attempting to learn about causeless sub-atomic effects, courtesy of another poster, so on another level you may be right. Maybe I should modify my statement to include only the Newtonian world.
Not at all. Sometimes it becomes an intrinsic genetic parasite.
Disingenuous.
Re-read my post. I said it would re-locate.
I catch your drip, but anti-evolutionists do not aim their hostility at biology alone. They are anti-science, anti-empiricism. They reject geology, physics, astronomy. They reject the methods and assumptions of science as a whole.
evolution = hypothetical
ID = a criticism of that hypothesis
"They reject geology, physics, astronomy. They reject the methods and assumptions of science as a whole."
You have anything to back up that statement. Are "they" trying to eliminate geology, physics, and astronomy from schools? I haven't heard of it.
For example?
Google 'human endogenous retrovirus'
That's what a literal take on Genesis leads to.
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