Behe backs off 'mechanisms' [Cross exam in Dover Evolution trial, 19 October]

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.

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."

Ok, then how do we recognize design? Give me an example.

In a scientific methodology, first would be the observations that intelligent agency is known to produce complex specified information. Where complex specified information exists from known causes it is always the result of intelligent agency, and never the result of chance or necessity. The hypothesis would be that if objects were designed they will contain complex specified information. Experimentally, biological structures could be examined and reverse-engineered to see if they exhibit CS. If some machine-like structure in microbiology has a particular arrangement of parts which is necessary for those parts to function, and if it has a vastly improbable arrangement of many interacting parts, a tentative conclusion of design is warranted because such attributes are known to be produced by intelligent agency and because there is no other known mechanism that is causually sufficient to produce such IC biological structures.

The devil is in the details, though, and if becomes a matter of how to quantify mathematically the information content of a biological structure. I do not know enough about statistical mathematics to be able to answer the question, but I assume there are biologists and mathematicians who could do this in a rigorous way. I would like to see such experimentation on something like this:

The F1-ATPase enzyme has a tiny structure 10x10x8 nm that is analogous to an engine block, and a drive shaft. It rotates at 30 to 240 rpm. The "block" is based on a triangular arrangement of three subunits.
Hiroyuki Noji, Ryohei Yasuda, Masasuke Yoshida, and Kazukiko Kinosita Jr., "Direct Observation of the Rotation of F1-ATPase", Nature 386 (Mar. 1997), pp. 299-302. Separately there are a diagram and four ".mov" files (400 to 1700 KB) available.

Cordially,

You're forgetting living systems. We certainly exhibit CSI by any reasonable definition, and we know for certain where we come from. (Our parents.) So in all known cases, CSI is produced by either an intelligent agency or reproduction. Then there are complicated weather patterns, interlocking geyser systems, natural nuclear reactors, sand spits, etc. etc. that exhibit some CSI, which aren't known to be produced by either intelligence nor reproduction with mutations. <shrug>

Then there are complicated weather patterns, interlocking geyser systems, natural nuclear reactors, sand spits, etc. etc. that exhibit some CSI, which aren't known to be produced by either intelligence nor reproduction with mutations.

What about natural nuclear reactors exhibit CSI? Or what level of CSI? Certainly nuclear fission is a complex phenomena, but what would be the independently given pattern that would make specified?

Deep under African soil, about 1.7 billion years ago, natural conditions prompted underground nuclear reactions. Scientists from around the world, including American scientists have studied the rocks at Oklo. These scientists believe that water filtering down through crevices in the rock played a key role. Without water, it would have been nearly impossible for natural reactors to sustain chain reactions.

The water slowed the subatomic particles or neutrons that were cast out from the uranium so that they could hit-and split-other atoms. Without the water, the neutrons would move so fast that they would just bounce off, like skipping a rock across the water, and not produce nuclear chain reactions. When the heat from the reactions became too great, the water turned to steam and stopped slowing the neutrons. The reactions then slowed until the water cooled. Then the process could begin again.⁷

Scientists think these natural reactors could have functioned intermittently for a million years or more. Natural chain reactions stopped when the uranium isotopes became too sparse to keep the reactions going.

[snip]...Scientists believe that similar spontaneous nuclear reactions could not happen today because too high a proportion of the U-235 has decayed. [perhaps this is the reason that nuclear fission on earth today is the result only of intelligent agency] But nearly two billion years ago, nature not only appears to have created her first nuclear reactors, she also found a way to successfully contain the waste they produced deep underground.

Cordially,

What about natural nuclear reactors exhibit CSI? Or what level of CSI? Certainly nuclear fission is a complex phenomena, but what would be the independently given pattern that would make specified?

The part that automatically keeps the reaction running within certain levels:

These scientists believe that water filtering down through crevices in the rock played a key role. Without water, it would have been nearly impossible for natural reactors to sustain chain reactions.

The water slowed the subatomic particles or neutrons that were cast out from the uranium so that they could hit-and split-other atoms. Without the water, the neutrons would move so fast that they would just bounce off, like skipping a rock across the water, and not produce nuclear chain reactions. When the heat from the reactions became too great, the water turned to steam and stopped slowing the neutrons. The reactions then slowed until the water cooled. Then the process could begin again.⁷

Scientists think these natural reactors could have functioned intermittently for a million years or more.

What level of CSI? You'll have to ask Dembski that, because only he knows how to measure it.

"...Maybe you're just carrying around high-fallutin' metaphysical baggage attached to the idea of causality that isn't needed either in the classical world or the quantum world."

More a matter of if I'm trying to design a research project it kind of needs to be watertight.

There's no such thing. And the notion of causality, while pretty fundamental to the design of an experiment, in no manner is thereby demonstrated to correspond to a tangible natural phenomenon, nor is it generally the intellectual challenge in the process of constructing an experiment that you would tighten the screws on if you were trying to produce watertightness.

Sorry for a late response.

To set the record straight, I think Behe's argument about the flagellum is a philosophical and not scientific argument. Instead of just stating that, however, Miller attempts to refute it by saying that the flagellum had precursors that served some other function before they mutated into a flagellum, which, although it shows that evolution can explain the flagellum and Behe has not disproven evolution, it is not a valid refutation of Behe's argument.

In addition, by refuting Behe's argument in this way, he actually gives it some credibility in the sense he acknowledges it as a falsifiable theory rather than the purely philososphical argument that it is.

I just think Miller's refutation was a mistake, because now Behe can shoot holes in Miller's argument as being somewhat speculative, even though his argument in the context of evolutionary theory is a valid one, but is not valid in disproving a non-evolutionary philosophical argument.

The only good thing about Miller's refutation is that it does shoot holes in Behe's contention that evolution cannot explain the flagellum.

To set the record straight, I think Behe's argument about the flagellum is a philosophical and not scientific argument. Instead of just stating that, however, Miller attempts to refute it by saying that the flagellum had precursors that served some other function before they mutated into a flagellum, which, although it shows that evolution can explain the flagellum and Behe has not disproven evolution, it is not a valid refutation of Behe's argument.

I don't see how you can say the above and then say that ID as peddled by Behe at least deserves any share of science class. The whole excuse for it being literally wrong derives from it not belonging to a discussion of science.

In addition, by refuting Behe's argument in this way, he actually gives it some credibility in the sense he acknowledges it as a falsifiable theory rather than the purely philososphical argument that it is.

Both of the following are falsifiable statements. "Evolutionary science can imagine no scenario by which an irreducibly complex thing may evolve." "A bacterial flagellum must have been designed because it cannot be explained as evolutionarily coopted proteins and sub-assmblies." Just now, both of them appear to have already been falsified.

I just think Miller's refutation was a mistake, because now Behe can shoot holes in Miller's argument as being somewhat speculative...

Simply inevitable. As I mentioned last time, the argument reflexively shifts to "What's the proof of that?" As if creationists believe a mutation cannot stomp on a function. That's the one thing they claim that they do believe about mutation. Fumbling about and trying to recast words and sneak up on it from another angle doesn't make it any less ludicrous.

FWIW, however, what I was reacting to when you jumped in was not the "Flagellum Unspun," but bloodcotting unspun. Behe admits that there are parts of the blood clotting cascade you can knock out in most animals and it still works. There is supposedly some "irreducible core" which you can't knock out and have it still work. Whoopee!

It's the incredible shrinking theory.

don't see how you can say the above and then say that ID as peddled by Behe at least deserves any share of science class. The whole excuse for it being literally wrong derives from it not belonging to a discussion of science.

I do not think I have ever said that. I do not think ID belongs in a science class. At the same time, I do not think whether it is or not should be determined by the federal courts but that is a separate issue. I am not a creationist or and IDer, I just have some issues with the theory of evolution.

Both of the following are falsifiable statements. "Evolutionary science can imagine no scenario by which an irreducibly complex thing may evolve." "A bacterial flagellum must have been designed because it cannot be explained as evolutionarily coopted proteins and sub-assmblies." Just now, both of them appear to have already been falsified.

I agree with you on the first one (Evolutionists are very imaginative). I agree with the second one to the extent it does not falsify evolution. At the same time, since we do not know if that actually happened that way, it would not falsify another theory that was constructed in a manner that was not an attack against evolutionary theory, but was going down a different path because someone thought evolution did not explain something like increasing complexity, for example, in as plausible a way as some other theory.

IOW, even though evolution can account for it, it does not disqualify another theory which may also be able to account for it. It, of course, would have to be a valid scientific theory.

FWIW, however, what I was reacting to when you jumped in was not the "Flagellum Unspun," but bloodcotting unspun.

I saw that but I was more familiar with the flagellum argument so I used that, and its basically the same argument, except that flagellum is less complicated to the non-biology types like myself.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delay.

I have trouble understanding how the determiation of the specification is done. How do we know if some complexity is specified or not?

The example you gave is interesting but does reinforce my point that we recognise our own 'design' rather than something that does not resemble our design. It appears that we are limited in what design we can recognize to comparison to our own.

I also have difficulty with the premise that nature cannot produce comlexity that is also specified. If I look at an Wild Oat seed fresh off the plant and note the twisting tail it uses to propel itself into the ground, that complex structure looks to be specified. Or are we to assume that because it shows complexity that is also specified that it too is designed?

It seems to me that the major premise is a pretty big assumption with no research behind it. If some research can be done, ID may turn out to be a science, but it has a way to go yet.

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.