ID Guru Michael Behe Faces Challengers
I learned a lot about intelligent design after hearing Michael Behe speak at Villanova. I still think it's pseudoscience, but now I have a new reason to discount it.
ID Guru Michael Behe Faces Challengers
I learned something new about intelligent design on Thursday night after listening to one of the movement's most visible proponents. Biochemistry professor Michael Behe was the star witness for the anti-evolution school board in the 2005 Dover trial. He's written several influential books on the idea that life was at least partly cobbled together by a non-human intelligent designer.
The event was held at Villanova University. It started with a screening of the intelligent design documentary, “A Flock of Dodos” and finished with a panel discussion.
Not surprisingly, the audience directed most of the questions toward Behe. Some wanted to know how he and his cohorts could possibly test the principles of ID. Others tried to pin him down on the details of this so-called theory. He wiggled and slipped around the questions, none of the answers quite satisfying. After some 25 minutes of interchange, the audience was still struggling to get a grasp on the man and his strange view of science.
One of the most interesting questions came from the filmmaker, Randy Olson. He wanted to know how Behe could justify what seemed clearly to be a “god-of-the-gaps” position, in which a supernatural designer makes for an easy answer to hard scientific questions.
Behe’s answer here was interesting. He said ID is more like archeology or forensics, in which scientists find positive evidence for human influence in artifacts or scenes.
Olson addressed this claim nicely in the film, explaining that scientists have a large number of documented human-created artifacts, so we know what to look for. There’s a way to do this scientifically. But we don’t have any definitive god-created objects or artifacts so there’s no basis for comparison. We don’t really know what a god-created artifact is supposed to look like.
The only trait ID proponents seem to attribute to the designer is that he/she/it is intelligent. We know intelligence because we see it in ourselves – or some of ourselves anyway.
Then someone asked about the blind spot in the eye. Why would an intelligent designer make it with a flaw? Behe’s answer: We can’t presume to know how God would want to design something.
But wait! Does that mean their God might not appear intelligent to us? That would seem to undermine any claim that they can detect designed structures in nature. Now there's no criteria for assessing design - it doesn't even have to look intelligent.
I noticed in the comments following an earlier blog post that someone questioned my understanding of ID because I’d quoted Olson’s use of the rabbit digestive system as an example of poor design. The commenter thought surely the ID people didn’t use that as an example of good design, so Olson and I were revealing our ignorance. This reader may be making assumptions that ID is more organized and specific than it really is.
ID is vague about the nature of the designer, what’s been designed, how much of life is designed, and why God would design some aspects of nature and leave others like the poor rabbit’s digestive system up to evolution.
"Olson addressed this claim nicely in the film, explaining that scientists have a large number of documented human-created artifacts, so we know what to look for."
Scientists--archaeologists and forensic folks--also have the advantage of knowing that entities capable of creating the artifacts we find--that is, human beings--actually exist and there is independent evidence of their existence. Behe has nothing like that. There is no independent evidence of the existence of entities capable of designing and manufacturing the biochemical systems he claims are due to some anonymous intelligent agent.— RBH- I see a problem with Behe's facile appropriation of the term "design." In "Flock of Dodos," he analogizes Mount Rushmore's design with an alleged design of nature. But the details of Mount Rushmore aren't analogous to any easily discernible aspect of nature. An analogy depends on aspects in common, and Behe's analogy, besides being absurd, has no force. The putative designer behind nature doesn't roll like any human designer.— jxxphilly
- A good rule of thumb for all aspiring scientists is to always question people who refute current and accepted theories without providing any alternative science to back up their claims of "a designer did it". Red flags should shoot up in the air immediately as it really doesn't explain why or how.
"How does crystal field theory explain degenerate orbitals of transition metals splitting into two energy levels in the presence of ligands?"
"It was designed that way..."
Not really fulfilling huh?— Aquanerd09 - Another way to put it is that Behe in analogizing garden variety design and ID, compares, in effect, paprika and Communism.— jxxphilly
- Behe tried the BS at the Kizmiller v Dover trial. His cross examination by Eric Rothschild tore him apart, and was carried into the Judge's decision. The trial transcript starts at :
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm2.html#day12pm475
— Dr_GS_Hurd - But of course we can very well presume to know how evolution would adapt things--suspiciously like what we actually see in life.
That's why evolution is science and ID is not. Both "good design" and "poor design" reveal the (undesign-like) derivations inherent to the combination of vertical and horizontal transmission rates actually observed in organisms.
ID is dogma in that it allows for confirmation of its claims, and not for disconfirmation of same. Anything remotely akin to known design--or at least construed to be so--is "overwhelming evidence" for design, and anything quite unlike known design is chalked up to the fact that we don't know what the designer's whims and purposes are. Sort of like God, however shocking that may be...— Glen Davidson - Does anyone have an example of something which is *not* "designed"?
Even something hypothetical or impossible? (I realize that if one identifies "design" with "create" then, according to traditional faith, all things are created.)
So we can tell the difference that "design" makes?— thoms - @thoms: We're brushing up against determinism vs. non-determinism, probably. And even that may not be ultimate enough in some circles.— nerdyseahorse
- The argument for ID rests solely on an argument by analogy, meaning because complex things man created do not appear in nature, complex biological structures could not either. Behe and others have repeatedly drawn lines in the sand to say "there has been some evolution, but this thing X could not have evolved." Behe originally pointed to things like flagella and enzymes as things that could not have evolved. However, biologists have shown how these things could evolve, which means the statement "could not have evolved because of irreducible" is false. Behe is now reduced to pointing to things like DNA as the final line in the sand for ID.
What many ID folks do when the argument by analogy fails is use the fallacy of completeness, which rests on a misunderstanding of scientific theories themselves. Theories are models for explaining observed phenomena, and they are not enumerators of all possible "facts." A similar argument would be to say that since astronomy, relativity, and garden variety physics cannot explain the position of every star in the sky and its path since the big bang, these areas of science must be incomplete or false. In terms of ID, this the argument behind saying things like DNA are irreducibly complex because there is no explanation of its origin. This is a gap in our empirical knowledge, and not a hole in the theory of evolution.
A true counter-example would not be something evolution cannot explain yet, but rather something finding something that provably could not have evolved or violates some critical aspect of evolution such as common descent. Step 1 of refuting a theory is finding something it cannot explain, such as when Einstein predicted gravity could bend light while traditional Newtonian physics did not (Eisenstein was right). So far... no such example exists for evolutionary biology.— CRW - I think no one who posted a comment actually read something of Behe but let me help you out. First of all, Behe believes that theory of evolution explaines some things but he doesn't believe that it's a theory of everything. He believes Darwinism has limitations and I agree. He tries to explain this point with data. You cannot prove that there's a designer but you can exclude a natural cause. In the same way are people tested for Alzheimer. There's no Alzheimer test yet. By excluding other possibilities they come up with Alzheimer. So is the ID conclusion. Because of intensive research in E.Coli, Malaria, HIV and many other organisms, it becomes clear what evolution can do. Just a view fixed point mutations in a trillion or so organisms is all that we see. Most of the time it's about dammaged genes like we find in sikkelcel desease and malaria resistents or the deletion of the CCR5 receptor which gives protection against HIV. Nothing fancy happens under constant pressure like we punt on the malaria parasite. Of course there are mutations and yes they are being selected but it's very very poor evidence to explain the advanced features we find in biology. Behe uses the term highly unlikely. I think that's an understatement. Based on todays knowlegde it's save to say that natural selection working of random mutation can never explain what scientist have found in living organisms. It's way way beyond what Darwinism can do. I think that all scientist should put their hands together. There's evidence for evolution but there's all so strong evidence that life can not arise and develop during natural causes. That something is not perfect is not a case against design. Even the most crappy car is designed. People act stupid about the blind spot and things like that. I didn't even know that I had one till I read about it.— Gammaburster
- @CRW,
You said:"However, biologists have shown how these things could evolve, which means the statement "could not have evolved because of irreducible" is false"
I disagree. I can draw you a scenario in where you will be the president of the united states within 5 years, win a nobel price a year later and a gold medal at the next olympics. It is possible and I can never prove that it won't happen. But it's highly inlikely. Scientist not only have to come up with a scenario but they also have to show that it's biologically reasonable. And it's not. A view point mutations fixed in a feature that was already there in a trillion organisms is not stong proof that you can build something like the pathway for glycolysis the same way.— Gammaburster - And sorry for my crappy English. I'm a dutch guy but I try to do the best I can.— Gammaburster
- Behe is not reasonable; another argument he makes is that if one came across flowers in a wood arranged to spell "Lehigh," one would recognize the hand of an intelligent designer, but not know which one. But the designer would have to be human! He and his co-conspirators at the Discovery Institute eschew the "G word," but their religious aim is clear: Drive mainstream science out of education and replace it with gibberish akin to Lehigh flower arrangements and Mount Rushmore "evidence." Behe is a biochemist, but no philosopher. You can't EXCLUDE nature as a natural cause; nature is the be-all and end-all.— jxxphilly
- @jxxphilly - Behe has a real flair for making self-defeating arguments.— thoms
- @jxxphilly,
Again I don't agree. Behe is very carefully by explaning the data especially in "the edge of evolution" which is a more straight foreward book than "Darwin's Blackbox". He only uses data and draws fair conclusions. Behe is not against mainstream science he is just pointing out that a natural cause is not an adequate explanation. Not because of some kind of "god of gaps" argument but because there's data now and it shows a different kind of story. What's wrong with that? Nothing ever makes it reasonable to believe that random mutation can build the traits we find in nature. Why would you deny that? Common ancestry is well explained with the data but where the traits come from or even a specific sequence is NOT supported by data and became very unreasonable instead.— Gammaburster
In pursuit of her stories, writer Faye Flam has weathered storms in Greenland, gotten frost nip at the South Pole, and floated weightless aboard NASA’s zero-g plane. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and started her writing career with the Economist. She later took on the particle physics and cosmology beat at Science Magazine before coming to the Inquirer in 1995. Her previous science column, “Carnal Knowledge,” ran from 2005 to 2008. Her new column and blog, Planet of the Apes, explores the topic of evolution and runs here and in the Inquirer’s health section each Monday. Email Faye at fflam@phillynews.com.
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