Professor [Behe]: Design not creationism [Evolution trial, 18 October]

The York Dispatch ^ | 18 October 2005 | CHRISTINA KAUFFMAN

[connectthedots]

I'll have to dig out my copy of Behe's book to check the cite and the context. I think I can find it; it's been a few years.

[shuckmaster]

Great stuff! The writer's no Dave Barry but, I suppose when you're writing about someone making a fool of himself on the witness stand, humor is the best way to approach it in the commentary.

[connectthedots]

But common descent means to a biologist that all the complex, multicelled, sexually reproducing organisms share a common lineage, a single family tree. Agree or disagree? Behe takes these things for granted.

Assuming Behe actually takes such a position, I would disagree with him. If he does take such a position, it is hardly distinguishable from Darwinian evolution. If so, why all the hate directed toward Behe?

[connectthedots]

Hmmm, Weasel words. Are you saying that it is 2 billion years old then? ie halfway between the biblical statement and the physicists belief? Let's hear from Behe again...

I simply think the evidence is inconclusive. wouldn't read anything more into or out of this comment.

[VadeRetro]

Tomasacci's friend, Lynn Appleman, said he supports Dover's school board. He said he thought Behe was "doing a good job" during testimony, but "it can get over my head pretty quick."

Tomasacci knows his lines. Having it all fly over your head is actually the idea, and the best way to support the school board. Thus, there must really be a controvery in science after all.

The article doesn't mention any cross by the plaintiffs yet. I assume that's coming.

[Doctor Stochastic]

No, but I have noted their alliance with Harun Yahya, a militant Islamic group.

[VadeRetro]

Raising a smokescreen of bafflegab will only fool the people who want to be fooled. We have to hope the trial judge isn't one such.

[cliff630]

Didn''t some person use the argument of finding a ticking watch to question randomness?

And then,someone else tried to top that by asking what was the chance of a tornaado hitting a junkyard and turning the junk into a 747.

Isn't the brain and its ability to comprhend its own complexity a stretch to say "natural selection with random variations"?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Unicorn Link the First

Unicorn Link the Second

[Doctor Stochastic]

It's buried in a field in Minnesota.

[GreenOgre]

It is constantly stated that ID requires a designer. So here is my question....

When is the designer going to testify?

What is the designer's mailing address?
Nuff said...

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do we really want political considerations to shape the lessons?

That was the main thrust of the Marxists some 40 years ago. Politicize art, education, etc. Political Correctness means choosing art, science, cuisine, etc. only insofar as the choices advance political aims. (The Left and the Right are identical in their actions, differing only in their selected targets.)

[js1138]

If he does take such a position, it is hardly distinguishable from Darwinian evolution. If so, why all the hate directed toward Behe?

It's not hate. It's more like sadness that someone would piss away his intellect on an enterprise that's going nowhere.

And it's not going nowhere because it's wrong. It's going nowhere because it isn't productive. It doesn't suggest any research that won't be done anyway. the only response science will ever have to unexplained phenomena is to seek explanations, and the explanations will always be naturalistic.

[js1138]

I think that in this digital world we have forgotten that Newton's world was geometric. In our world the billard ball model seems to prevail.

I think you have it slightly backwards. Billiard ball determinism is pre 20th century. Physics doesn't think like that any more.

[furball4paws]

There's more to it than that. Here's a man who should know better and he has decided to throw his education in the trash. The waste is immeasurable. Why get it in the first place?

[RightWingNilla]

"I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent".- Behe.

[furball4paws]

If I were Asian, the word "shame" would come to mind.

[Ichneumon]

Behe claims that all the 14 or so factors are required beforehand to create a blood clot, -- if any are missing the fuction fails (blood doesn't clot). That is "irreducibly complex" by his argument. Miller points out that the Hagemann factor is absent in Cetaceans (Whales and dolphins), yet their blood clots just fine. Thus blood clotting is not "irreducibly complex".

Shhh, don't confuse the poor boy with facts.

[js1138]

But cetacean clotting must be irreducible, and if it isn't then something else is.

[Ichneumon]

[Certified pedantic coxcomb]

LOL!!!!

In case you're curious, it comes from here, and although that particular reply was directed at Stultis, it was made concerning a point I had first raised here.