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

The York Dispatch ^ | 18 October 2005 | CHRISTINA KAUFFMAN

[Ichneumon]

I don't think the plaintiffs' attorneys are going to lay a glove on Behe. If the plaintiffs' attorneys think they can outsmart Behe, they are mistaken.

[connectthedots]

Miller has done a nice job of outsmarting Behe over the years. He got Behe to admit the blood clotting cascade was not IC.

You have a link?

[wyattearp]

I read through Behe's “A True Acid Test” Response to Ken Miller (link at the bottom, as I can't get it to work in the body of the text - grrr), which was a response to the aforementioned "The Evolved Galactosidase System as a Model for Studying Acquisitive Evolution in the Laboratory"

I think that Miller is going to have something to say about it, now that Behe brought it up. The following is Behe's endnote from the article:

Miller’s prose is often exaggerated and sometimes borders on the bombastic. Perhaps he uses such a relentlessly emphatic style in the hope of overwhelming readers through the sheer force of his words. Perhaps he just has a much-larger-than-average share of self-confidence. Fortunately, in this section on the “acid test,” experiments exist to show that his prose is bluster. Let me be blunt—Miller always writes (or speaks) with the utmost confidence, even when experiments show him to be quite wrong. I would caution readers of his work not to be swayed by his tone, whose confidence never wavers even when the evidence does.

(trueorigin.org, a blatant attempt to mimic talkorigins.org)

[newguy357]

Hey,,, those are my words and I've been asking that question for a year or more here.

Who designed the designer? And which one of those designers does the Bible refer to? The one that created us or the one that created him????????????????????????? Or Him, or Him?

I know you think this is a brilliant argument, and it would work if there were no possibility of a supernatural designer, but, by the definition of the word, a supernatural designer is not bound by natural, physical laws, since any such designer is the creator of said laws and therefore must exist outside of them. Your argument precludes the possibility of natural designers "all the way down" (e.g., superintelligent aliens that designed our planet and our species) but does nothing against a supernatural one. If, e.g., the God of the Bible designed our universe, as described, he needs no beginning since he exists outside of time (which is physical).

[DoctorMichael]

Did you mean '18' in the title instead of '10'?

Has anyone ever noticed how much the Creationist wackos have in common with Screwy Louis Farakhan and the Nation of Islam? Both believe that a Scientist, at some distinct point in the near past, made mankind. Maybe the Creationists should merge with Louis? They are very similar ideologies.

[Joe Republc]

Just read 'Darwin's Black Box' by Behe. Very compelling book. At the LEAST it leaves a lot of hard questions about the explanatory power of evolution.

-- Joe

[furball4paws]

You are missing the whole point of Allen's post. I suggest you reread it carefully.

[shuckmaster]

If the plaintiffs' attorneys think they can outsmart Behe, they are mistaken.

You sure seem to be putting a lot of faith into a psuedo-science charlatan.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

He said the courtroom went from "Biology 101" to "Advanced Biology."

It's ironic how this court case mirrors our discussions on FR.

We've had this argument that you can't teach ID in high school because a bunch of kids reading at a 4th grade level aren't prepared to cope with graduate level material in biology.

[shuckmaster]

a supernatural designer is not bound by natural, physical laws, since any such designer is the creator of said laws and therefore must exist outside of them.

Have you got a supernatural designer in your back pocket or are you just making this up?

[Ichneumon]

The following is Behe's endnote from the article: "Miller’s prose is often exaggerated and sometimes borders on the bombastic. Perhaps he uses such a relentlessly emphatic style in the hope of overwhelming readers through the sheer force of his words. Perhaps he just has a much-larger-than-average share of self-confidence. Fortunately, in this section on the “acid test,” experiments exist to show that his prose is bluster. Let me be blunt—Miller always writes (or speaks) with the utmost confidence, even when experiments show him to be quite wrong. I would caution readers of his work not to be swayed by his tone, whose confidence never wavers even when the evidence does."

Wow!! That has got to be the most classic case of "psychological projection" I have ever seen. Behe's remarks about Miller actually describe Behe himself perfectly, especially since it comes as an "endnote" to Behe's own "confident bluster" in his desperate hand-waving attempt to salvage his flawed arguments.

[shuckmaster]

At the LEAST it leaves a lot of hard questions about the explanatory power of evolution.

I'm not a scientist myself but, you just happen to have a few pretty good evolution explainers on the thread today. Ask one or two of your "hard questions" from Behe and watch them go...

[longshadow]

Behe is tougher than WJB, ....

Yeah, but is he as good an elocutionist?

[Ichneumon]

Just read 'Darwin's Black Box' by Behe. Very compelling book.

It's only "very compelling" until you stop for a moment and realize its fundamental errors.

At the LEAST it leaves a lot of hard questions about the explanatory power of evolution.

Really? Such as?

[Right Wing Professor]

Miller has done a nice job of outsmarting Behe over the years. He got Behe to admit the blood clotting cascade was not IC.

You have a link?

Link

KM: So the point stands that a subset of these proteins is functional in a different context. Now that's the bacterial flagellum, let's look a couple of the other guys. Let's look at the clotting pathway, this is the way in which blood clots, you call this the Rube Goldberg in the blood, great stuff, and the clotting pathway is extremely complex. It produces a clot around the red blood cell, and what you wrote is, in your book is that none of the cascade proteins, these proteins, are used for anything except controlling the formation of clots, that's very clear. Yet, in the absence of any of the components blood does not clot and the system fails. Now here's the, the hard part for me. Remember you said, in the absence of any of the components, blood does not clot and the system fails. One of those components that you've talked about is called factor 12 or Hagemann factor, and you'd think, if we take it away, the system should fail, so there shouldn't be any living organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, but it turns out, uh, lo and behold, that there are some organisms that are missing Hagemann factor, I've crossed them off up there, and those organisms turn out to be, dolphins and porpoises, they don't have, um, I assume that statement therefore is incorrect and has to be changed?

MB: Well, first of all let me express my condolences for the dolphins. Umm...[laughter]

KM: You don't have to have to do condolences they do fine. That's my point. It's the theory of irreducible complexity that needs condolences at this point, [laughter/ applause] because that's what's happening.

MB: Well, if you read my book a little more closely, you'll see that I talk about both the intrinsic and extrinsic pathway, I say that they can use both of them. And, uh, you'll see that when I talk about irreducible complexity I say, the details of the pathway, beyond uh christmas factor and so on, are rather vague, so let's uh, so I said I'll, we'll confine my argument to those. But nonetheless...

KM: Yeah but your own words are up here and you point out Hageman factor, factor 12 and so forth, so they're part of that system.

MB: Well, um, nonetheless, let me point out that if you do delete prothrombin if you delete tissue factor, you end up with this.

KM: I'm asking you about Hageman factor. I'm not deleting those. My question is straightforward. You said you couldn't delete them, nature's done the experiment, it deleted them, doesn't that disprove the hypothesis?... and you're talking about deleting other ones?

MB: You're right there are redundant components in the blood clotting system...

KM: So it's not irreducibly complex?

MB: In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.

[furball4paws]

"I'm not a scientist myself but, you just happen to have a few pretty good evolution explainers on the thread today. Ask one or two of your "hard questions" from Behe and watch them go..."


I'm sure Ichy would be glad to oblige :-)

[Physicist]

One of the parents' attorneys made mention of the in-depth subject matter, causing Muise to draw reference to Miller's earlier testimony. He said the courtroom went from "Biology 101" to "Advanced Biology." "This is what you get," Muise said.

“Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

[furball4paws]

Probably not, but WJB won his case and died a few days later in ignominy. To actually admit humans were not mammals in the courtroom - wow! He at least was true to his beliefs even if it made him out to be a blithering idiot.

Behe, already marginalized scientifically, will be crushed. JMHO 8-}

[MEGoody]

Then he has to explain who designed the designer

Why? Evolution theory doesn't attempt to explain origins.

[longshadow]

We've had this argument that you can't teach ID in high school because a bunch of kids reading at a 4th grade level aren't prepared to cope with graduate level material in biology.

Even Relativity can be boiled down; Einstein wrote a 500 word essay on it for laymen, as I recall. That Behe can't present his pet Theory in a straighforward manner should be a clue to all concerned. The purpose of education is to clarify ideas, not muddy the water.