What do you mean by 'common descent'? As for the age of the Earth; I personally don't give much weight to any extreme as to the age of the Earth.
Based on the explanation found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent
I would not have a real problem with 'common descent'. Universal common descent would be an entirely different matter. I suspect Behe means common descent rather than universal common descent. Universal common descent would hardly be any different than Darwinian evolution in its most extreme form.
The really odd thing is that the star witness for the defense agrees with mainstream science on both of these issues.
I have been asking for a couple months now and have not been able to get a single freeper ID advocate to agree with Behe on these two points.
Depending on your definition of common descent, I could very well be one.
(Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box).
I'm told by the ID'ers that it is a really good book, but most of the Freeper ID'ers seemed to miss that sentence.
The age of the earth is 4.5 billion years, give or take a percent or two. Agree or disagree?
Common descent gets a bit fuzzy in the transition from single celled to multi-celled organisms. Even among living things there are transitional critters.
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.
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...
For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. (Michael behe)
Behe has almost nothing in common with the majority of Freepers who claim to espouse ID.
I have been asking for a couple months now and have not been able to get a single freeper ID advocate to agree with Behe on these two points.
I think Behe has the same problem.