http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/darwinbx.html
Is Michael Behe a respected expert in biophysics? Does his theory hold water? If it doesn’t why does Lehigh University continue to have him on staff?
Here is an article from Behe:
Behe’s been debunked many times on this board. You might want do a search. He’s been pretty well ripped to shreds on multiple occasions.
Here’s an index of responses to Behe from talkorigins.org
The answers to your OP is that he is a biochemist, but i wouldn’t say he’s partucularly respected.
No his theory doesn’t hold water.
I don’t know why he’s kept on at Lehigh, but i suspect that he does not attempt to teach irreducible complexity as fact in any of his classes.
There are others on this board who are better versed than I am on this subject. Ben, (who is also a biochemist) for one, and Darwin’s Finch for another. Hopefully, they’ll find this thread shortly.
Shheesh, these guys always bring up Darwin. They Never mind others of the time like Gregor Mendel who were making breakthroughs in science!! Mendel was a monk!
Of course darwin was biased and his information new and incomplete! Nowadays the evolution information is more complete. It’s simple scientific observation, and just because it’s evolution the creationists start to harp on darwin.
Evolution does not try to explain the origin of life, that’s biogenesis. This big stink over evolution is so pointless!!
I mean, you only have to look at mammals, and you see evolution…what are you going to teach kids??? That the fact that monotremes came first, then marsupials, then placentals is just some coincidence? If they all existed all at once you’d have all the extinct monotremes running around…not the few surviving ones!! The great extinction of marsupials in Australia was a great example of the survival of the fittest when people brought placentals like cats and rabbits!!
It’s fact folks, get used to it, and stop thinking that it’s solely some atheist agenda! It’s not an attempt to say the bible is wrong…it’s just the same as when someone tried to say the earth was not the center of the universe…fact…not trying to debunk god…jus a simple fact!! Nothing to get all worked up about!!
Biogenesis is not taught in public schools, so calm down already!!
As Diogenes said, Behe seems to be a regular topic here (although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am “better versed” on the topic myself). Here are three sites (among many) which go into some detail regarding his “theory” and some problems with it:
At the end of the day, Behe’s argument is yet another “I don’t understand how this could have happened, therefore God (oops, sorry - an Intelligent Designer) must have done it.” He just uses more sophisticated examples than most.
My qualifications to comment - Ph.D. Biochemistry.
Although I do like his theory of “(god) creating some amoeba 3.5 billion years ago, with all these IC systems”
It might make evolution less foreboding/threatening to creationists. Teaching creationists about Behe’s theories couldn’t be all bad would it?
On other forums I’ve asked about the idea of god pushing evolution from the time of ‘creation’ to make evolution less threatening.
YOu know my stance from my previous post…so I am posing this as an honest question…would that idea be all bad…just not taught as the only ‘theory’ for evolution?
It’s a separate issue from evolution. The beginning of life (abiogenesis) is really unrelated to the mechanics of evolution, so it would not contradict evolution per se if God zapped the waters to get it all started. Evolution, conversely, does not ipso facto disprove the possibility of a divine abiogenetic event. There is no evidence to support such a hypothesis, of course, but it is not automatically excluded by evolution.
I haven’t read all of the responses to Behe, nor all of Behe’s writings, but it seems to me that many of the critics woefully oversimplify Behe’s objections.
For example, the index which you cited “refutes” Behe’s irreducible mousetrap scenario by stating that a Venus fly-trap (a “living” mousetrap) could have evolved from sundews via multiple small steps. However, it fails to explain what those steps are, much less illustrate that a viable organism with functioning parts can occur at each stage. It ultimately amounts to stating that small-steps evolution did occur, but without venturing an explanation of how, or what those steps would be.
Other responses to common objections to his mousetrap analogy are covered here and, more generally, here. For example, some of the postulated “alternate mousetraps” consist of fewer parts (e.g. a piece of flypaper), which misses one of Behe’s main points (namely, that simpler designs may exist, but that this doesn’t explain how the more complex design can develop in a step-by-step fashion).
Mind you, I’m not saying that there aren’t valid criticisms of Behe’s arguments. As I’ve said, I haven’t had an opportunity to study them in detail. I do think, however, that many of these criticisms involve a lot of hand-waving (i.e. “proof by gesticulation”) or failure to accurately represent Behe’s contentions.
I don’t know why Lehigh keeps him on the staff, but he is a biochemist. He is not, however, an evolutionary biologist. The problem is that Behe has declared that evolutionary biology is all wrong, but the evolutionary biologists have to point out time and again that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
Behe came to speak at my university recently, and people thought he was mostly a joke (and, btw, we weren’t evolutionary biologists either, which shows just how bad he is, IMO.) During the Q&A session he basically didn’t answer any questions, but just weaselled ad infinitum. He’s got some fancy new mathematical model which he’s now using to try to “prove” that even a single protein can’t evolve, but it’s based on some obvious straw-men.
There are three basic problems with Behe’s ideas:
1.) Behe is an outright liar, just like everybody else who claims that evolution has been proven wrong. The fact is that evolution is as well established as heliocentrism or the atomic theory. You can’t argue that it’s wrong without lying.
Here’s one example, in which he engages in a classic case of creationist quote mining, from the Internet Infidels’ page on Behe.
Bear in mind that Behe is very slippery, and tailors his spiel to his audience. When he spoke at my university, he said outright that people brand him as a propagandist just because he’s a Christian, and that he’s only interested in the science, and is willing to let the theologians sort out the implications of his work. But when he speaks at churches, he’ll talk at length about how the evilutionists are corrupting our children’s minds, and we need to inject God into public education.
2.) Behe can’t come up with anything beyond the argument from ignorance. It goes like this: “Here’s something you can’t explain, therefore I win by default.” Look in any textbook on logic or critical thinking, and they’ll tell you that the argument from ignorance is fallacious. And yet, that’s all Behe or any other anti-evolutionist can come up with. His argument is, therefore, dead in the water before it even starts.
Behe was asked about this point (if somewhat indirectly) when he spoke at my university. Specifically, one of the questioners pointed out that Behe’s ideas seem like a dead end, in that basically you end up saying, “here’s something evolution can’t explain, so it must be ID, end of story.” That “end of story” is the problem- once you write something off as ID, you can’t carry the idea further. Let’s say you’re Benjamin Franklin. You can try to figure out what lightning really is, or you can say “nobody else can explain lightning, therefore lightning is supernatural, end of story.” If you actually get off your butt and study lightning, you can go somewhere. You can invent the lightning rod. You can understand electricity better, and eventually, sometime down the road, invent the computer and the Apollo program. But if you decide lightning is supernatural? What does that mean? What properties does supernatural lightning have? Can it be controlled? Can it be analyzed? At this point Behe just declares, “that’s theology, and we can’t understand the matter further.” Historically, everything science has accomplished has been due to people like Franklin, and people like Behe have contributed, over the entirety of the last six thousand years, precisely zero of any value- unless you count the fact that people like Behe tend to retard the advance of people like Franklin.
3.) Behe is completely immune to Popperian falsifiability, because he believes in the Divine Weasel. Behe has stated outright that even though there are IC structures which show all the signs of being created by known random processes (specifically, exon shuffling,) his ideas are still correct, evolution is still wrong, and God still done it. Why? Because even though those processes seem to be completely random, no one can prove that God wasn’t secretly manipulating them in a way which God intended to look indistinguishable from a random process.
In other words, Behe’s argument boils down to this:
Here’s a biochemical system. If you can’t explain how it works, then that means God did it, so I’ve disproven evolution. If you can explain how it works, that just means that God did it in secret, so I’ve still disproven evolution.
I think that’s an example of the misrepresentation of which I spoke. Behe isn’t merely claiming that he doesn’t know how it could have happened, and so God must be behind it. Rather, his contention is that the evolutionary model is woefully inadequate to explain how such organs and systems could have occured, which suggests intelligent design rather than chance.
Mind you, I’m not attempting to defend Behe. As I’ve said, I haven’t explored all the examples under discussion. However, I do think it’s unfair to represent his view as saying “I don’t know how it could have happened, so God must have done it!”
No, it’s not a coincidence, It’s just not true.
Placentals haven’t evolved from marsupials, nor do masupials come first. The two groups share a common ancestor, and each is equally ancient. The monotremes appear to be slightly more recent in origin.
You seem to have gotten your timeline completely reversed. Marsupials and placentals appeared followed by monotremes. We have no evidence that monotremes come first, then marsupials, then placentals.
Monotremes, marsupials and placentals did exists all at once, and still do.
There are three extant species of monotremes. There are only about 10 extinct forms, and most of those are highly similar to the extant forms. Your statement makes about as much sense as saying that if it were true we’d have all the extinct birds running around and not the few surviving ones. Most monotremes are extinct, as are most birds. But monotremes aren’t the ancestors of modern marsupials or eutherians any more than birds are as far as we can tell. Monotremes appear to be a ‘degenerate’ form of early marsupial, rather than a truly primitive mammal. The primitive features they possess show every sign of being secondarily derived. The egg membranes aren’t produced as are marsupial reptilian membranes, but show signs of having evolved from more ‘advanced’ mammalian structures. The lack of nipples is due to a lack of lips required by diet. Interestingly embryonic monotremes show signs of having nipples which later disperse into the mammary pores of the adult. In addition montremes possess pouches. All these features suggest that they evolved from primitive marsupials, rather than the other way around.
Great extinction of about 12 species? And it appears that none of those were related to the introduction of placental mammals per se, but rather to alteration of vegetation and fire regimes, introduced diseases and direct human activities.
There was certainly a great extinction wen humans arrived in Australia, just as there has been on every other continent except Africa. But that was down to human activity, not ‘survival of the fittest’. Placentals aren’t inherently more fit to survive, nor are marsupials any more primitive.
You do realise that placental mammals have been in Australia at least as long as the marsupials, and possibly slightly longer?
Drabble, while I agree with the general message of your post, it’s probably time to reconsider your reasons for your belief in evolution. It seems to be based on seriously erroneous information.
But that isn’t what Behe believes. Behe believes solely in microevolution, just like any other creationist. He does not believe that the history of life can proceed without constant intervention from God, because turning one species into another is “macroevolution,” and therefore impossible.
I believe that creationists who believe as Behe does generally call their beliefs “progressive creationism.” (i.e., God created birds by progressively transforming reptiles.) It is unclear to me whether Behe actually believes in literal, parent-to-child descent or believes in the “periodic zap” dogma, by which God periodically zaps one species out of existence and zaps a “descendant” species into existence.
It’s understandable that there’s some confusion on this point. Like I said, Behe tailors his message to his audience, and that requires him to be a bit obfuscatory on the details. In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe made a big deal of how he believes that evolution can explain lots of things- you know, finch beaks and antibiotic resistance. (In other words, microevolution.) Meanwhile, if you look at what he writes for an explicitly creationist audience, he talks about how there aren’t any transitional fossils for whales.
How do these differ? Honestly, they seem the same to me. Behe has claimed that we don’t know how something could have happened. i.e., our current model can’t explain it.
That only “suggests” ID because Behe wants to prove ID. Why should intelligent design be the default option?
Scientists admit that they don’t have all the answers yet. That’s why they keep looking. Unlike Behe, they’re honest enough to admit to their own ignorance.
Can you dig up a quote for this?
If he actuallly said that, that would alone be enough for me to dismiss him. (And a handy dandy refutation point for future discussions).
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/fte/darwinism/chapter6.html
(Let me put in the caveat that I haven’t had the time to read this chapter in its entirety, but the quote seems pretty damning. Also, let me mention that 4 months after this was published, the transitional fossils were discovered.)
So, on the one hand, if you call Behe a creationist the IDists will shout that he’s no such thing and that you’re misrepresenting his views. In DBB he tries very hard to look like he believes in evolution with an occasional divine nudge.
But when he’s writing for creationists, he not only decries a supposed lack of transitional fossils, but he draws a direct analogy between the “stepping stones” needed for morphological evolution in the fossil record and the “stepping stones” needed for biochemical evolution.
What are we supposed to think Behe believes? That he believes in evolution by actual parent-to-child descent, despite believing that such a view lacks evidence?
There’s a big difference between the two claims. To say “I don’t know how this could have happened” could simply mean that the specifics are missing, without necessarily invalidating the theory itself. Behe is making a stronger claim – namely, that these “irreducibly complex” systems would require intermediate steps that specifically violate one of the key postulates of evolutionary theory.
Because if something didn’t happen by chance, then it’s only reasonable to conclude that intelligent design was involved.
Besides, why wouldn’t it be the default option? If we can not offer a satisfactory explanation of how something could have happened by chance, then it’s only reasonable to postulate intelligent design. (Again, I’m not defending Behe’s analysis here, as I haven’t studied the matter sufficiently. However, it seems entirely reasonable that if the workings of chance appear to be highly improbable, then the workings of intelligence would be the most reasonable alternative. Remember, we’re talking about adopting a working worldview, which requires finding the most plausible model – not absolute proof.)
Thanks. That about ends my respect for the man personally. It’s the same tried argument.
We have no fossil whales at all, so that proves there are no transitions.
Then we find fossil whales with external hindlimbs and nostrils located lower down the snout, but these still aren’t transitional whales.
Then we find whales with external hindlimbs and nostrils located lower down the snout and fully articulated necks, but these still aren’t transitional.
Then we find a mesonychids with whale like like features on a creature with 4 legs and a tail, but that still isn’t transitional.
These things show features part way between all modern whales and and all land mammals. In what way aren’t they transitional? No matter what is turned up, the fossil is still deemed to not be transitional because there are no transitional fossils between the transitional fossils between the transitional fossils.
Yes he’s right in that there are no known ‘transitional forms between the mesonychid and the ancient whale’. But the ancient 4 finned whales and the mesonychids are transitional in themselves. So he wants transitional forms between the transitional forms.
One has to ask where it stops. When they find the transitional form what reason do we have to believe he won’t base his position on an absence of transitional forms between it and the presumed ancestor?