In other words, “Lie to me.”
Which explains not just Behe’s followers but also homeopathic quacks, UFO cults, bottled water, and Bush voters.
Michael Behe is a fraud.
In other news, the Pope is Catholic. 
Depending on the platform, I rather do. If, by “platform” we mean to say Behe is free to put up his own blog, or publish books editors feel will sell, per his right to free speech, I say he’s entitled to those outlets.
But in the realm of “peer review”, free speech isn’t the only criterion determining what does and does not get published. In this arena, Behe is a miserable failure. He has, so far as I know, managed to get one paper published in support of his Theory of Intelligent Design, in an obscure journal, and even then the decision to publish was highly controversial. You set this against what must be hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed articles that support the basic elements of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selelction, and I think there’s ample cause right there to question Behe’s credentials, e.g. “Biochemist, or pseudoscientific crackpot?”. It is not an exaggeration to say Behe’s theory is about as tenable as the conspiracy theory that the US Govt. is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial visitation from the people of Earth. So, if I got a single paper published in an obscure astrophysics journal expounding on such a notion, had my arguments shredded from virtually every intellectual direction, yet generated significant book sales due to the sensational nature of my claims, would I merit an Op-Ed piece in the NYT?
I would say no, absolutely not. So perhaps we must ask ourselves, why does Behe merit such a coveted space? What has he done to warrant such esteem? The likely answer disturbs me a great deal.
What do you think is the likely answer, Loopydude?
My feeling is that the Times (and other media) feel compelled to present an “opposing viewpoint.” Perhaps eventually they will no longer feel a need to present opposing viewpoints to global warming and evolution, just as they do not present opposing viewpoints to Round Earth Theory. That time isn’t here. I don’t blame the Times for running the article, and look forward to the thrashing he will get when the letters come in.
I made my suspicions known in my first post to this thread:
To put it another way, if Behe got the indifference he deserves, powerful voices would counter that he is the victim of anti-religious hate. It’s the same argument being used to shoehorn ID into school science curricula right now, even though the matter should have been settled in the Scopes Monkey Trial, if not long before. It’s the sort of argument that gives school boards the purported license to put disingenuous “Evolution is Just A Theory” stickers on textbooks. Behe has already gotten thrashed; one more round of thrashing won’t make any difference. That fact alone tells me perhaps the best way to deal with these frauds is to simply give them the attention they deserve, rather than use craven excuses like the “need for diversity” so that editors can wash their hands of responsibility. Some ideas don’t merit prestige. Klansmen don’t get it; UFOlogists don’t get it; hunters of Bigfoot don’t get it. Why does Behe? What’s the point of embracing diversity, if that means you must embrace shit? Inviting a diversity of views does not mean we discard any and all filters that appeal to sensibility.
In defense of the Times, the OpEd page is for opinion. The Times ran an extensive story (front page, I believe) about how evolution is not getting taught effectively in Alabama and Ohio, and making the point that biology teachers are afraid of teaching it clearly, but are using subtle ways, such as bringing it up a little at a time. Their giving Behe space might have been to balance this very powerful story.
However fraudulent Behe is, notice that he did say in the piece that evolution works, and not just microevolution. I am not aware of his admitting this in such a public forum before. I wonder if this will make him lose support from the Creationists. Though ID is bogus, it is a far cry from YEC. Would the creationists be satisfied with a teacher teaching evolution except for a few places where ID happens? That’s not in the Bible, so I doubt it.
Does anyone know of creationist reaction to this?
No, it’s not any different from creationism at all, it’s just a front for creationism that uses most of the same people, arguments, and lies as that which openly and honestly calls itself creationism.
Note I specifically referred to Young Earth Creationism. The YECers support of Behe show how desperate they are - he is clearly as close to a real scientist as they are going to get to show that creationism is scientific. Behe, for all his many faults, is far from being a Biblical inerrantist. You know and I know he is talking about supernatural intervention, but intervention by aliens, like the Raelists propose, is just as true to ID as God. I’d love to tell the creationists that ID can be taught in school, but due to First Amendment issues the class must say the design was done by bug-eyed monsters. Guess how fast they’d drop supporting it!
I found the article on-line. I was wrong on one point: Dembski spoke out against “naturalism”, not “materialism”.
Of note is that the evolutionary biologist assigned to rebut Behe is none other than Kenneth Miller (mentioned above by Apos).
Also of note is Robert Pennock’s rebuttal of Dembski:
Why does this stuff get published? There a market for it. Note that 55% of Americans believe that humans were created as is, in our present form.
Yeah, but there’s been plenty of copy sold on the subject of UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. Do you expect to see an Op-Ed piece written by a cryptzoologist attempting to make a cogent argument for the existence of Sasquatch in the New York Times? A distressingly vast number of people believe the Earth has been visited by aliens, but I don’t recall any “recovered-memory” psychologists getting Op-Ed space so they could argue for the veracity of UFO Abductions and cattle mutilation.
Well, Loopydude, I have come awful close to writing letters to the editor over front page stories that treat as “true” or at least “possibly true” such things as ghosts, astrological projections, and psychic behavior. My opinion is that these should not be treated as news, even when they are fluff pieces. But various kinds of pseudoscience are treated non-dismissively by the mainstream press (I don’t know about the Times specifically…)
And herein lies an even bigger headscratcher.
Macroevolution, and even microevolution, most certainly are not things that can happen without biochemical evolution. After all, it’s not like pandas are basically just human beings with lots of fur and different body shapes: underlying those differences are differences in proteins and other cell structures. Minor in pandas vs. people, but quite dramatic in the first tetrapods vs. modern mammals.
In other words, Behe is being incredibly inconsistent. The blood clotting mechanisms in reptiles and fish are much simpler than those found in warm-blooded animals. But how can Behe both believe that common descent is a fact AND something like blood clotting couldn’t have evolved? Did the phantom designer at some inexplicable point decide to wave a wand and say “I grant you cold-blooded creature the power of sticky protein cascade!” Why, when, how? What’s the deal? Evolution has pretty good sugguestions for answers to all those questions, and better yet, the suggestions are testable (and, point of fact, they’ve been tested and found plenty of support so far!) So what’s Behe’s deal?
You know, it’s often said that science can’t explain the “why” to things. Well, if by “why” you mean intention, then no, because there may not have been any intentions. But it seems that science actually is a LOT more verbose in explaining the sort of “why” questions any inquisitive person might have: a LOT better than any ID theory. Why, for instance, are the species on islands near continents more like the speices on the nearby continent than species elsewhere in the world? Evolution can explain precisely why. ID can only reply “that’s just how the designer wanted it” which isn’t really an answer at all. And yet, it’s not clear how ID “theory” could ever do better than that, ever.
Right. No Behe-creationist actually believes that life on Earth was created by “aliens.” Every one of them, to a man, is a deeply religious Christian, and many of them were or still are involved with openly creationist groups. Whether they accept the scientifically valid date of the Earth or not, their arguments about the evolution of life are identical in every way to those of the open creationists. For all those reasons, they are creationists in every relevant respect, and they don’t deserve to be called by some separate term, because that gives unearned validity to their claim of being different from the other creationists.
I don’t have much time to post today, but I thought I would provide a link to the Talk.Origins archive on the subject. It’s a good source of background and links germane to the Shredding of MJ Behe.
Oh come on, we’re much smarter than the talk.origins people. I say we challenge them to some dodgeball. We’d whipe the floor with their pasty academic asses.
And you know this how? Not a single one of them is Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, neo-Pagan or agnostic?
They had one agnostic three years ago, but he heard a lecture by Behe and immediately came forward to be saved.
All the major ones I know of are devout Christians, save Berlinski, who is tight-lipped on what he believes (haven’t heard much from him lately though).
So you think there’s no such thing as an agnostic who seriously questions neo-Darwinism?