This isn’t a debate about evolution and intelligent design. We’ve been through that a thousand times. I’ve read enough posts on the dope and been through the Talk Origins site to know all the holes and flaws in the ID argument.
One thing bugs me though. If those flaws are obvious to me, a mere dilletante, why aren’t they obvious to Micheal Behe himself, a professional biologist. What’s up with this bird?
Some hypotheses come to mind.
1.) He’s lying. His views on ID have catapulted him from being an obscure professor of biology to hero of the Christian right, best selling author, sought after speaker, and all around famous person. That sort of temptation is hard to resist.
2.) He couldn’t take the implications of evolution. While I firmly believe that the theory of evolution is mute on the subject of God, I can see why a committed theist would be troubled by it. Behe just couldn’t stand the implications and had to find a way out. His fear of said implications drove him to create a theory his native intelligence and training would have rejected.
3.) He’s just not as bright as I’m giving him credit for. I don’t know if I buy this, but I’ll put it in here just to fill the requirement that a list have three elements without resorting to “hi opal.”
I know it’s impossible to get inside someone else’s head, but do any dopers have any info on why Behe says the things he says?
Note: again, this thread already assumes the falsity of ID. If you want to argue the merits of ID please open another thread. But please do a search first. It’s been done.
I read a book, I think called THE CREATIONISTS, which presented a good history of the Creation-Science movement (which for all its Baptist/Fundamentalist popularity apparently has very deep roots in Seventh-Day Adventism- the reason why later in this post). The author, who had an SDA Creationist upbringing but has left it, spoke of talking with a noted Creationist & them both realizing that each other was a knowledgeable & intellectually honest person, who just saw things differently.
IANA scientist- I think I understand the basic principles & why ID isn’t commonly regarded as Science. It’s not falsifiable. It’s a way of interpreting the data. AS IS much in Evolutionary circles. An old-earth Creationist & an Evolutionist can know & understand the same facts & have a totally different interpretation of how these facts came to be (especially if the Evolutionist is non-Theistic). Now, a young-earth Creationist, I will totally concede, denies, distorts or misunderstands a lot of basic facts, so I’m not even considering him in the equation.
Basically, you & other ID opponents and Michael Behe & ID supporters SEE THINGS differently. You both may have the same amount of knowledge & understanding, but you have different philosophical mindsets to guide your interpretations.
Right, but the problem is that Behe isn’t just talking about a point of view. He claims to be able to show that evolution is scientifically impossible, or at least that it fails to explain every aspect of the structure of living beings. His claims have been scientifically answered. So why does he persist?
Again, I’m not looking for a debate about the merits of evolution. I’m just trying to understand where this particular individual is coming from, if any doper has any knowledge, or even a WAG.
I think that this is actually quite possible. I had a psychology teacher in high school who had a Ph.D., but knew basically nothing about psychology. She couldn’t pronounce words like “Wernicke’s area” or “locus coeruleus” when reading from the textbook, even though there was a phonetic spelling after all technical words. She also taught us that the adrenal glands are located in the head, so adrenaline is released directly into the brain. I have no idea how she could have gotten a Ph.D. Perhaps the situation with Behe is similar, or some combination of the three possibilities is at work.
OK, for what it’s worth, I haven’t read anything but news articles from both sides on ID- I own but haven’t read DARWIN’S BLACK BOX, but have read a few old-earth Creationist books which incorporate Behe’s argument. Knowing the mindset, I think I can still describe how Behe can claim this. He says that certain features in lifeforms show an irreducable complexity which could not have evolved but must have been fully formed, and that they demonstrate evidence of Intelligent Design. Now- what is the scientific refutation of that other than demonstrating that these features can be reduced further & could have evolved by chance? (The reducability could be scientifically demonstated, the chance part is again a matter of interpretation.)
Personally, I look at Life, the Universe and Everything and think (42 L) that those who see all this as having evolved from mindless matter in motion are either blind to or rebellious against the Creator. You may look at LTU&E & think that all of us who must attribute this to a Creator are delusional. We may marshall arguments & indicators for or against a Creator, but we can’t prove or disprove whose interpretation is correct unless God decides to step in, which He
refrains from doing in irrefutable ways.
But it has been demonstrated how most of the features can be reduced further, how they probably evolved, judging from evidence shown in family members of the species, and how they could have evolved by chance.
This has been shown for feathers, for the bombadier beetle, for the spinning flagelum, and for the eye.
Ok, my “credentials”: Raised evangelical, went to evangelical college, still go to evangelical church. Dad was the type to be upset when brother indicated he doubted had doubts about Noah story.
I actually bought Behe’s book, and at the time I was a fan. Since then I’ve become one of the minor heretics in the American church on the subject. One of the things that I LOVE about my church is that this subject just isn’t brought up by the leadership.
The church is full of people who are desperate for evolution not to be true. I think most of them simply haven’t thought much about the subject, really, and believe that their theological points and evolution are diametrically opposed. They subconciously avoid the points that would make them have to re-evaluate their beliefs, because that’s really hard to do.
There also is a lot of unspoken pressure to believe the most you can, as there is in any group that’s based on a belief system, even if it’s the local teacher’s union (and I should know). You are judged on your level of commitment to the belief system, and exact version of correctness is defined by the leadership, who often are the leaders because they’re the kind of people who are obsessed by the subject and are willing to put in lots of time and make a lot of noise.
I suspect that Behe is avoiding the points that he doesn’t like because he has too much invested intellectually and emotionally, and he probably thinks, spiritually. This is not a very good reflection on him, since he is in a position to have a clue about the true nature of the situation, as opposed to your average Joe/Jane who attends church.
Maybe also he doesn’t have the philosophical bent enough to realize that his point is completely outside the realm of science. Even if he were right about irreducible complexity, it wouldn’t prove Intelligent Design. Two of the most prevalent flaws of humans are a willingness to talk about things we don’t really know about, and an unwillingness to admit a point despite the implications to our argument or emotional state. I think Behe’s trapped in these like a lot of us, but his case is exacerbated by the publicity, and even worse, the responsibility he carries by the knowledge he has.
The problem with this scenario in regards to Behe, specifically, is that he is not arguing for theistic evolution–a position held by his own church–he is explicitly arguing for direct Divine intervention in specific events–events that he has been shown are not as he had envisioned them.
It is one thing to choose between chaos resolving to order by the laws of physics and the laws of physics being established by the Divine. It is quite another to insist that God is sticking His fingers into the system to do some tinkering and that we can see His fingerprints–and it is particualrly odd to continue to espouse the latter belief when others continuously demonstrate that the “fingerprints” are simply wave patterns left by errant breezes.
I suspect that Behe, like Johnson, simply recoiled at the notion that we cannot directly see God in Nature and has a personal need to invent His image even where He has not imprinted it.
In many ways, this is analogous to seeing the Virgin Mary in stains on an underpass, or Jesus in a cheese sandwich: many people who are excessively committed to an ideology see what they really want to see, no matter what anyone else says. You can explain how the stain pattern is random, how the burnt cheese looks just as much like Elvis as it does Jesus, or that evolutionary pathways can be determined, even hypothetically, thereby disproving the notion that such pathways cannot exist, until you are blue in the face when faced with such people; their zeal overshadows their ability to critically examination phenomena they hold dear.
This is the heart of it I think. I read Black Box many years ago, and while his main arguments as presented in the book focused on the irreducible complexity stuff, I got the feeling his real argument was in the parts where he talked about how intrinsically unlikely he found the whole thing. This is where he had a real problem with evolution and this is the part that captured many of his readers. They felt strongly deep down that evolution didn’t make sense, and he was just presenting after the fact justification for that belief.
I can’t blame him too much. Evolution is a hard thing to swollow for a human mind that only experiences time in 60-70 year spans instead of the millions of years involved. I myself probably wouldn’t buy it if it weren’t for the tons of physical evidence, and I can see how someone from a strong religious background who already had an explanation (God did it) would seek justification for their strong intuition that evolution was bunk.
They know Darwin was wrong, after all, so their must be some proof of its inncorectness. Behe knows Irriducible complexity arguments must be real because it proves what he knows is true, and the objections to his arguments must be false. It’s a trap I can see a PhD getting stuck in just as easily as a preacher or HS dropout.
I’d go with a combination of all three. First, one need not be terribly bright to get a PhD in the sciences. I have one, and I’m a few brain cells (more or less) from a chimp. You just need to be able to take abuse for 7-20 years to get your PhD.
I looked at the guys publication record, and he has 36 total publications. Now, spanning a career that started in the late 70s, that’s actually pretty low. He has the occaisional paper in JBC (a good biochemistry journal), but many of these are in relatively low ranking journals. But a funny thing happens in 1998. First, he stopped publishing scientific research for the most part; he ony has five papers since then, and none of them are really research. They’re all just review articles and pontifications on evolution, and two of them are in Science (the creme de la creme of journals). So, it looks like he is getting a lot more notoriety being the evolution guy, even in the world of science, than he was being the guy publishing articles titled “Co-polymer tracts in eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and organellar DNA.”
Thanks for all the responses. This was really bugging me ever since I ran across Darwin’s Black Box in the science (!) section of a local bookshop. At first I was taken aback, since I had never seen anyone with Behe’s credentials arguing for creationism. Although I later learned the flaws in his arguments, I’ve always been curious about the person behind them. The replies here make sense to me, though of course we can only guess at what’s really going on.
FTR, my own view, again, is that evolution has nothing to say for or against the existence of God, although I can understand why some Christians (Or Jews or Muslims for that matter) might find the implications of evolution troubling. A theory that can be embraced by a militant Atheist like Richard Dawkins and a comitted Catholic like Kenneth Miller is pretty silent about God, IMO.
Speaking of Kenneth Miller, here’s an interesting article he wrote on the evolution of blood clotting, one of the things Behe claims could not have evolved.
It’s hard to back off once the contrarian position to which your name has been attached is shown to be lacking.
Look at Peter Duesberg, who advanced the hypothesis in 1987 that the syndrome we call AIDS is the result of licit and illicit drug use and not HIV. At the time it was an interesting but extremely unlikely idea; these days it’s just total nonsense. Yet, as far as I know, he’s still pushing it.
It’s the same with Behe–he has an awful lot invested in this idea, so he’ll hang on to it for dear life no matter how often his examples are debunked.
Back in 2003 I started a thread posing the question: “Are there any “creation scientists” who are NOT traditional religious believers?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=205796 Nobody could name a one, with the possible except of Fred Hoyle.
There’s Anthony Flew, who was briefly a hero of the creationist/ID movement; as I understand it, he made some kind of statement that was wildly misinterpreted as abandonment of evolution in favour of creationism. He was pretty annoyed by all these rumours, as I understand it.
Anyway, regarding Behe; I’m pretty sure it’s him that I’ve heard accused of misrepresenting his stance depending on the audience - giving Christian audiences the impression that he’s a creationist, but to mixed or academic audiences, going for the ID angle. Maybe that’s just clever topic management, but it could be evidence that he’s aware of the flaws in his reasoning.
I am convinced that some of these prominent creationists cannot be both sane and honest - that is to say that they are either delusional, or they are knowingly perpetrating falsehoods. Gish and Hovind spring to mind here. Not sure about Behe though - he could just be so wrapped up in his work that he hasn’t noticed what the real world is like.
But is he a believer in a traditional religion? What I’m looking for is a creationist/IDist who is not. I would be willing to accord the whole ID movement a little more intellectual respect, if I found a proponent who did not begin with the assumption that a conscious God made the universe (and either created or guided the evolution of all living things in it), and then looked for evidence and arguments to support that, but rather arrived at their conclusions from dispassionately studying the scientific evidence. After all, their is no logical connection between the idea that a God made the world and any other tenet of Christianity (e.g., the fall of Adam and Eve, the doctrine of Original Sin, or Christ as a sin-redeemer). It would be illogical to expect a creationist to be an atheist, at least after he or she arrived at the point of believing in the creation. But it would be possible for a creationist to be a “philosophical theist” like the famous skeptic Martin Gardner, who believes in and prays to a personal God while rejecting all traditional religious revelations as to His nature. Gardner, however, is not a creationist or IDist – he accepts that human beings originated through accidental biological evolution. Are there any “creation scientists” who are also philosophical theists, or otherwise completely reject the authority of religious traditions or revelations as these bear on scientific questions, and who still find scientific reasons to prefer creation or ID to unguided evolution? Does anybody know?
I would give the reason as 60% #1, 35% #2, and 5% #3.
I don’t think he’s lying to other people, but probably lying to himself. As others have pointed out, he’s been transformed from a obscure professor to champion of the Christian world. There’s probably an element of his popularity causing him to overlook his own doubts.
This reminds me of an old joke, where a guy is being shown Rorshach blots.
Psychiatrist: “What do you see?”
Patient: “A man and a woman having sex.”
Psychiatrist: “What do you see?”
Patient: “A woman with her legs spread open.”
Psychiatrist: “You’ve got quite the dirty mind!”
Patient: “Me? You’re the one showing me all the dirty pictures!”
Behe isn’t lying in the sense that he knows otherwise. He’s lying in the sense that he has his mind made up, and any contrary opinion now just convinces him even further.
I wouldn’t call him unintelligent in the sense that I’m pretty sure he could run circles around 99% of his opponents, but I do consider him unintelligent for essentially giving up his career in order to become a Christian spokesperson.
There was a set of point/counterpoint articles in The Dallas Morning News recently (not sure if registration is required or not). The ID [article](The first misunderstanding is the belief that intelligent design is based on religion rather than science. Intelligent design is a scientific inference based on empirical evidence, not on religious texts. The theory proposes that many of the most intricate features of the natural world (like the amazing molecular machines within the cell) are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process like natural selection. ) was written by John G. West of the Discovery Institute, and he tries to pass off ID as non-religious.