Keith Devens .com

Your links seem to be broken too.

I think that creationists or "intelligent designers" are mistaken to think that bashing evolution will ever allow ID to become the prominent theory. No amount of criticism has ever supplanted a scientific theory. Historically, a scientific theory will stand until a more plausible and provable theory replaces it.

So shouldn't Behe try writing a book called "The Biochemical Proof of Genesis"? It seems that it would be a simple matter to show that all human life originated from a single couple in the Middle East a few thousand generations ago. This couple would have to have no Neanderthal predecessors, of course.

The "irreducible complexity" argument I find pseudoscientific at best.

I did find this link from an Amazon review very interesting.

Note that according to Publisher’s Weekly, Behe says that life was "designed by an intelligent agent, whether God, extraterrestrials or a universal force". I’m not sure if the book directly addresses the influence of E.T. on human creation, but that is actually a plot from a 1970s comic book, which was one of my favorite comics growing up.

(Note the complete lack of FSM references.)

Your links seem to be broken too.

Works for me, even on my friend's Mac.

I'd recommend watching Behe's interview, as you misrepresent his position in many ways.

I investigated a little further. The links give a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" if you don't have RealPlayer installed already because the "rtsp" protocol won't be recognized.

I'll try to watch it today, because, after reading some more of the "Black Box" book, I feel I did somewhat misrepresent the positions of Behe. I would never want to do that.

But I am not sure if Behe affords others, especially Ken Miller, the same consideration. Read Ken Miller's article from MIT's "Technology Review". In his book, Behe says that Miller's arguments are based solely on psychology and only appeals to emotion. I would consider that a misrepresentation.

But going back to the original post, ID requires some type of belief in the supernatural, and Behe does talk about aliens and other "intelligent agents" in his book.

On the whole, though, I think Behe presents some fair arguments and I will probably read the Black Box book. Do you have a copy? It is always interesting to read the arguments of the other side.

Have you read The Blind Watchmaker to get a feel for the other side's arguments as they present them?

Behe does note in the book that he and Miller are both Roman Catholics, and Behe agrees with Miller that belief in evolution is compatible with religious beliefs and faith.

I would add that evolution itself does require some level of belief or "faith" also. Until we invent time travel and create a time-lapse movie of the planet's history, we will never be able to directly observe evolution. Therefore, evolution mandates that we have a belief or faith that we have drawn the correct conclusion based on the evidence that we have.

Do you have a copy?

Yeah, I have Behe's book. Never finished it, but read a good deal of it.

I never read the Blind Watchmaker, though I'm pretty familiar with Dawkins. Actually, I was reading this article the other day. I'm continually struck by how clueless this guy is. Not only does he make the mistake of arguing against a strawman of the position of creationists (i.e. he defines evolution in the sense of evolution I agree with -- "nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for building embryos."), he also makes the extremely philosophically foolish statement that "evolution is a fact", which I've argued against in the past, ironically at the same time he chides others for "confusing the philosophically naive" by continuing to call it a "theory". As you point out, evolution is not based on direct observation and therefore is outside the realm of hard science, not even worthy of being considered a scientific theory in the first place.

Dawkins makes the typical mistake (calling it a mistake is charitable, I think it's obfuscation) of arguing from one sense of "evolution" to another. He writes that "...complexity—is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve and that natural selection, uniquely as far as science knows, does solve." That's just wrong. Natural selection only selects among existing variants. It says nothing about how those variants came to be in the first place -- i.e. how the complexity of life arose. Dr. Veith makes this point eloquently.

One of the things I enjoyed about this interview with Behe is that he turns the burden of proof in the debate on its head. He starts from the obvious design in nature (what Dawkins calls an "illusion of design") and says that it's very easy for their position -- that intelligence is necessary to produce the design in nature -- to be shown false. All evolutionists have to do is show that it's possible to produce the type of complexity we find even in the "simplest" forms of life (though as Behe pointed out, we're continually learning how amazingly complex even the simplest cells are) through random interactions of chemicals. Show it in a lab. Until evolutionists can do that, they have no scientific foundation for their views on the origin of life.

I don't think that showing it in a lab would prove much to either creationists or evolutionists. National Academy of Sciences even states:

[I]f a living cell were to be made in the laboratory, it >would not prove that nature followed the same pathway >billions of years ago. But it is the job of science to >provide plausible natural explanations for natural phenomena.

I will be the first to admit that Behe makes some very interesting points for ID. We can continue this discussion when you get back...over scotch.

[I]f a living cell were to be made in the laboratory, it would not prove that nature followed the same pathway billions of years ago.

Indeed, it would not follow that nature followed the same path, but it could show that it was possible for life to somehow come about through random chance (that phrase doesn't make sense to me). In other words, it would show that life coming about without design, through random natural processes, is possible, and would therefore disprove ID's central claim.

... over scotch.

Mmm... Scotch. Dalwhinnie is still my new fav. Hey, tell me if you can get Newcastle Brown Ale down there. It's my new favorite beer, so if not I'll be upset. Speaking of beers I can't get in TN, I'm planning to bring a case of Yuengling with me when I get back, so you'll be able to try that out finally.

So, how did the "designer" come about then? Designed too? Or was he just there from the beginning...

Well, you seem to be being facetious as you know both what I'm going to say and that the former is illogical (at least infinitely regressive). But, the same type of criticism was leveled by Dawkins in the article I linked above ("The designer’s spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations."). He doesn't even stop to ask the question. In fact, even otherwise sophisticated philosophers make the same special-pleading type of mistake. In his book, The Mysterious Flame, my former professor Colin McGinn brings up the question of our origins, and, as I remember it, appears to seriously posit that aliens might have created us. But when he later discusses the possibility of a God, he dismisses it by questioning where the God would have come from. You see the inconsistency?

I continue to be shocked at the poor reasoning I come across from otherwise intelligent people when it comes to this issue. At the risk of repeating myself... Dawkins seems to consider natural selection itself somehow an explanation of our origins, while natural selection is only a conservative, not a creative, force. When I come across such obvious mistakes in reasoning I can only think about what the Bible says in the beginning of Romans.

To address your question directly, I believe the Christian God created things, and that He has always existed. But the ID community spans religious lines and genuinely seems to not discuss the religious issue of who the designer is, instead mainly sticking to doing science.

Just thought I'd mention this here: one of the most interesting things I've heard brought up lately about this issue is the fact that the machinery (literally, microscopic biological machinery) that replicates DNA is itself coded for in that DNA. It seems to create a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone who would say that all these pieces could have gradually evolved independently.

You can get Newcastle. Should not be a problem. I will check for Yeungling at the new smoke and ale shop near my house. If they don't have it, I will ask if they can get it.

But back to the previous topic...

It would be bordering on "non sequitur" to propose that life could be randomly created in the controlled environment of a laboratory. Computational science and biochemical simulation, in my opinion, would produce the most interesting results, but the required conjectures about the primordial soup would reduce its value to nil. I consider the "primordial soup" a huge conjecture in and of itself.

I have a theory of intelligent design that does not need a supernatural being, aliens, or anything beyond what I perceive as being within the reach of human science and technology.

1. We have the ability to sequence RNA and DNA.
2. Time travel is possible (if extremely expensive).
3. We combine the two to create the origins of life.

This would fit in with primitive mythologies like the "Midgard Serpent". But it could have a really, really bad "butterfly effect" too. I think the experiment could just as easily wipe out all life and wreck the space-time continuum.

I did read some interesting articles today that discussed the possibility of "intermediate" biochemical entities that could have bridged the gap between organic compounds (which have been created in the labs) and basic biochemical structures, like RNA. These intermediaries would alleviate the complexity problem, if there was any evidence they ever existed.

However, I consider the intermediate forms just an extended supposition of what may have existed billions of years ago.

BTW, isn't God the Judeo-Christian God?

In his book, The Mysterious Flame, my former professor Colin McGinn brings up the question of our origins...

Possible correction, it may have been in his Ethics, Evil, and Fiction.

It would be bordering on "non sequitur" to propose that life could be randomly created in the controlled environment of a laboratory... the required conjectures about the primordial soup would reduce its value to nil. I consider the "primordial soup" a huge conjecture in and of itself.

Indeed, you're right. That's why experiments such as the Miller-Urey experiment, even if they were successful (and not bordering on fraudulent), wouldn't even show what they purport to show. They'd purport to show that life could arise in what some think were early conditions on Earth, but really all they'd show was that you could do so in a controlled and carefully designed experiment in a lab. This all goes to support my assertion that theories of origins simply cannot be studied scientifically. They're historical conjectures. Ultimately, we all look at the same data and extrapolate backwards, and the conclusions we come to are largely pre-determined by our starting points.

I have a theory of intelligent design...

> 1. We have the ability to sequence RNA and DNA.
> 2. Time travel is possible (if extremely expensive).
> 3. We combine the two to create the origins of life.

Isn't that like Reese being sent to the past by John Connor to become his own father?

I did read some interesting articles today...

Links?

BTW, isn't God the Judeo-Christian God?

Sure, why?

It would be a lot like "Terminator". I did not include cyborgs in the original theory, and that was grossly negligent.