Michael Behe Hee
CNN had a multi-part show on "intelligent design" tonight, featuring Michael Behe, the Lehigh University biologist who is prominent among the IDers. I think it might have been part of the Paula Zero show. It was even-handed in the usual "some say the moon is a big old rock" but "others say it's made out of green cheese" sort of way. While they made it pretty clear that Behe is an isolated, even somewhat persecuted, figure I didn't see much presentation of the more mainstream view that Behe is a mediocrity who made a name for himself by embracing popular nonsense.
I didn't see the whole thing - it had already started when I turned it on, and it eventually became too annoying, but what I saw illustrated why TV usually does such a crappy job on this type of reporting. Behe got to show his lovely picture of a bacterial flagellum and talk about how it couldn't have arisen by chance, but Niles Eldridge was just a suit walking through a museum. This wasn't Eldrige's fault - if you give one guy a chance to set up models and pictures in his office and have a walking interview with another, it's not a fair exchange.
I thought this was a show with a pro-ID slant. In addition to the bacterial flagellum, the eye was mentioned as an example of something "too complex to have evolved by chance." It's not easy to explain how such structures did arise by chance, both because the history was no doubt complex and because it happened a very long time ago. In the case of the eye, we have a rough picture of the steps that evolution took, but the explanation is complex and can't be managed in one or even a few pictures. Of course there are many steps that are incompletely understood. No one knows the whole history of life on this planet or the whole pattern of evolution for any major biological system.
We have faith in evolution because it predicted, among many other things, that such intermediate steps must have occurred and we have found millions of examples since then fitting those patterns. The case for evolution was ironclad before the discovery of DNA, but DNA is the clincher. DNA not only provides the mechanism that Darwin could not quite apprehend but the molecular evidence of evolution in the distant past.
The bacterial flagellum is indeed a miracle of rare device - or evolution, I should say. This helical propeller is an intricate nanoscale machine powered by a tiny rotary engine whirling 1500 times a second. Some of what is known about its evolution is here at talk design. The link provides a lovely story and lots of pictures - minus Behe's colors and flashing lights.
What is known of the explanation fits perfectly the outline Darwin provided almost 150 years ago. Evolution proceeds by adapting old parts to new uses. He didn't know about the molecular scale - molecules weren't really invented yet, but the same principles operate. Evolution leaves its traces in the DNA. In many cases it is clear from the DNA how a few ancestral proteins gave rise to other proteins with apparently completely unrelated function.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Darwinian natural selection is how many chances God has had to prove it wrong - and declined. If it had turned out that different animals had different and unrelated hereditary mechanisms, evolution would have been dead, dead, dead. Instead, we see that all life, from the humblest bacterium to the most advanced mammals use the very same genetic mechanism. If, even today, we were to discover some animal or plant that did not fit into the existing pattern of life, we would, at the very least, have to expect some extraterrestial origin.
It is often said that "intelligent design" is untestable, but I don't believe it. If we could find clear evidence of evolutionary changes clearly "put in by hand" that would be evidence for ID - but we never see that, the only things IDers can point to are examples of changes not yet fully understood on the basis of natural selection. More tellingly, evolution provides us with many examples of "stupid design" - adaptations that are seemingly clumsy juryrigged things that are just what you would expect from catch-as-catch can chance, but not from a good engineer.
A classic example is the wiring of the human (vertebrate) eye - sort like a TV set with the wires and cables coming out of the screen instead of the back.
I didn't see the whole thing - it had already started when I turned it on, and it eventually became too annoying, but what I saw illustrated why TV usually does such a crappy job on this type of reporting. Behe got to show his lovely picture of a bacterial flagellum and talk about how it couldn't have arisen by chance, but Niles Eldridge was just a suit walking through a museum. This wasn't Eldrige's fault - if you give one guy a chance to set up models and pictures in his office and have a walking interview with another, it's not a fair exchange.
I thought this was a show with a pro-ID slant. In addition to the bacterial flagellum, the eye was mentioned as an example of something "too complex to have evolved by chance." It's not easy to explain how such structures did arise by chance, both because the history was no doubt complex and because it happened a very long time ago. In the case of the eye, we have a rough picture of the steps that evolution took, but the explanation is complex and can't be managed in one or even a few pictures. Of course there are many steps that are incompletely understood. No one knows the whole history of life on this planet or the whole pattern of evolution for any major biological system.
We have faith in evolution because it predicted, among many other things, that such intermediate steps must have occurred and we have found millions of examples since then fitting those patterns. The case for evolution was ironclad before the discovery of DNA, but DNA is the clincher. DNA not only provides the mechanism that Darwin could not quite apprehend but the molecular evidence of evolution in the distant past.
The bacterial flagellum is indeed a miracle of rare device - or evolution, I should say. This helical propeller is an intricate nanoscale machine powered by a tiny rotary engine whirling 1500 times a second. Some of what is known about its evolution is here at talk design. The link provides a lovely story and lots of pictures - minus Behe's colors and flashing lights.
What is known of the explanation fits perfectly the outline Darwin provided almost 150 years ago. Evolution proceeds by adapting old parts to new uses. He didn't know about the molecular scale - molecules weren't really invented yet, but the same principles operate. Evolution leaves its traces in the DNA. In many cases it is clear from the DNA how a few ancestral proteins gave rise to other proteins with apparently completely unrelated function.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Darwinian natural selection is how many chances God has had to prove it wrong - and declined. If it had turned out that different animals had different and unrelated hereditary mechanisms, evolution would have been dead, dead, dead. Instead, we see that all life, from the humblest bacterium to the most advanced mammals use the very same genetic mechanism. If, even today, we were to discover some animal or plant that did not fit into the existing pattern of life, we would, at the very least, have to expect some extraterrestial origin.
It is often said that "intelligent design" is untestable, but I don't believe it. If we could find clear evidence of evolutionary changes clearly "put in by hand" that would be evidence for ID - but we never see that, the only things IDers can point to are examples of changes not yet fully understood on the basis of natural selection. More tellingly, evolution provides us with many examples of "stupid design" - adaptations that are seemingly clumsy juryrigged things that are just what you would expect from catch-as-catch can chance, but not from a good engineer.
A classic example is the wiring of the human (vertebrate) eye - sort like a TV set with the wires and cables coming out of the screen instead of the back.
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