Pharyngula::Behe opens mouth, speaks, brain falls out

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Behe opens mouth, speaks, brain falls out

PZ Myers • 52 Comments (last page)

Michael Behe tells us what color the world was from his side of the witness stand:

The cross examination was fun too, and showed that the other side really does have only rhetoric and bluster. At one point the lawyer for the other side who was cross examining me ostentatiously piled a bunch of papers on the witness stand that putatively had to do with the evolution of the immune system. But it was obvious from a cursory examination that they were more examples of hand waving speculations, which I had earlier discussed in my direct testimony. So I was able to smile and say that they had nothing more to say than the other papers. I then thought to myself, that here the NCSE, ACLU, and everyone in the world who is against ID had their shot to show where we were wrong, and just trotted out more speculation. It actually made me feel real good about things.

This is typical. The science doesn't matter—they could have dragged him through the Harvard medical library and showed him stacks and stacks of journals, taken him on a tour of a thousand labs doing research of flagella and clotting pathways, and he would have just smiled his supercilious smile and waved them away as nothing. His cheerful ignorance is impenetrable.

It is strange that someone whose performance on the stand has made his opponents deliriously happy (that testimony is going to be a source of great amusement for years to come, astrology boy) should "feel good" about it—self-awareness is apparently not something he is good at. And now he's gone and publicly admitted his cavalier attitude towards scientific research and evidence, yet another confession that will serve us well.

(via Ooblog)

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Comments:

#47645: bill — 11/08 at 07:50 AM
I'm sure that Astrology Boy Behe will be a great draw at church picnics, and, who knows, he may become an expert pickle judge at county fairs.

However, scientifically Behe is no more relevant than Pat Robertson, and has far less entertainment value than Ken Ham.

#47648: — 11/08 at 08:05 AM
Spin. It's all about the spin. Even if Behe was in a state of utter depression after his testimony, I'm sure there were a couple of DI folks available to cheer him up and tell him how to put that happy face out for public consumption.

#47649: — 11/08 at 08:09 AM
The irony being that Behe claims ID is falsifiable, and therefore science, because a possible evolutionary pathway would mean a given structure isn't irreducibly complex. Ignoring for a moment that this is isn't falsifiability, it's absurd for him to accuse people of "speculation" when the only test he has given for his hypothesis is speculation.

#47652: Mike — 11/08 at 08:25 AM
I probably don't really have to point this study out to the crowd that reads this blog, but I can't help myself: "Unskilled and Unaware of It".

"It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. "

http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware.html

#47658: — 11/08 at 08:37 AM
I think this "speculation" that he keeps babbling about is a key to the thinking going on here. Sounds like the usual goalpost-moving and dual-standards to me. He demands evidence of evolving pathways and reducible complexity. WHen given it, he claims it's not good enough because we didn't present every single precise step in the evolution. If we could do that, he'd then demand that we recreate it in the lab. But while he assigns that insane standard of evidence to evolution, he assigns the astrology standard to ID. The raw contradiction should be enough to make his head explode.

#47660: coturnix — 11/08 at 08:55 AM
Mike: thanks for the link, I have lost it. Did Cognitive Daily have a post about that paper recently?

#47664: — 11/08 at 09:00 AM
"The irony being that Behe claims ID is falsifiable, and therefore science, because a possible evolutionary pathway would mean a given structure isn't irreducibly complex. Ignoring for a moment that this is isn't falsifiability, it's absurd for him to accuse people of "speculation" when the only test he has given for his hypothesis is speculation."

To be fair, Behe won't accept speculation as a test; he requires a formal proof of a molecule-by-molecule causal story before he will accept that something "could have evolved".

#47666: — 11/08 at 09:03 AM
"The raw contradiction should be enough to make his head explode."

The falling out of the brain forestalled that.

#47671: — 11/08 at 09:12 AM

#47658: rrt — 11/08 at 08:37 AM
I think this "speculation" that he keeps babbling about is a key to the thinking going on here. Sounds like the usual goalpost-moving and dual-standards to me.

Goalpost-moving deluxe! Astrology boy said in his book:

We can look high or we can look low in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system"

(Sorry for any errors, I copied that from the cross-exam PDF)
Nothing there about "speculation", or "detailed" or "rigorous" or other goalpost-moving disclaimers that astrology boy added during his cross-examination or in his current spin cycle.

#47673: — 11/08 at 09:17 AM
Suggested reading: Steven Dutch Intelligent Design and Unintelligent People.

Also, if you haven't read some of his other writings, I do recommend: Science, Pseudoscience, and Irrationalism.

I don't know about you but his writings just brighten my day every time.

#47675: tristero — 11/08 at 09:20 AM
"It is strange that someone whose performance on the stand has made his opponents deliriously happy (that testimony is going to be a source of great amusement for years to come, astrology boy) should "feel good" about it"

Not strange at all. One of the hallmarks of the profoundly incompetent is that they do not know they are incompetent. It stands to reason Behe wouldn't know how badly he did.

#47676: — 11/08 at 09:20 AM
"examples of hand waving speculations"

He must never have looked at himself in a mirror.

Maybe that is why he acts like he has no intellectual honesty to loose.

#47678: Kristine Harley — 11/08 at 09:24 AM
Hey, Mikey Behe--Quit flogging your flagellum and get a lab!

Oh, he'll go down in history, all right--along with the "greatest discovery in the history of mankind," those Mars canals. After all, we never fail to recognize design! We can always tell an intelligent agent, and that's why people in Texas was so busy staring at the image of Jesus in a woman's tree that they let a murderer slip out of their hands.

#47681: — 11/08 at 09:34 AM
Something tells me Behe doesn't hang out much with his faculty colleagues at Lehigh. Even aside from his anti-science propaganda, I doubt they take kindly to his arrogant narcissism, even if it's not as bad as Dembski's.

#47689: — 11/08 at 09:55 AM
If a Behe brain falls on a desk, does it make a noise?, Zen koan for the new millenium...

#47691: Polymath — 11/08 at 10:00 AM
i don't know if you've posted the link to this article or not, but it's a good one:

http://www.slate.com/id/2128755/?nav=navoa

not, of course, that it would actually change behe's opinion....

#47694: — 11/08 at 10:08 AM
"But I outsmarted him, for I knew that stack of papers was not from The Book, and if it's not in The Book it is either empty vanity or the wily equivocation of Satan himself."

OK, OK, that's not what Behe said, but his methodology of not examining anything in front of him doesn't make his conclusion any better supported than if he had said something like the above.

#47698: — 11/08 at 10:34 AM
Behe is bright enough, but like so many true believers, he has so compartmentalized his thinking that he reacts to threats to his faith with a willful incomprehension. And if you told him you had no strong beliefs, but used a set of working hypotheses, all of them subject to refutation, he would smile at you and consider you a poor benighted heathen.

#47700: — 11/08 at 10:40 AM
Achtung! Ve haff to stop picking on poor Behe and Dembski.
It is obvious to me that ze vere both picked on mercilessly, und deservedly so, when ze was in school! Swirleys und wedgies were zer usual interaction from ze normal children, so you see, zer socialization proceses vas forcing zem to not focus on reality! The Wedge Document was direct result of too many wedgies given to zem both. Ze both haff this problem und vill never rcover und be normal. They vill always be ze butt of jokes, und no one that knows them will ever like them!

#47702: — 11/08 at 10:43 AM
Speaking of Michael Behe, Burma is moving its capital on the advice of the dictator's personal astrologer

#47703: LochNess — 11/08 at 10:48 AM
Behe opens mouth, speaks, brain falls out

Wouldn't his brain fall out if he took a dump instead?

#47707: — 11/08 at 11:09 AM
I then thought to myself, that here the NCSE, ACLU, and everyone in the world who is against ID

Behe forgot to mention Judge Jones, who undoubtedly went back to his chambers and puked after watching Behe's "performance."

#47712: — 11/08 at 11:20 AM
rtt sez:

He demands evidence of evolving pathways and reducible complexity. WHen given it, he claims it's not good enough because we didn't present every single precise step in the evolution. If we could do that, he'd then demand that we recreate it in the lab. But while he assigns that insane standard of evidence to evolution, he assigns the astrology standard to ID. The raw contradiction should be enough to make his head explode.

this reminds me of the BS the creationist whackjobs used to pull with their claims about transitional fossils.

When presented with multiple marvelous tranitional examples--say for instance prehistoric horses--of species A-->species b-->Species C, etc, the creationists would start screaming; "But where is the transition between A and B and B and C."

In this case, the IDiots scream and demand the molecular "fossils" in biochemical pathways. when presented with them via comparative sequence or amino acid analysis or cryptic retroviral sequences, they blow it off like Behe does.

You have to hand it to the ID'ers though. Even though the ones that are trained scientists know they are BS'ing, they also know that the unwashed masses of fundie whackjobs will swallow the BS whole because it has the faint whiff of "legitimacy" due to the high tech sounding mumbo jumbo Behe and his ilk spew. This causes the fundies to buy it (as if they didn't already have twisted justification for doing so) because they want to believe in their biblical "just so" stories so badly.

Bunch of dishonest cocksuckers....

#47716: — 11/08 at 11:31 AM
LochNess: that's a very apt image of Fry to go with the quote about brains falling out.

#47718: — 11/08 at 11:37 AM
But "He sounds like he knows what he's talking about", and that's enough for most people.

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Behe opens mouth, speaks, brain falls out

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