#43477: — 10/11  at  09:14 AM
Reading this I was struck by a really obvious (forgive me if too obvious) question: Whatever is designed, if it is to get off the drawing board, to have material form (like machines, or people) must be manufactured. You don't just draw up a blueprint and sit around waiting for it to materialise spontaneously. So who manufactures all the things that the intelligent designer designs? What do they have to say about this?

#43480: Bryson Brown — 10/11  at  09:48 AM
It's worse than shifting goal posts-- it's cheap, blatant rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Behe's argument against evolution holds that the evolution of IC items is impossible because they can't be selected for until the entire system is in place, which turns evolution into a 'tornado in a junkyard' process. Then he replies to the type III secretion system by saying it doesn't show the flagellum isn't IC because the TTSS has a different function. But if the parts of an IC system can develop under selection for other functions (and it seems he's just admitted this), then his main argument collapses.

I think Behe is assuming that his audience's attention span is so short that they can't put these two ideas together & see that his position is untenable (or perhaps he just thinks they don't care, because any critique of evolution is grist for their mill, no matter how much of clown show it is). Unfortunately, when it comes to his supporters, he's right about this.

#43481: — 10/11  at  09:51 AM
You've hit one of the many problems with "Intelligent Design".
As I've pointed out before, we know of many designs which were not implemented, and we know of things which are not designed.
So even if it were true that 'biological entities are designed', we've added no information to our stock of knowlege.
Even in the presence of design, science must ask about implementation.
Oddly enough, it seems that only the execrable Behe has addressed this (although hardly straight-on) with his "Poof!" mechanism [so-called].
None of the other dishonest hacks involved in ID have dared to discuss implementation.

So even if we found a set of designs for the bacterial flagellum, we would know nothing about how the flagellum came to be.
Just as having Da Vinci's designs for helicopters tells us nothing about how any particular helicopter came to be -- there is a perfect disconnect between the design and the implementation, and it is the implementation that matters!
Indeed, even if we were to extract from an existent helicopter the design of Da Vinci, we would not claim to know that Da Vinci was causally involved with the designed helicopter; knowing the design and the designer doesn't really add anything useful.

hugs,
Shirley Knott

#43485: — 10/11  at  10:15 AM
While looking to see if Curtsinger has a blog, I came across this:

http://www.cbs.umn.edu/eeb/faculty/CurtsingerJames/

#43489: Curt Rozeboom — 10/11  at  10:34 AM
Evolution's design and implementation processes are inseparable. Evolution designs in such a way that were we to duplicate it, we'd have engineers on the factory floor putting dents in molds ;) The thing that seems to separate "intelligent" design from evolution is the "gap" caused by someone making internalized design selections and then implementing them wholesale. We can't see the selection process of a designing mind. That's why IDC's see gaps as evidence and why having TTSS doesn't count against them (in their minds). As long as they can show a gap (how did TTSS get co-opted?), they think they still have evidence in their favor. What they fail to realize is that the human mind does not design by "poof", but by a highly selective process of its own. At least with human design, there tends to be documentation of the design process in the form of crumpled pieces of paper in the trash ;) Oddly enough, there is such documentation of evolution's designing at work in the form of failed evolutionary pathways. By that logic, if design is present in nature and if design implies a designer, shouldn't ID become another line of evidence for evolution?

#43491: Mike — 10/11  at  10:37 AM

He added that the bacterial flagellum is still irreducibly complex in the sense that the subset does not function as a flagellum.

Hmmmm....Seems like we ought to be able to come up with a good counterexample that shows how dumb this kind of IC is. Any suggestions? What (1) is obviously not irreducibly complex and (2) has a different function if you remove one part?

#43492: Michael Roninson — 10/11  at  10:40 AM
It's worse even than that (IC gets perpetually worse). Behe's analogy to the mouse trap requires that realize that you can't assemble the five pieces into five successive, functioning mouse traps. A true statement but only if the parts are not altered in the process. Behe's argument in no way touches on the possibility of having a functioning, four-part mouse trap, adding a fifth part, modifying the parts and ending up with his functioning, five-part trap. However, if Behe is now ruling out cooption as a mechanism in biology, and his analogy refuses to recognize the modification of parts, I see no biological mechanism for "adding parts" although Behe recognizes that this phenomenon occurs. In Behe's world parts can be added, but the only biological mechanisms for doing so, cooption and duplication followed by modification, don't exist. In short his fundamental argument either has nothing to do with biology, is incoherent, or both.

#43493: PZ Myers — 10/11  at  10:46 AM
But that's what he wants to claim--there is no way to add a part, other than by the intervention of Jesus.

#43496: Les Lane — 10/11  at  11:01 AM
In "Unlocking the Mysteries of Life" Behe explains how one day (10 yrs ago?) he "suddenly realized" that no one had explained the evolutionary origin of flagella. My immediate thought was that any graduate level molecular biology student who didn't immediately recognize why this was so must be a moron. Since Behe isn't a moron, it's clear that molecular biological thinking is (far) more alien to him than one would predict from his academic position.

#43502: Kristine Harley — 10/11  at  11:26 AM
"But that's what he wants to claim--there is no way to add a part, other than by the intervention of Jesus." Quite.

Well, I would say this to Behe: Fine, if you want to chalk the mechanisms of biology to Jesus, be my guest. In the meantime, we have to watch the development of Avian Flu and tackle finding a cure for Alzheimer's, among other grown-up priorities. So when is Jesus going to intervene in THESE-- whenever He gets done flinging hurricanes at us and melting the north pole, as if Global Climate Change were real (and not an unproven "myth" concocted by environmentalists)?

At what point does the "Designer" intervene in what appears to be not a design but an organic, changing, evolving process? In other words, so when is Jesus going to give us a cure for Alzheimer's? When we pray hard enough? Because some people in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's can lose the ability to express their own faith! (And it is not a reflection of the patient's piety earlier in life, either. It is an unfortunate occurrence caused by a biological deterioration of the brain. Now why would a brain disease make a believer forget Bible verses, cause them to publicly masturbate, and engage in other uncomfortable behaviors...)

Does the Lord design those who evolve themselves?

I felt so frustrated during Behe's talk, because I don't have the education to engage him at his level of speciality, but there we were, an auditorium full of people who owe our lives to the biological advancements that are a gift of Darwin, listening to blather about "machines and highway signs in the cell!" And little Keebler Elves! Who are the workers running these "factories" in the cell, and what if they form a union and go on strike? (Hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea... Are they atheists or Christians?)

#43504: DouglasG — 10/11  at  11:55 AM
If you give the mechanisms and make ID a completely scientific hypothesis, what you get is Random Mutation and Natural Selection. That is, you end up with evolution. This is why they don't do it. This is why they can't do it. They are completely supported by individuals who think we are not decended from a common ansestor of the apes. ID cannot refute this observation. Thus, the proponents of ID talk around the subject pointing at the silly evolution objections. This is all they can do. This is all they have ever done. This is all they will ever do.

#43507: — 10/11  at  12:33 PM
Les

Since Behe isn't a moron, it's clear that molecular biological thinking is (far) more alien to him than one would predict from his academic position.

Behe is a professional liar.

He is paid to lie and create confusion. That's how he earns his living, in part. That's how he chooses to feed his family: be creating the impression among a portion of the population that the vast majority of scientists are deluded by their atheism from appreciating Behe's revolutionary contributions to the history of biology.

Of course, the vast majority of scientists are NOT deluded by their atheism from appreciating Behe's revolutionary contributions to the history of biology. Rather, as is plain from the comments here and elsewhere and the lack of any serious scientist using Behe's "concepts" in a positive productive fashion, the opposite is true: Behe is a fraud and scientists are correct in understanding that evolution -- not mysterious alien beings -- is responsible for the diversity of living things on planet earth.

The stunning and sad fact is even in 2005 we don't see this messsage being delivered effectively. Instead, you will still find would-be "defenders of evolutionary biology" engaging in tiresome arguments about "Shannon entropy" and other irrelevancies, arguments that do nothing except provide the dissemblers like Behe, Dembski and Luskin more kindling from which to craft the anti-science smoke signals that evangelical Christians are born (again) to read.

#43512: Michael Robinson — 10/11  at  01:02 PM
PZ,

That dosen't seem to be quite the case. He does claim that reducibly complex systems can exist and that some evolution via natural selection occurs, or at least he has in the past. He does seem to argue that parts can be added. But then he sort of argues that they can't. Or maybe he's arguing that they have to be added by Jesus if they're really, really important. I'm still voting for incoherent.

#43513: — 10/11  at  01:03 PM
"Surprisingly, he had nothing to say about new developments in ID. Surely this revolutionary approach to biology has produced important scientific insights in the last nine years."

Nine years!? Natural Theology has systematically failed to control and predict nature since forever.

#43514: — 10/11  at  01:05 PM
Herr Curtsinger is a more forgiving man than I.

I would have written that ID need to rise above the level of 'bovine feces' (5005).

#43515: Skeptic — 10/11  at  01:08 PM
While hunting for leads rising from the current Kitzmiller case, I came accross this web site about simulating the evolutionary process on computers and coming up with some inventions that Behe and his group would definitely attribute to ID.

This stuff is really cool (click by URL for the link)

#43516: — 10/11  at  01:17 PM
I really enjoyed Curtsinger's article. He used a specific example to refute one of Behe's claims. He provided instruction to allow any reader to duplicate his efforts. Very educational.

#43523: — 10/11  at  02:01 PM

Does the Lord design those who evolve themselves?

Yes! Not a bad way to put it at all, from the POV of a Christian who understands evolution.

#43524: — 10/11  at  02:02 PM
Results for "male bovine feces": 1198.

Heh.

#43525: — 10/11  at  02:06 PM

He added that the bacterial flagellum is still irreducibly complex in the sense that the subset does not function as a flagellum.

Wow. If I had ever been tempted to believe that this guy is merely incompetent and not also a totally dishonest twit, that one sentence would remove all doubt.

#43526: — 10/11  at  02:17 PM
I did a search on "irreducible complexity" and it only turned up ten results. Of those that had anything to do with evolution or Intelligent Design, all of them supported evolution. The rest of the results were false positives due to the fact that the synopses included either of the two search terms and had nothing at all to say about the subject in question.

I say again: heh.

#43532: — 10/11  at  05:03 PM

He added that the bacterial flagellum is still irreducibly complex in the sense that the subset does not function as a flagellum.

Isn't that kind of like saying a thirty year old could never have been a ten year old, because a ten year old is obviously not thirty? If I meet Behe while wearing a hat, will he think I'm someone else if I take my hat off?

Someone mentioned that Behe accepts some evolution. So he doesn't think everything is designed? I.e., he thinks there's a "designer" who set up evolution to make 99.9% of everything work naturally, but for some reason, he couldn't get it to build a fucking flagellum? And this is where the designer feels the need to step in? To help flagellates locomote more comfortably. Not to cure alzheimers or cancer, or to fix any number of genetic diseases.

Did anybody call him out on the ridiculousness of the Mt. Rushmore analogy? I mean, besides the fact that he can tell it's designed because you can easily compare it to the non-design of nature, but also because we know people carved it to look like something specific-an end goal, which evolution doesn't have. What did he think of The Old Man Of the Mountain (before it fell down)? Obviously it was carved by natural forces, and yet it looked rather like a human face. Clearly, nature can make things that look designed, but unless he has ID evidentiary slides of human shaped rocks, or even potato chips that look like Jay Leno, he knows the difference, and I call bullshit.

#43533: Jim Harrison — 10/11  at  05:20 PM
If absolutely everything that exists was designed by an omnipotent God, one cannot argue for design by pointing to the difference between designed and undesigned objects since ex hypothesi there are no undesigned objects. At best one can try to imagine what an undesigned object would look like if there were such things.

#43535: — 10/11  at  05:54 PM
"Isn't that kind of like saying a thirty year old could never have been a ten year old, because a ten year old is obviously not thirty?"

I read it more as saying something like I am irreducibly complex because my head, arm, leg or whathave you on its own is not a complete human being.

I may be off base though, because I never read creationist crap - why the hell would I? Why the hell would anyone? I mean, I can understand why PZ does, in the same way I understand why we need sewer workers, but still...

#43536: — 10/11  at  05:56 PM
"At best one can try to imagine what an undesigned object would look like if there were such things."

Buffalo's Kensington Expressway.