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Friday, May 27, 2005

Michael Behe: malignant metastasizing metaphors!

What is wrong with Behe? This interview in the Christian Post contains one of the most illogical, stupid, idiotic excuses for the Intelligent Design hypothesis I've read yet. The writer asks a simple question, one I'd like to see answered by the IDists, but Behe's answer is simply pathetic.

Do you see ID having enough evidence?

Yes, I certainly do. Well, I am a biochemist and biochemistry studies molecular basis of life. And in the past 50 years, science has discovered that at the very foundation of life there are sophisticated molecular machines, which do the work in the cell. I mean, literally, there are real machines inside everybody’s cells and this is what they are called by all biologists who work in the field, molecular machines. They’re little trucks and busses that run around the cell that takes supplies from one end of the cell to the other. They’re little traffic signals to regulate the flow. They’re sign posts to tell them when they get to the right destination. They’re little outboard motors that allow some cells to swim. If you look at the parts of these, they’re remarkably like the machineries that we use in our everyday world.

The argument is that we know from experience that machinery in our everyday world that we use in our everyday world required design, required an intelligent agent that put it together, who understood how it was going to be used and who assembled the parts. By an inductive argument, when we find such sophisticated machinery in other places too, we can conclude that it also requires design. So now that we found it in life and in the very foundation of life, I and other ID advocates argue that there is no reason to not reach the same conclusion and that in fact, these things were indeed designed.

Seriously. This is the best the man can do? He's asked for the evidence, and what does he give us? Irrelevant word games ("scientists call 'em 'machines'!"), and asinine metaphors. Calling cytoskeletal transport proteins "trucks and busses" does not make them so. If I call Michael Behe bird-brained, it does not mean I think he has feathers and can fly; it especially does not mean he should jump off a tall building, confident in his avian abilities.

And no, if you look closely at them, they are nothing like the machineries with which we are familiar. When scientists call them machines and pumps and signals and motors, they are making broad but severely limited analogies in order to communicate their function to other human beings who are familiar with machines and pumps and signals and motors. They are not trying to imply that Ford has the contract to manufacture annexins for the phylum Chordata, or that there are little winking green, yellow, and red lights in the cell. Most importantly, there is no intent to imply designers.

One other interesting omission in the article: nowhere does Behe even mention "irreducible complexity". I guess that's one concept the IDiots have learned belongs on the junkheap, yet it's the one thing that made Behe famous.


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Comments:
#26378: — 05/27  at  05:19 PM
their "ultimate" (i.e. current) function
The end of the world is nigh!

Are you seriously saying we were meant to have a bunch of broken genes, eg vit.C, and that that is evidence of intelligent (and furthermore an "end") design and possibly (although they often try not to say it) of a benevolent sky fairy? It's a little like that StarTrek NT episode where they collect special snippets of genetic code from various alien planets and ... contact the designer via recording. The Enterprise crew had more genuine reason (within the programme reality!) to go looking than the IDers.

Meanwhile, the amount of "junk" tolerated does depend a bit on the scale of the cell and life-form. Viruses won't put up with much at all (though you can always claim they don't count). Nor do bacteria carry much on the whole (counter-examples welcome). Can we deduce a size of the original protocell from this and see traces of it littering genetic info down the lineages (ie test the notion of devolution against reality)?



#26379: murky — 05/27  at  05:24 PM
"Are you seriously saying..."

No, you seem to have misread me.



#26383: — 05/27  at  05:53 PM
Righty-ho. The most likely version being that you're not seriously saying it ... but suggesting someone else might be. Yet the counter-arguments still stand - which is why the original assertion (if I can follow back that far again!) actually stands a good survival-of-the-fittest chance of flying. The other possibilities eliminate themselves in the face of the evidence.



#26385: murky — 05/27  at  06:07 PM
I don't think I'm supposing anything about junk tolerance. I'm saying the modern genes were rarely if ever junk. They had other purposes and/or hadn't been given birth to yet via gene duplication and/or weird recombination events.



#26389: — 05/27  at  06:17 PM
murky: No they wouldn't.
...
PZ: Yeah, the fact that we carry a huge load of garbage DNA right now says that it wouldn't make a difference. However, the fact that this junk is freely mutable and accumulates variation at a rapid clip does say that any secret functional codes would not survive.
...
murky: i.e. I'm disallowing or raising a red flag on the "non-adaptive" assumption that was entangled in the poster's point.
...

'We' carry a huge load of garbage, but 'we' are complex multicellular eukaryotes. How many genes does a typical bacterium have? How many genes does a typical mammal have? How much 'junk DNA' does a typical bacterium tolerate?

Have either of you ever run a chemostat competition experiment?

Have either of you done enough genetic engineering to know that if you want your plasmid to stay in a bacterium, and you can't select for retention of the gene of interest, you have to load it with selectable essentials like antibiotic resistance genes? And that's for a week-long experiment, not 3+ billion years.



#26391: — 05/27  at  06:20 PM
BTW, if you want to qualify for your own nonadaptive suffix load, sign up as a Friend of Charles Darwin:

http://www.gruts.com/darwin/

http://www.gruts.com/darwin/join-form.php



#26392: — 05/27  at  06:23 PM
I see PZM is already on the list as FCD #260. Any relation to Gordon Myers, FCD #264?


http://www.gruts.com/darwin/friends/0251-0300.htm



#26393: — 05/27  at  06:31 PM
If you are allowing gene duplication as well as single point mutations then the idea/claim that all the information is already there in code form is rather dubious. That's also very different from the usual really-all-there-to-start-with claim of "fall" proponents, which would require massive initial cells (and traceability).

It also becomes indistinguishable from evolution and not useful as a separate concept unless you can deduce something from it which you then test, eg about the coder (or the previous and following steps) from the code without just letting it play out. You might have problems with the size of the universe (and Godel) for that one.

God of chinese whispers 1 sets things in motion knowing something will happen but not caring/determining what. He just likes playing the game of life on his universe computer. He seems to be indistinguishable from natural processes evolution and theistic evolution. He can't even be said to favour humans (which is what the religious want out of him).

God of chinese whispers 2 is omnipotent. He knows how to set the game up for an outcome. Yet this too is useless unless we can identify that outcome from the concept itself - tends to be obvious with a real solvable code or a book (eg the killer unmasked). Relying instead on a set of fairy stories, dreams/nightmares and drug or epilepsy induced delusions for that end point is not doing science. There's still no evidence-based indication of benevolence for example either.



#26399: murky — 05/27  at  07:20 PM
SEF: Do you think I doubt common descent? I don't.

BB: I don't see how your latest points are pertinent.



#26402: — 05/27  at  08:18 PM
"However, the fact that this junk is freely mutable and accumulates variation at a rapid clip does say that any secret functional codes would not survive."

Unless they're double-secret codes that even random variation could not detect! My formidable logic is, of course, impenetrable. Even your vaunted but feeble biological knowledge cannot hope to cloud this crystal-clear vision of truth held in the center of my mind.

May the chainsaw of enlightenment someday cut through the bonds of materialism that entrap you.



#26405: Duncan Kitchin — 05/27  at  09:46 PM
Charlie quotes Behe as saying:

"an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly…by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition non-functional"

and then points out how it might be disproved:

"All the detractors had to do was to show that even if a part is removed some function, perhaps a different function, still remains and that there can be a workable but simpler form of the system."

...but I don't think that is the fatal flaw. The fatal flaw in Behe's argument is the assumption that the stepwise precursor to what he describes as "irreducibly complex" must necessarily be that system with something removed.

By Behe's definition of IC, a stepwise precursor system could easily contain all of the components of the IC system plus something else, and still be functional. By definition, such a precursor system is not irreducibly complex, since there is something which can be removed whilst still leaving it functional.

Hence, it is shown that an IC system necessarily has an infinite number of stepwise precursors which are not themselves IC, and Behe's statement is demonstrably wrong.

Actually, I think Behe's underlying assumption that any system built stepwise must necessarily be arrived at in a straight line, blind alley-free way is bizarre.

Regards
Duncan



's avatar #26406: moioci — 05/27  at  10:41 PM
"By an inductive argument, when we find such sophisticated machinery in other places too, we can conclude that it also requires design."

Maybe you guys would finally understand, if I could just clarify this inductive argument somehow....

I know. It goes something like this:

Endor is a planet. There are trucks and busses on Endor. But Endor is populated by Ewoks! That does not make sense. There are little outboard motors that allow Ewoks to swim. But Ewoks are extremely hydrophobic!* That too does not make sense. On Endor, there are little traffic signals and signposts to regulate the flow of traffic. But Ewoks have tiny little eyes! That, too, I submit, does not make sense. You notice I have not yet mentioned Chewbacca? You got it; no sense AT ALL. Therefore, there must be a Designer.

*Rabid or lipid-rich -- I report, you deride.



#26407: — 05/27  at  11:28 PM
Charlie's so stupid it makes my brain hurt. If anyone comes up with a firefox extension which will strip or somehow obscure charlie wagner's comments, please let me know. It would save me from having to see, in my peripheral vision, several million words of blather about his hand waving Nelson's Law retardity, over the next few years of reading science websites.

Charlie, for your own sake, don't waste the last few years of your life raving like an idiot. Do something productive. Nobody's ever going to believe your hand-waving garbage. You just look like a stupid crank.



#26408: — 05/28  at  12:01 AM
To murky: No - especially since the scenarios under discussion were all common descent ones! What I do think is that you were trying to suggest certain alternatives were viable without following through on them. Their lack of viability is one of the things which makes the assertion that you said wouldn't fly actually be the thing left flying. It being right in itself of course helps. That's why I don't believe you have the agreement you expect in post #24.

If you were saying something else then I missed it. Going back through: #15 looks like standard sarcasm and not part of this point anyway; #21 is the relevant start (I agree with the original remark and not your negation though we could quibble over the precise meaning of "tremendous") and seems to lack sufficient additional absurdity to qualify as sarcasm; #24 can't be sarcasm unless #21 was - and #25 makes that even less likely.



#26413: — 05/28  at  08:46 AM
murky:
BB: I don't see how your latest points are pertinent.

I fail to understand your objections, so I will drop the line of discussion unless/until you can make your meaning clear to me.

SEF:
To murky: No - especially since the scenarios under discussion were all common descent ones!

I consider common descent to be firmly established by all available evidence, including the fossil record and genetic relationships. The question under discussion, I thought, was front-loading as opposed to natural selection. If Mr. Wagner has evidence contrary to both common descent AND natural selection, he should present it.

Going off on a tangent, the publisher of Of Pandas and People wishes to involve themselves in the legal wranglings in Dover, PA.:
http://www.thewgalchannel.com/learningmatters/4526413/detail.html
Great news. I've read the book. The book sucks badly. The choice of book does not work in favor of the Creationist school board members. I hope they go over the section of the book on genetic evidence for homology in depth, because it is based in its entirety on a misunderstanding of the standard evolutionary interpretation of that evidence. (i.e. that evolution claims a ladder instead of a branched tree.)



#26414: — 05/28  at  08:47 AM
If you were saying something else then I missed it. Going back through: #15 looks like standard sarcasm and not part of this point anyway; #21 is the relevant start (I agree with the original remark and not your negation though we could quibble over the precise meaning of "tremendous") and seems to lack sufficient additional absurdity to qualify as sarcasm; #24 can't be sarcasm unless #21 was - and #25 makes that even less likely.

It occurs to me that we may be trying too hard. Perhaps murky is just living up to his name.



#26418: — 05/28  at  09:10 AM
These "toolkit genes" and genetic switches have been around since the beginning. They didn't evolve, couldn't evolve. They came to earth already programmed and ready to unfold their coded information.


Hey, it's the homunculus again!



#26420: murky — 05/28  at  09:57 AM
SEF: I didn't realize there are people who accept "common descent" but don't accept the whole modern synthesis picture that I believe all biological systematists and essentially all biologists of all stripes embrace. Sorry to have been unclear. I do still think PZ and I agree as I said (sincerely) in #24. Perhaps he'll chime in about this eventually.

BB: I too feel I am trying to hard and will leave it to others decide whether there's anything here actually worth disputing and whether any of us has adequately disputed it, but I'll be keeping my flag raised right where I raised it.



#26424: murky — 05/28  at  10:19 AM
SEF: No, #15 was not standard sarcasm. I was being flip and trying to be amusing (otherwise, what makes life worth living?) but foremostly I was making a deep point. You don't have to go down to the "quantum" scale to observe probabilistic behavior. That's one source of the "counterintuitivity" of phenomena at the nano scale. Proteins are "nano," as so they aren't predictable in the way that the liquid in a glass of water is predictable, but more like an individual H2O is predictable--which is to say not at all, except on average. If you were in the driver's seat of a water molecule, you wouldn't like that aspect and you'd probably be reluctant to liken your vehicle to a car.



#26426: murky — 05/28  at  10:30 AM
emphasis on "more like". The water analogy suggests an error rate of 100%, but enzymes like DNA polymerase are--regarding the operation on which we have our eyes peeled--are very predictable. Just not predictable enough to avoid bancruptcy in the case of high award lawsuits (I'm talking about the core enzyme, not the holo enzyme and error rate when you factor in correction and the like). Driving DNA polymerase would be unnerving as well, because the whole thing would rattle ("breathe") and you'd never know exactly when a cylinder (e.g. hydrolysis of ATP) would fire.



#26429: murky — 05/28  at  10:36 AM
Actually, this just reinforces the irrationality and/or slyness of Behe's argument, because as a biochemist and ought to appreciate that this fundamental difference between the macro and nano worlds fractures his analogy.



#26430: murky — 05/28  at  10:39 AM
i.e. Behe is like a physicist telling you a gluon is like a softball that two quarks or other particles toss back and forth, and acting like he really believes it's true.



#26453: Don S — 05/28  at  12:09 PM

Charlie W:
"The mousetrap is unevolvable by random, non-directed, accidental processes...This type of organization is not obtainable without insight, and insight always requires intelligence. There is no way that these parts could be assembled in such a manner without insight."


(Emphasis added by me.)

Charlie's (and ID's) ENTIRE argument rests on the There is no way... mantra of intuitive denial. The massive ID house of cards is built on insisting that what apparently happened over 4 billion years couldn't have actually happened. "There's no way." How much research did that take, gathering all that evidence for the "There's no way" model? More to the point, how can any of you insist you support good objective science when you have presupposed that "There's no way..."?

Science is about "How?" while ID is about "There's no way...."

"There is no way" OJ killed two people in 5 minutes. "There is no way" Lee Harvey Oswald could have hit the President twice from 300 yards. "There is no way" 1960's technology got us to the moon and back. "There is no way" my little Johnny pulled a gun on that cop.

"There is no way..." is truly the most ridiculous argument against an event or process, ever, and yet it is the only argument ID has.

"There is no way that these parts could be assembled in such a manner without insight."

Brilliant.


Still Charlie:
"No offense but the controversy is over."

No offense, but "the controversy" never existed in the first place. It is ID's creation, if you'll excuse the term.



#26461: — 05/28  at  01:30 PM
Masers are also the result of intelligent design. We know this thanks to Behe:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001077.html#c32568



#26462: — 05/28  at  01:30 PM
I should have said "stellar masers", not just "masers"



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