#44495: — 10/18  at  02:19 PM

While Michael Behe is testifying in the Dover trial, Ken Miller lectured at Lehigh. I think that means that Behe was not in attendance, unfortunately.

Well the Ken Miller talk at Lehigh was on October 12, and Behe didn't start testifying in Harrisburg until October 16.

#44496: — 10/18  at  02:19 PM
I'm sad to report, that accrodingly to some of my collegues, there was a news segment about Intelleigent Design in the Danish news yesterday. Apparently whoever talked about it seemed not to outragerous, and several people was wondering what ID was. Of course, I explained it to them, and they were rather surprised to hear what it was all about - somehow the person explaining it made it sound much more scientific.

However, I'm happy to say that on the front page of one of the major newspapers today, there was an article explaining why ID is nonsense, and evolution is one of the most well-established scientific theories. It seems that journalists can do their jobs once in a while.

#44497: — 10/18  at  02:23 PM
<a href=http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b3_4miller4oct13,0,3970144.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed">The Morning CAll reports on Miller's talk</a>

Science teachers should refuse to introduce creationism hidden in the form of ''intelligent design,'' Brown University biology professor Ken Miller said Wednesday night at Lehigh University in Bethlehem.
...

#44498: — 10/18  at  02:25 PM
Fixed link to Morning call article

#44502: — 10/18  at  02:34 PM
What I'd like to know is, what if they win? Not this case, but their ultimate objective? What if all of us who are not scientists actually manage to delude ourselves that there is such a thing as an Intelligent Designer? What do we do then? Just nod our academic heads sagely and go about our business?

Somehow I doubt it. I think that their Intelligent Designer will demand (through his Chosen Ones at the Discovery Institute, naturally) to be honored, even worshipped. And he'll bear a strong similarity to the God of the Bible. You think?

#44508: — 10/18  at  02:40 PM
Friends, notice how easily PZ utterly destroyed Behe's testimony in four paragraphs. I hope our attorneys can do at least as fine a job!

Check this out

http://yorkdailyrecord.com/story/doverbiology/90161/

HARRISBURG — Jack Schultz, a retired engineer from York International, believed intelligent design was not a science and that it belonged in philosophy or religion classes until he and his wife, Marion, returned to the U.S. Middle District Court Monday.

"He seems to be making a strong case," Jack Schultz said. "Maybe it seems more scientific than I thought.

"I can't put it all together yet. I still have trouble with the science aspect of it."

Let me say what the fine journalist at the York Daily Record is unwilling so say: Jack Shultz is a hypocritical moron who babbles like an infant.

Let's translate the statements made by Jack "Another Clueless Engineer" Shultz: "That Behe guy uses a lot of big words that I don't understand but he's dressed well and seems sincere so maybe he is the leader of the greatest revolution in history of science in spite of what every other scientists in the world says."

Hey Jack, give me a phone call, 1-800-URA-RUBE. I have formulated a solution based on various factors found in the blood clotting cascade and boosted with flagellar ATPases and some crystals from the banks of the river Jordan that will guarantee you another 20 years on earth, diaper-free! Only $20,000, far cheaper than the typical Americans hospital bills in his/her waning years.

And, yes, in case you wondering, I am wise in appearance, speak in a deep compelling voice, am tenured, and neatly dressed.

Also, I take PayPal.

#44514: — 10/18  at  03:08 PM
Science keeps treating the ID crowd as if there is a rational discourse involved. There is no rational discourse with people who believe an entire constellation of fantastic 'facts' without evidence. We need to say it loudly: "WHAT CAN BE ASSERTED WITHOUT EVIDENCE CAN BE DISMISSED WITHOUT EVIDENCE" (Christopher Hitchens said it). If ID believers cannot get published in anything other than their own in-house journals for true believers, then the argument must be forcefully made that they have yet to present a cogent case for ID. What they call ID is nothing other than a placeholder for their ignorance. This is nothing but the God-of-the-gaps argument dusted off, and their increasing frustration may well spring from a recognition that as the gaps in scientific knowledge get smaller, so does the God-of-the-gaps.

#44516: — 10/18  at  03:15 PM

#44502: speedwell — 10/18 at 02:34 PM
What I'd like to know is, what if they win? Not this case, but their ultimate objective? What if all of us who are not scientists actually manage to delude ourselves that there is such a thing as an Intelligent Designer? What do we do then? Just nod our academic heads sagely and go about our business?

Then Europe finds out what it's like to be on the receiving end of a brain drain.

#44520: — 10/18  at  03:39 PM
What astounds me right out of the box is that you can report anything for the NYT without ever having learned to write:

As Mr. Behe's responses grew increasingly long and arcane, Judge John E. Jones III slumped in his chair.

Where I come from, that would need to be "increasingly longer and more arcane." And any hick newspaper editior ought to know that, much less an editior at the NYT.
Ugh!
But, hey, at least we don't have to deduct even more points for "arcaner."

#44525: — 10/18  at  03:42 PM
Since when was evolutionary theory supposed to "explain the existence" of DNA? You cannot have natural selection without genes, so obviously natural selection is not the process that created the medium for encoding those genes. It's a separate area of research. It makes about as much sense as expecting neuroscience to explain the existence of the human brain.

Granted, I believe that DNA is itself the result of self-organizing processes involving replicating molecules that may have been subject to something analogous to mutation and selective pressure. But not only is that outside the scope of natural selection (certainly outside the scope of Darwin's original work) but as far as I know, it's not covered at all in high school biology and is therefore irrelevant to Kitzmiller. I don't think it's part of biology at all, though many biologists may be interested in understanding it.

Is it common practice to let IDers/creationists get away with conflating evolution and abiogenesis? Both occur, but while evolution is truly the underpinning of biology, which would be impossible to understand without it, the same is not true of abiogenesis. Evolution is evolution whether DNA originated from inorganic compounds on earth, landed here on interstellar spores, or was put here by unknown agents. It seems that you would make a stronger case by narrowing the field to actual biology. Or am I wrong? Maybe it's better to allow IDers to lump in abiogenesis without objection because to do otherwise suggests some lingering need for belief in intentional origin.

#44526: — 10/18  at  03:47 PM

Is it common practice to let IDers/creationists get away with conflating evolution and abiogenesis?

No, but it is common for creationists to attempt that conflation.

#44534: — 10/18  at  04:04 PM
A question for academics/academics-in-training, admittedly slightly OT:

Then Europe finds out what it's like to be on the receiving end of a brain drain.

How likely do we find the possibility of a brain drain? Does anyone have any thoughts about how easily the academic community in the states might be pushed over the edge? I'm curious because I consider the possibility a genuine likelihood, but only from reflecting on my own opinions-- in a few years time, if/when I hit the job market, if the political situation is still as bad as it is or worse, I would up my consideration of jobs overseas (not to say that those jobs would be intrinsically appealing-- the U.S. still does, by my estimation, have the best university system extant, and by a considerable margin, but who knows where we'll be if certain anti-academic movements are allowed traction). So... do we think the smart folks would leave if the neocons or IDers or whoever put more clamps on our (public) universities?

Just curious if anyone had any thoughts.

#44542: — 10/18  at  04:35 PM
However, Mr. Behe, a Roman Catholic, was asked whether he had concluded that "the designer is God." He said yes, but added that his conclusion was not based on science.

Am I the only one to find this statement terribly significant? Hasn't Behe just shafted the defense team?

#44551: — 10/18  at  05:24 PM
Andy -- Behe's statement could be used to shaft the defense by asking him two follow up questions: (1) on a scale of 1 to 100, how confident are you in that conclusion that life on earth did not evolve naturally but was "intelligently designed" by God? (2) when did you arrive at this confidence level in your conclusion that God "intelligently" designed life on earth?

A clever attorney would first get Behe to admit that his "scientific" studies on the flagella etc were conducted at Time A (that information has probably already been established).

Then the answer to question (2) is used to show that Behe had assumed his conclusion that life could not have evolved naturally before doing any of his "calculations" to support that conclusion.

From there, it's trivial to show that Behe is just a charlatan. These questions would be great:

Is there any evidence for aliens that visited earth that could have designed all of the irreducibly complex subcellular components that ever existed on earth? (Answer: NO)

Do you believe that God exists? (Answer: YES)

So if the alternative is God or mysterious alien beings, for which you have no supporting evidence, then which is more likely in your expert opinion?

Is the existence of a bacterial flagella scientific evidence that God exists? (If Behe answers YES, then ask him if he believes that he's scientifically proven the existence of God or ask him if it's the Christian God or some other God; if Behe answers NO, then ask him why not?)

I'd love to be deposing Behe. That little whiner would be begging for mercy by the time I was through with him.

Trackback: Local Reporting of Behe's Dover Testimony Tracked on: Abnormal Interests (64.81.36.251) at 2005 10 18 17:48:28
While driving home from work this afternoon (yes, I so work on occasion), I heard a report on the Dover trial on my local all news radio station, KFWB . Here is what the reporter read. A biochemistry professor who...

#44560: — 10/18  at  06:13 PM
More fun from teh York Daily Record:

Dover’s attorney, Robert Muise, asked Behe about methodological naturalism, the element of the scientific method that limits study to natural causes.

Behe said it “hobbles” scientific inquiry

Methodological naturalism IS the scientific method. For Behe to say it hobbles inquiry is just pathetic.

#44574: — 10/18  at  07:32 PM

Since when was evolutionary theory supposed to "explain the existence" of DNA?

Haven't you seen the ID talking points? If evolution doesn't explain everything, then it doesn't explain anything. Each and every miniscule step along the way from the first appearance of matter in the universe to the fact of my typing these words right now MUST be accounted for by evolutionary theory, or it's useless.

It's worse than Zeno's friggin' paradox with these guys. I swear, the only way you'd ever get them to accept the existence of transitional fossils is if you were able to find a sufficiently detailed sequence of fossil prints such that you could photograph them, display the photos at sixty frames a second, and make a movie of a couple of archosaurs humping, laying eggs, growing up, humping, laying eggs, and so forth until you had a bunch of T. rexes.

On a related note, Zeno's paradox can be a fun thing to throw at someone who denies the existence of transitional fossils, because you can get them to a place where their inconsistent standards of evidence become clear to everyone. They believe motion is possible - obviously - but no gradation of transition in fossil specimens is ever sufficient to satisfy them. Most creationists don't know enough differential calculus to deal with Zeno - I sure don't!

#44580: — 10/18  at  08:28 PM

Haven't you seen the ID talking points? If evolution doesn't explain everything, then it doesn't explain anything.

This brings up another peeve of mind. What sort of miracle caused these guys to reject vitalism? I mean, they seem comfortable (IDers especially) talking about living things as machines, and yet biology has only so far scratched the surface of how these alleged "machines" operate. That such complicated mechanisms work at all strikes me as far more surprising than evolution.

For instance, I don't really have that much trouble imagining how humans and chimps could share a recent ancestor. Chimps are an awful lot like us and vice versa. The difference (maybe with the exception of language) seems more a matter of degree than kind. Chimps have faces with readable emotions the way, say, starfish don't, and their group dynamics are a lot like that of humans too.

But how in the name of flying spaghetti can you get from one tiny, squishy little cell to an elephant complete with thick rough skin and ivory tusks? You can tell me there is a tiny "blueprint" in that cell in the form of DNA, but I don't see any blueprint let alone an elephant. It's just a random-looking chain of nucleotides. And then you tell me what this blueprint does is encode for different proteins, that fold up in all different ways--none of which, I might add, is shaped like an elephant. And now, I sort of see how the squishy little cell can grow into some kind of batch of protein soup. But an elephant? No way! And ivory is not even a protein for crying out loud. Isn't this really stronger evidence for some kind of... I dunno... elephant spirit that at least knows what an elephant looks like, knows how to make ivory, and tells the cells how to grow into the shape of an elephant?

In short, why do these guys reserve their incredulity for origins questions? There are plenty of incredible phenomena not fully explained yet.

OK, back to earth here, I think know why. They're not stupid enough to stand in the way of a juggernaut. Any vitalism-based objection they could raise would likely as not be crushed in the lab before they opened their mouths. But evolution, to the extent that it relies on the fossil record, leaves them more wiggle room. Some of the evidence we'd love to have is hard to find and perhaps lost forever. It seems to me that they're basically cowards, going at science in places where science is at the mercy of erosion and decay.

I also think that those who argue ceaselessly against the ID/creationist camp could maybe take a day off once a year to celebrate the genuine progress and acknowledge that there are no vitalists left anymore. Hooray! ID or not, almost every educated person (including Behe and Dembski) has already embraced "philosophical naturalism" with the exception of a few issues to iron out.

#44581: — 10/18  at  08:46 PM
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars is saying the cross-ex of Behe was a disaster for Behe...no details though.

#44586: — 10/18  at  09:13 PM
Ow, my brain. Last week it had to try to digest the concept of evolution (or anything for that matter being "metaphysically impossible," and now it has to try to wrap itself around the idea of "theological and philosophical facts."

Trackback: Like peas in pod Tracked on: Buridan's Ass (66.235.212.128) at 2005 10 18 21:21:07
Unfortunately the Dover trial is just one of those things that the media can't get enough of. It makes for great drama, especially when it involves "your average folk just wanting to let their children have the chance to explore...

#44627: — 10/19  at  08:48 AM
Mike Argento on a roll

HARRISBURG — Dr. Michael Behe, leading intellectual light of the intelligent design movement, faced a dilemma.

In order to call intelligent design a "scientific theory," he had to change the definition of the term.
...
So, as we learned Tuesday, during Day 11 of the Dover Panda Trial, under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would be a scientific theory.
...

#44630: — 10/19  at  08:57 AM
York Daily Record article on Behe's cross-examination

In his writings supporting intelligent design, Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemistry professor and author of "Darwin's Black Box," said that "intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on proposed mechanisms of how complex biological structures arose."

But during cross examination Tuesday, when plaintiffs' attorney Eric Rothschild asked Behe to identify those mechanisms, he couldn't.

When pressed, Behe said intelligent design does not propose a step-by-step mechanism, but one can still infer intelligent cause was involved by the "purposeful arrangement of parts."
...
After Behe could not identify intelligent design's mechanism for change, Rothschild asked him if intelligent design then isn't just a negative argument against natural selection.

Behe disagreed, reiterating his statement that intelligent design is the purposeful arrangement of parts.
...
Earlier in the day, Behe had said under direct testimony that a creationist doesn't need any physical evidence to understand life's origins.

So creationism is "vastly 180 degrees different from intelligent design," he said.

Hmmm, but he can't present any evidence.

#44697: — 10/19  at  01:13 PM
Paul Callahan wrote:
" What sort of miracle caused these guys to reject vitalism? ... I think know why. They're not stupid enough to stand in the way of a juggernaut. Any vitalism-based objection they could raise would likely as not be crushed in the lab before they opened their mouths."

But do they reject vitalism? Have they actually come right out and agreed that there is no "life force" or "bioenergetic field?" Do fundamentalist Christians reject vitalism? Does the general public?

From what I have seen and read, the victory dance over the corpse of vitalism is very premature. Sure, it's dead in the lab and among scientists. So what?

Alternative medicine, feng shui, astrology, energy healing, the power of prayer, ESP, paranormal events, even the belief in disembodied ghosts and souls all rest firmly in the idea that living energy is a *thing* with conscious causal power. What, after all, is God, if not some sort of Intelligent Life Force?

It would seem that Intelligent Design is tied up with vitalism, once you get to thinking vaguely about mechanism. Try asking theists if God might be a "higher kind of energy." More often than not, there is a pause and tentative agreement or puzzled uncertainty. Sounds plausible.

In fact, far from being conquered, I would guess that the average person in the US today holds to some form of belief in vitalism -- and this goes for most of the rest of the world. Once they manage to get ID in the schools, vitalism is just around the corner. The Spiritual Left already wants to get vitalistic practices like Therapeutic Touch and Homeopathy into medical schools and hospitals, and has succeeded to an alarming extent. Like ID, vitalism has a lot of scientific-sounding "experiments" and "findings" supporting it. Imo, the average person probably thinks it is either already part of mainstream science, or kept out by a bunch of narrow-minded self-appointed defenders of the orthodoxy in the form of a hegemonic cabal of materialist scientists.

#44700: — 10/19  at  01:34 PM
I think you are right about vitalism, Sastram, except that it isn't totally dead among scientists.

See, for example, the preaching of Martin Lockley ('The Eternal Trail') which combines (what appears to this amateur) acceptable paleontology and Sheldrakian kookiness.

He's a tenured professor, too.

T.W., see David Heenan's new book, 'Flight Capital.'

He documents a considerable reverse brain drain, not apparently connected to Bushitlerism but to economic opportunities improving in the native countries of U.S. researchers.

This alone could be significant if, as Heenan reports, 15% of U.S. researchers in biosciences are from India.

Heenan is interested solely in economic development and does not have anything to say about whether politics would accelerate a reverse brain drain he already identifies as a serious threat to American intellectual prominence.

#44750: — 10/19  at  05:40 PM

But do they reject vitalism? Have they actually come right out and agreed that there is no "life force" or "bioenergetic field?" Do fundamentalist Christians reject vitalism? Does the general public?

Agreed. But ID is pretty heavily invested in not being vitalism, what with the whole "the flagellum is a tiny outboard motor" business. Who knows what they really believe, but it is still worth reminding them that by their own admission they've already conceded most of the territory to "philosophical naturalism."

Honestly, they'd do better if they stuck with the planted dinosaur bones. Even a God who'd play a nasty trick like that has more cultural resonance than an "anonymous designer" best known for putting propellers on the backside of bacteria.

#46247: arensb — 10/31  at  12:09 PM
The article also says,

Teaching of "intelligent design" is not bringing the Bible or the Koran into the classroom because it does not name the creator, Tomasacci said.

That ranks up there with "Karl Rove didn't break the law because he didn't give Valerie Plame's name. He just said ``Joe Wilson's wife''."

#47262: — 11/05  at  12:30 PM
Might be a good site for you guys to read and think about:
http://www.answersingenesis.org

And the most important thing that the God who designed and created the same earth that you live on, that God died for YOU becouse He love you so much. Did anybody die for you recently? Would your best friend do that for you? Maybe!
Other thing: did you know KEpler, Newton, Galilei believed in the God of the Bible? THE BIG SCIENTISTS, who layed the foundation of modern phisics. Oh, btw they know God of the Bile before they know science. They were not religious either... anyhow... evolution theory try to tell us we aer an accident without any purpose in life... God created us on purpose... and only one of them is ture. Doesnt' matter wich one you pick reality won't change if you pick the wrong one you will be dead forever does that sound hars? maybe. but life is not a playground
have a nice day

#47264: — 11/05  at  12:48 PM
pirgi - what makes you believe that we don't know of that site? Many, probably most, of us have looked through their articles, and at best they can be said to be uninformed.

Evolution doesn't deal with the why of mankind (or any other races), but rather how. Religion deals with the why. Quite a few relious people believes in evolution. Kepler, Newton and Galilei were probably all relious people, but they were scientists foremost, so I think it can safely be assumed that they wouldn't disregard the evidence, and turn to a literate reading of the Bible to provide the answers. Galilei actually proved that he wouldn't choose that route.

Oh, and your reference to Pascal's wager doesn't impress us much either - we have heard it all before

#47304: arensb — 11/05  at  08:11 PM

God of the Bile

Pharyngula doesn't have Chez Watts, does it? If not, I nominate this for Typo O' the Week.