PZ Myers. 2005 Sep 30. Behe tonight. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/behe_tonight/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, September 30, 2005

Behe tonight

With a weary heart, I shall be trudging back to Minneapolis this evening. Not for anything pleasant or fun or exciting, mind you, but to hear Michael Behe piss out some more shameful ignorance at the Maclaurin Institute. His lecture is titled "Toward an Intelligent Understanding of the Intelligent Design Hypothesis", and I suspect it will be the same dreary dreck he always drones about.

Having thus stirred everyone's enthusiasm for attending, it's at 7:00PM, in the Tate Laboratory of Physics, Room 150, University of Minnesota East Bank campus. Look for me if you're going—maybe we can clump together and form the groaning and eye rolling section. Since it's sponsored by the mindless MacLaurin Institute, I think we might be a tiny drop of disgusted, exasperated reason in a sea of irrationality.

I'm doing a terrible job of rousing up any avidity for this event, aren't I?

Posted by PZ Myers on 09/30 at 07:59 AM
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  1. Doesn't he ever give a seminar on, you know, his actual biochemistry research in whatever his field of expertise is supposed to be? Or has he long since given up doing any?
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:11 AM
  2. Interesting - I'll try to attend as I haven't seen a IDer rave on in person and I work downtown Minneapolis so I'm not too far from the campus.
    #: Posted by Jason Bock  on  09/30  at  08:20 AM
  3. I just checked out their last speaker, Jeff Polet. How disgusting! I hope you don't get stoned (in the Biblical sense).

    And Behe hasn't published on DNA structure since the late 90's. I don't think he was ever considered anything more than a welterweight in his field.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:21 AM
  4. Here's something far more interesting out of Wisconsin today:

    Brain disconnects during deep sleep, UW study says
    (http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/sep05/359643.asp)

    Madison - As we slip into deep sleep, higher regions of our brains take a vacation from each other, disconnecting so much that consciousness is snuffed out and a once highly integrated organ becomes separated, according to a groundbreaking experiment by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. ...
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:29 AM
  5. Since you won't be attending alone I suggest the best way to survive the inane dribble would be to prepare some three by five cards before hand to spring on your friends at inappropriate moments. Then you can enjoy watching your friends' faces contort as they try not to burst out laughing in the middle of the talk. A few cards you might prepare could be:

    If humans invented business, why is there still monkey business?

    What about dwarfs and midgets?

    I'm very intelligently designed. That's why my earwax tastes so good.

    When someone dies, what happens to all the little workers in the little factories in their cells?

    And just because it was done in the movie Wayne's World it doesn't mean it's okay to write a card that says: This man has no penis.
    #: Posted by Ronald Brak  on  09/30  at  08:38 AM
  6. Eva and I are planning to attend tonight. We met earlier in the week and I lent her my copy of Darwin's Black Box. I will remind my better half to remind me to pack the homebrew I owe you before I head out tonight.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:47 AM
  7. When someone dies, what happens to all the little workers in the little factories in their cells?

    Hahahahahaha, that's gold.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:48 AM
  8. You should bring fliers with all of Behe's arguments listed (since you know what they are going to be) and refuted with cited evidence and hand them out to the audience before the talk. That would be funny.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:49 AM
  9. Here's something far more interesting out of Wisconsin today: (article on consciousness)

    Holy crap. That is great stuff. Go go neurobiology!
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:50 AM
  10. PZ, do you think you'll have a chance to question Behe? If so, you should be able to ask him a tough question and, of course, have the answer and citations at hand; don't let him off the hook with the Dembski answer: "I think I addressed that question in my book. Next question."

    We look forward to a FULL report!

    (haha, the secret word was "promoter". must have dropped the "self-")
    #: Posted by bill  on  09/30  at  08:59 AM
  11. Proposed: <b> Intelligent Design does not necessarily imply a deity.<b>

    Terran biota could have been designed by intelligent non-terran entities, such as aliens from other planets, other "dimensions", or from right here on Earth but who are no longer with us or remain hidden.

    That prompts the question (goddamnit it doesn't beg the question, everybody stop saying that right now): how did the intelligent designers come to be? Either they too were designed and you just push the issue back one causal level, or they arose by some non-intelligent natural process like evolution.

    Conclusion: ID theory does not necessarily require a deity to explain the origin of life and speciation on Earth. But it does require either a) evolution of intelligent (and I mean <i>really<> intelligent) agents from non-supernatural milieus, or b) some Being which simply always was and is equipped with that level of biological know-how as well as the means to move molecules around with supernatural powers, or c) perhaps most interestingly, a supernatural Being which arose via non-intelligent naturalistic processes like evolution (that last one is kind of fun to contemplate).

    It's Friday and I'm bustin' the freestyle.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:09 AM
  12. PZ, keep us updated on it. You really should ask some good questions, since most of the people in the audience are probaly faculty or students, who can spot out possible lies.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:11 AM
  13. "the same dreary dreck he always drones about"
    Love the alliteration. If I lived anywhere near Minneapolis, I would go to the seminar just to hear more of that.

    As for the neurobiology article, most interesting! I wish I understood more of it, but what are you going to do?
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:16 AM
  14. And they mention IU! Sweet!
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:20 AM
  15. Think you got it bad? You should have seen yesterday's AbramsReport on MSGOP when po' ol' "Book 'Em Danno" Abrams was tryin' to ride herd on that Meyer putz from the "Discovery" Institute. Danno must not have kids. Otherwise, if he'd ever had any experience with 5-year olds, he'd been better able to deal with Meyer. However, given "Book 'Em" Danno's typical, daily on-air behaviour and 'tudes, he kinda deserved it in a way.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:40 AM
  16. I found your title and lack of enthusiasm bizarrely amusing. In the UK, there's an advert for a product which I think from the jingle must be called "Chicken Tonight" (though I've not paid enough attention to know for sure). So I was reading your post and thinking (complete with musical accompaniment): "I feel like Behe Tonight, Behe Tonight!". Go eat him alive, PZ. :-D
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  09:43 AM
  17. I wish I could go, not just to witness it first-hand, but because I really miss the Twin Cities.
    #: Posted by MAJeff  on  09/30  at  09:53 AM
  18. Friday's Badger writes:
    Terran biota could have been designed by intelligent non-terran entities, such as aliens from other planets, other "dimensions", or from right here on Earth but who are no longer with us or remain hidden.

    First off, let me just say, "Nice handle," in that it is Friday, and my wife will be dressing as Badger tonight when we go see Serenity. But as to your comment...

    This is actually a possible scientific form of ID. If we find some organ or system or genetic structure that doesn't fit with the rest of evolution, it would not be absurd to propose that it was engineered by some other species whom we can't currently identify.

    If, for instance, giraffes had the singular ability to breathe fire, an ability whose development was controlled by a set of genes none of which was even remotely related to any other known genes, it would make sense to ask if those genes were inserted and giraffes are in fact the result of some alien experiment.

    This, while difficult to examine in detail, would still be a hypothesis subject to scientific inquiry. Look at the genes, look at the proteins, look at the fossils and the selection pressures, and see if there's any way the giraffe could have evolved the ability to breathe fire. If not, there's nothing inherently wrong with hypothesizing "the aliens evolved naturally, but fire-breathing giraffes didn't," if there's genetic and/or fossil evidence for such a thing.

    Course there isn't, and that ain't what the IDists are proposing. But if it were, that'd be awesome.
    #: Posted by Johnny Vector  on  09/30  at  10:30 AM
  19. In the UK, there's an advert for a product which I think from the jingle must be called "Chicken Tonight" (though I've not paid enough attention to know for sure).

    That ad is *still* running over there? We first saw that ad campaign about 20 years ago here in the US - but like you, I can't remember the product it was advertising.
    #: Posted by spencer  on  09/30  at  10:45 AM
  20. Ew. Thanks for reminding me, SEF... over here, we had to put up with a Swenglish version of the Chicken jingle which blatantly eliminated any and all implied meaning, because the name of the product was still the same. I bet that doubled its brain sticking power. Gah.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  10:59 AM
  21. What I can't understand is the fact that it actually happens at the physics department. How come that they invite Behe and his ID into the UM? To me it just looks like Behe has a friend there, and to the general public it looks like the physics department and the university support ID (or at least give it scientific support). That's just wrong.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  11:23 AM
  22. What I find interesting is the use of the term "hypothesis" in the title of Behe's talk. That's the first time I've seen that term used in that context. Normally (in the Discovery Institute's lexicon, at least) it's intelligent design "theory".

    RBH
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:28 PM
  23. Joergen:

    This is NOT a University of Minnesota Physics Dept. event. Any properly registered student group or organization can reserve any classroom or lecture hall that is not, on the given day and time, being used for a class.

    We in physics frequently have Young Repugs or Christian Rock groups reserving our lecture halls in the evening. The Physics building is centrally located, and the rooms are large without being cavernous. The reservation is handled by the Central Adminstration Room Scheduling people, and Physics has nothing to do with it.

    For example, my dept. did not know that the University of Minnesota Bookstore had reserved room 150 for Thursday Oct. 13th from 7 - 10 PM for my public lecture on THE PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES folowed by a signing of my book by the same name, published by Gotham Books (!) and now available everywhere.

    [Who says this isn't the Marvel Age of shameless plugs?]

    Face front, true believers! (and to what, exactly, I am a true beliver in, I would say, only three things: Truth, Justice and the American Way!)
    #: Posted by Jim Kakalios  on  09/30  at  12:34 PM
  24. I think I'll go to this as well. I don't know how much Behe talks about stuff I may not understand, but I just want to see what it's like and see how much BS I can detect. It could just be a good experience overall too. *shrug*
    #: Posted by Kele  on  09/30  at  01:26 PM
  25. "...and to what, exactly, I am a true beliver in, I would say, only three things: Truth, Justice and the American Way!"

    And Science. Four things: Truth, Justice, the American Way, Science, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Uh, amongst the things in which I truly believe are...
    #: Posted by moioci  on  09/30  at  02:23 PM
  26. The McLaurin Institute, as in the link:
    The Institute currently sponsors 15 to 20 lectures and one or two conferences each year, all dedicated to advancing our mission of bringing God into the marketplace of ideas.

    ...and ID is science and has nothing to do with promoting religion how?
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  02:43 PM
  27. OME! (Oh, my evolution!) I'm so glad you're going, because I am, and I love your website!
    When I read about this gobble, I thought to myself, "I wish Prof. Myers could be there. Maybe I should check his websi...!!!" smile
    I hope to turn this dreck into an article. (About how ID is dreck, natch.)
    BTW, no one would know it by looking at my little atheist self today, but I had a pretty rigorous Christian upbringing and also hope to come at him from a reverse direction... I really don't think that ID will destroy science, but it could hurt Christianity by encouraging misguided Christians to yoke their supernatural beliefs to what Whitehead called "misplaced concreteness," only to watch it paint itself into a corner.
    My Christian relatives, whom I love dearly, will accept no other creator/designer than God Almighty, so if Behe doesn't cough up this particular deity, I'm spreading the word that they are being duped into worshipping aliens or a New Age, values-free, no-resurrection idol. That will kill any support for ID they have (although I wish they could support evolution).
    #: Posted by Kristine Harley  on  09/30  at  03:37 PM
  28. Complete side issue tangent to the topic of this thread, so apologies for that, but have you guys seen this:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050930/ap_on_re_us/bennett_race;_ylt=Alstdwq_KfAiIb._nAbI_RRG2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

    I near lost my lunch. You poor Yanks have loons like this in government. I mean we've got nutters, but everything's bigger in the US of A. Just WOW.

    Sorry I couldn't find somewhere more suitable to post this, I guessit's vaguely related by virtue of being about a reality hating nutcase.
    #: Posted by  on  09/30  at  04:54 PM
  29. "Toward an Intelligent Understanding of the Intelligent Design Hypothesis". I wonder what he means by "Intelligent Understanding"? Maybe we have been misunderstanding ID because of our lack of intelligence? We will have to wait PZ's post.
    #: Posted by  on  10/01  at  03:01 AM

  30. My Christian relatives, whom I love dearly, will accept no other creator/designer than God Almighty, so if Behe doesn't cough up this particular deity, I'm spreading the word that they are being duped into worshipping aliens or a New Age, values-free, no-resurrection idol. That will kill any support for ID they have (although I wish they could support evolution).

    These sound like people who need to learn that the Raelians, a science fiction cult, support the teaching of Intelligent Design creationism, which they believe was carried out by space aliens.

    You could also mention to them that Jonathan Wells, an IDC supporter and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute is a Moonie. Are the Moonies Christians? They must believe in Jesus Christ, because they believe that their leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, is Jesus' younger half-brother.


    No word from PZ yet, I wonder if he survived the travel.
    #: Posted by  on  10/01  at  09:02 AM